Any reason not to passthrough the Intel SATA ports?

[thisman105]

I know I'm not supposed to virtualize FreeNAS, but I'm going to do it anyway, not mission critical stuff here and there's an offsite backup anyway.

I will have up to 8 drives in the server and my question is: since I will only have 3-4 drives on the FreeNAS VM, is there any reason why I would passthrough the LSI controller instead the Intel SATA ports?

Other questions is that if I should use the LSI controller for FreeNAS (IT firmware), how much CPU overhead will there be from ZFS if I run my 3x 15k SAS drives in RAIDZ1 and an SSD with no mirroring and use them to provide iSCSI to my other VMs?


Thanks for the help.






Hardware:
OS: ESXI 6.5 (or another version?)
Motherboard: Super Micro MBD-X10SL7-F 6 Intel SATA ports and 8 through the onboard LSI2038.
CPU: e3-1231v3
32GB ECC memory (currently at about 24 hours of MemTest)
Chassis: Chenbro SR20969-CO w/hot swap
iStarUSA 3.5.25-4*3.5 hot swap bay
Some PSU that works with this picky A$$ board.

 

[Dice]

heya :)

is there any reason why I would passthrough the LSI controller instead the Intel SATA ports?

Because forwarding of individual ports or on board controllers tend to be FAR more flaky than a LSI controller forwarded.
It is fine to forward the LSI, that is tried and tested.
Boatloads of problems have hit the fan with individual ports/partial SOC intel controllers. That route is a definite no-go to attempt the other.

how much CPU overhead will there be from ZFS if I run my 3x 15k SAS drives in RAIDZ1 and an SSD with no mirroring and use them to provide iSCSI to my other VMs?

nothing to worry about.

OS: ESXI 6.5 (or another version?)

fine.

 

[thisman105]

I was going to pass the entire Intel AHCI controller. I did test using the Intel ports and it seemed stable for the few hours I had it running but if there are issues I can use the LSI controller. Only issue there is I'm limited to 32GB of ram on this platform and FreeNAS will need most of that with all those drives. Should have dropped the extra $$ on an 1151 platform.


Thanks for the info.

 

[thisman105]

I went ahead and used the LSI as you suggested. I installed FreeNAS and uploaded my config file from the physical server with the drives plugged into the LSI ports. Everything seemed fine except some errors that seem to be related to the boot drive being IDE instead of SCSI which I should be able to fix. I am experiencing slow share speed as are others on the internet, however none of them seem to be using a PCI device passed though, they are all using virtual disks. Any ideas why it's so slow?

Thanks

 

[Dice]

as are others on the internet, however none of them seem to be using a PCI device passed though, they are all using virtual disks.

They clearly don't care about their data what so ever and does not understand what ZFS requires to any frigging extent at all.
Uninstall all of their advice. Detonate every single bookmark and note.
Quit fraternizing with that part of the internet. Delete accounts to the swamps of idiocy.

Make up your mind.
Follow the random idiots online, or follow the recommendations by the forum.
Honestly - where do you think the competence lingers?

./rant

 

[thisman105]

./rant

I know they are idiots, that's why I'm not using virtual disks. What I don't know is why I'm getting slow windows shares. I'm pretty sure I know why they are; but that should not be happening with my setup. Any idea why mine is so slow? Like between 2 and 30 MB/s transfer speeds on large files. The NFS share to the other VMs gets full speed.

 

[Dice]

How much RAM is dedicated to the VM? is it locked?
Describe the network setup please. The more detail the better.

 

[joeschmuck]

I agree with @Dice that you need to provide more details about your hardware configuration, ESXi configuration, protocol, etc... Assume we know nothing at all. Also, what version of FreeNAS did you VM? Are you transferring files from your FreeNAS storage to another VM or to an external computer over Ethernet, or WiFi? Seriously, assume we know nothing because we have no clue what you are doing and once we understand, you will get a sdound answer to help you along.

Also, I run ESXi 6.5 and FreeNAS VM with 16GB RAM locked, using CIFS and I can saturate my 1Gbit Ethernet. I can saturate using iSCSI and NFS as well.

 

[thisman105]

How much RAM is dedicated to the VM? is it locked?
Describe the network setup please. The more detail the better.

FreeNAS 9.10.2-U2
16GB RAM locked, tried increasing to 24GB, didn't work
Cat5e to Asus AC68u and Cat5e to my PC. Ran at Gigabit speed before I virtualized
ESXI default network setup with the E1000 network adapter

3x 4TB Seagate NAS drives RAIDZ1
2x 140GB IBM SAS drives Striped

Tried without the two SAS drives since they were not in the physical machine, same.

 

[thisman105]

I just got home and the volume status of the RAIDZ1 is unknown and "zpool status" doesn't show the pool at all.

 

[thisman105]

After some checking, the volume was missing two of the 3 drives. The two drives were the bottom two on the Chenbo hot swap cage. After some troubleshooting, I was able to determine that the Molex connector from the PSU that powered those two drives is somehow bad. Ran a new Molex to it and it and rebooted the VM. All drives were present, volume appears fine, and now getting gigabit speeds.

Should I start a scrub of the volume?

Thanks everyone.

 

[Stux]

Yes, run a scrub.

 

[thisman105]

Running.

 

[joeschmuck]

Hope the scrub comes out clean.

 

[thisman105]

Hope the scrub comes out clean.

One drive says damaged with too many errors. Any idea how to "replace" a disk without physically replacing it? Not at home ATM, but can I just wipe the drive and rebuild the pool?

 

[Stux]

One drive says damaged with too many errors. Any idea how to "replace" a disk without physically replacing it? Not at home ATM, but can I just wipe the drive and rebuild the pool?

Offline, wipe, replace

 

[joeschmuck]

Make damn sure you do the correct drive. If you do not have a backup, make it first!

 

[thisman105]

I have a backup from a few months ago, there hasn't been any appreciable data added since then.

 

[joeschmuck]

Then you have a go for liftoff!