CIFS, UFS, ESX 5.5 and a Noob...

[cgilbert37]

Hi all,

I'm new to FreeNAS, and like it enough to try to stick with it. I am looking for help with three things:

Config: Dell R610, dual quad core CPUs, w/48gb Ram, 3TB SAS all in RAID5 for 2.4Tb useable. This is just my home server and I am not a guru, just a project manager who likes to learn the stuff my IT teams work on. Base OS is ESX 5.5. FreeNAS is one of the VMs with a 4Gb OS partition and 2 data partitions: 900Gb and 400Gb- both UFS.

1) Did I screw up by choosing UFS over ZFS? I just didn't think I needed ZFS as I already have a RAID array and this is a VM.
2) Should/Can I expand the 900gb partition to 1.3tb?
3) Why can I not enable guest access to the second data partition? It seems because the "guest" account cannot map to two home directories...?

Thanks a lot!
Chris

 

[Whattteva]

I'm not sure if you're doing this for experimental purposes or for production use.
If you're going to use it in production mode, I suggest you read this thread first before going any further.
I'm not telling you to not do it, I just want you to fully understand the inherent risks so that you can accurately assess your risk tolerance.

 

[jgreco]

1) No. The benefits of ZFS in your environment are significantly reduced. You get error detection without possibility of correction (unless you're using copies= or something like that). I'd go UFS in that environment without a specific reason to use ZFS.

2) Expanding partitions is sort of magic and us old timers don't trust it.

3) Enabling guest access and mapping something as a home directory are two different things. You cannot assign a user two home directories. You do not need a "guest" user for providing guest access. You can share both partitions out and both can be accessed with guest permissions. I am not sure what exactly you've done, but I think you may have a user there that you don't need, named "guest", which is ironically NOT going to let you provide "guest" (also known as unauthenticated) access.

 

[cgilbert37]

Thanks for helping me overcome a learning curve. FreeNAS is running quite well as a VM!