1st build with ESXi, is iSCSI ok (and some other questions :p)

[sgm]

HI,

I'm building my 1st FreeNAS box (X10SL7-F, 32GB ECC, 8*4TB WD Red, i3-4360) and I'm still trying to figure which is best choice:

1. FreeNAS baremetal and another desktop PC for day-to-day use (both windows and linux)
   
2. FreeNAS in ESXi, being able to virtualize my desktop (and other VM is needed)

1) is obviously the best choice but:
would require more power/more space (tiny flat here)/stronger UPC (they would be next to each other)
2) less space/power/UPC but more complex (and chalenging :p)
=> I've read that NFS/iscsi perfs were not that great with esxi/freenas, but also that a new iscsi kernel *thing* has been activated in FN 9.3, so is perf still an issue ?
=> not related to FN, but would graphic card passthrough to my linux box be OK too ? A must have due to VDPAU (nvidia) hardware acceleration
=> any reason to do/not to do this ?

Thanks !

Edit: jails (with virtualbox ?) would be an option too, if you can do graphic passthrough

 

[pirateghost]

You're not going to get a whole lot of people here who advocate virtualization of FreeNAS.

Please. Let your FreeNAS be a NAS and use other hardware to connect to the storage. Do not attempt to virtualize your desktop under the virtual box plugin. Do not attempt to virtualize your NAS under ESXi unless you know 100% what you are doing.