I have looked around but cannot find anything which quite answers my specific questions. I have read lots about FreeNAS on VMware, and seen the changed recommendations (provided it is correctly configured), but I am a little confused about a few basic points.
1 - Is there any reason I cannot connect the drives to the SATA ports on the MoBo instead of using a LSI card in IT mode as seems to be the guidance if I read it correctly?
2 - Can I still boot FreeNAS off a (passed through) pair of USB drives or is that frowned upon when virtualising.
My objective is to have ESXi running a few VMs and have freeNAS provide the raided storage for it and a wider system at home. I looked at Corral - but I think that the VMware virtual environment is better for the VMs in as much as I can start things like DNS/DHCP and a Active Directory server without booting freeNAS first - or am I just barking up the wrong tree and I should just go with bhyve? Really appreciate some guidance here before I go too far.
Plan is to use a FreeNAS 9.10, SuperMicro X9 with an E3-1220 and 32Gb RAM and the six on board SATA ports - 4 for general raid storage and 2 for the ESXi datastores in mirrored Raid (which is plenty for my needs). TIA. If this is going to be insufficient or unrealistic, I'd like to know before I go too far.
1 - Is there any reason I cannot connect the drives to the SATA ports on the MoBo instead of using a LSI card in IT mode as seems to be the guidance if I read it correctly?
2 - Can I still boot FreeNAS off a (passed through) pair of USB drives or is that frowned upon when virtualising.
My objective is to have ESXi running a few VMs and have freeNAS provide the raided storage for it and a wider system at home. I looked at Corral - but I think that the VMware virtual environment is better for the VMs in as much as I can start things like DNS/DHCP and a Active Directory server without booting freeNAS first - or am I just barking up the wrong tree and I should just go with bhyve? Really appreciate some guidance here before I go too far.
Plan is to use a FreeNAS 9.10, SuperMicro X9 with an E3-1220 and 32Gb RAM and the six on board SATA ports - 4 for general raid storage and 2 for the ESXi datastores in mirrored Raid (which is plenty for my needs). TIA. If this is going to be insufficient or unrealistic, I'd like to know before I go too far.
Last edited by a moderator: