FreeNAS as a VM guest with virtio support?

[Drommy]

I am currently running FreeNAS as a VirtualBox guest under linux (openSUSE 12.2 x64). It all works correctly, but overall performance is somewhat below par.
I understand that VirtualBox does not provide Guest Additions for freeBSD guests, but the kvm virtio framework is available from
http://people.freebsd.org/~kuriyama/virtio/

I tested virtio-net on a nas4free testbed (freeBSD 9.1) and it seems to be working fine. Has anyone tried installing it on FreeNAS 8.3.x and if so, how did you do it (it being nanoBSD based)?

I would imagine running FreeNAS as a VM guest under a Linux host is quite a common scenario, so maximising its efficiency in this case should be a reasonable aspiration. Is there any likelihood that the virtio drivers would be included by default in upcoming versions?

Any thoughts?

Drommy

PS: To avoid any flames on running FreeNAS as a VM guest rather than host, my linux workstation runs heavy BOINC CPU and GPU workloads on a 24/7 basis, while FreeNAS provides backup and media services to the network on dedicated drives. It's bullet-proof, just somewhat slow at time machine backups.

 

[Gerhard Hannemann]

I am fighting this at the moment aswell. Not sure if this has been fixed.
NAS4Free does work with virtio as well on a KVM environment.
FreeNAS 8.3.1 also work with virtio as long as you do not use the virtio network (vtnet) device. Which is a pity as this is where I hope to see a performance increase. The drives have direct access to hardware as I use the Vt-d extension, therefore virtio for the data storage play no part.
I just stumble on a TRAC ticket to FreeNAS 8.3.1 that may address this issue.
The virtio can be set with the FreeNAS web gui. I had to manually fiddle with the network device on the KVM side to make it work.

 

[dlavigne]

Just to add to this, in 9.x virtio is built into the kernel so this option has been removed from the GUI.