I wasn't even going to respond to your comment(nothing personal). Virtualizing is a very hot topic because people don't take "its stupid to do this" for an answer and only adds more tension to the forums. But here's the unedited no-sugar-coating answer...
I actually proposed this idea about a month ago. The concensus among the few mods that discussed it was that it just wasn't a good idea.
Here's the reasons why:
1. The FreeNAS forums provide instructions for a VM but it doesn't specify a setup for production use. It says something like "for testing, experimenting, and learning". Everyone seems to assume that because there's a section of the manual devoted to using FreeNAS in a VM that it MUST be safe to use in a VM. (See how they jumped to the conclusion? Keep reading...)
2. As a partial extension from #1, if a section of the forum was created that was for virtualization questions, then everyone would also make the logical jump that it MUST be safe to use in a VM.
3. When things go wrong with the virtualization, its never been the fault of FreeNAS. At least, it hasn't been in the 18 months or so I've been on the forums. It usually has to do with the Hypervisor that was used(both type 1 and type 2). As such, Hypervisor support isn't something that should be provided in the forums. You really should be going back to your Hypervisor's developers for support. After all, FreeNAS is just FreeBSD with a pretty UI. This forum shouldn't be the place to discuss support for virtualization issues, the hypervisor designer is. They're the ones that will be having to implement the fix. Just about any issue you have with FreeNAS is almost certainly also a problem with FreeBSD. There's nothing that FreeNAS does that you couldn't do yourself from the command line. So why wouldn't you take your issue to the hypervisor's forum and get your solution there?
4. Lots of people that claim to have years of virtualization experience have lost their data due to virtualizating. They have no clue what went wrong and no idea how(or if) you can fix it. It really is a gamble. People have done everything right and still lost data with no explanation or understanding of what went wrong. So should we really be inviting FreeNAS users to go to virtualizing when we know it isn't something that should be done by the vast majority of users? Not to mention that everyone that shows up in this forum always thinks they know better and can handle things because you are always smarter than everyone else. The reality is that most people here are average(that is after all the definition of average). And the average person should not be attempting to virtualize.
5. Virtualizing makes lots of promises. It really does. It promises to save you lots of $$$ on your car insurance.. err hardware and software, you'll be able to make your system multipurpose for virtually nothing, that it won't rain when you want to grill steaks at a park, it'll save your marriage, take your dog for a walk for you every day and it'll keep your data safe. Nobody wants to think about how ugly things can be though. The reality is virtualizing can cost you a lot more than just $$$, it will cost you your marriage when you lose your wedding pictures, it'll kick your dog repeatedly behind your back, and it won't keep your data safe. Do you know how many people even understand what a hypervisor type 1 and type 2 are and what the difference is? I bet whatever percentage you make up, it's probably 1/2 that, at best. People really don't know what virtualizing is. But as soon as they see the promises they want in! Ignorance is bliss.
6. At least 80%(and probably more like 95%) of all of the forum users do NOT backup their data. So after considering numbers 1 to 5 do we really want to give any hint that going with virtualizing is in any way recommended or endorsed?
7. Guess what happens when %NewbieFreeNASuser% loses their data because they were part of that 95%+? They show up in here complaining about their lost data, the fact that they had no idea that FreeNAS was so unreliable and untrustworthy, that the forum failed to help them recover their data, that life sucks, their wife wants a divorce now, their dog died, etc. Remember that FreeNAS is sold by iXsystems as TrueNAS, and if lots of people are doing things that are less than smart and losing data, that doesn't matter. That's someone else that will tell all their friends how much FreeNAS sucks does matter. Do we really need that? So many people create an account on the forum and have a single post. That post contains "I lost my data cause FreeNAS sucks". Don't want it and don't need it in the forum. It adds zero value. If you want to be stupid and do things that cost you your data, its totally your choice. But the least us mods can do is try not to give a false indication that VMs are completely safe.
Now, I realize there's a handful of people in the forum that can and do use FreeNAS in a VM. Yes, I am one of those people.. and I keep religious backups of my data too. And I have a problem that I'd LOVE to post on the forum and get answers for. (For my situation I built 2 identical systems, one has the issue and one doesn't!) The only reason I did virtualize is because I had one-on-one support with our virtualizing master, I keep backups, and it allows me to experiment with FreeNAS to provide better support for oddball questions in the forum(which I use regularly).
So how do you separate the people that do know what they are doing from the people that don't? Do we even need to stop and separate the people into those groups? Short answer is that we do(see #7) but I can't tell RandomUser#1 from RandomUser#2 and tell you which one should and shouldn't virtualize. Notice that the manual doesn't really say anything about virtualizing FreeNAS in production. It points you to the forum. That was a smart choice and a deliberate one.
Right now, the discussion is about getting rid of some categories instead of adding more. There are so many and with all the cross posting people do, going off-topic of the original post, posting in the wrong section, etc. it's just an "all you can eat buffet" now.
So there you have it. Plain and simple. It's one of those things in life that sounds great in theory but really doesn't work out in practice. As unfortunate as it sounds, its the plain and simple truth. Maybe someday when things work better with virtualizing it will change. But I'm not counting on that because ZFS was designed to have total control of the hardware. And you are breaking that expectation anytime you virtualize.
