This may sound a little confusing, but please bear with me (I have exhausted all searching, trust me). Setup is aimed at using only 1 machine with Passthrough of most components (VT-d), Currently :
1) I boot ESXi from a 8GB USB Device (works fine)
2) I then passthrough the second USB Bus channel and connect a second 4GB USB Device to a free USB Slot on the same ESXi host/PC
3) I create a VM on the ESXi Host, with no disk, but add the "PCI Device" (passthrough device, which is actually the second 8GB Lexar USB Device mentioned in point 2) to the VM settings>add.
4) I start VM, and attach the ISO of Freenas to boot and install freenas onto this second passthough Lexar 8gb USB Drive, it recognises the key ok, as a "lexar usb" on "da0" and seems to install Freenas ok.
5) Once completed, I cannot boot to this Passthough'd USB Lexar 8gb PCI device although Freenas did install onto it) >>I found ESXi does not support booting from a VM via its bios to a passthrough USB device that's connected directly to the ESXi host.<<
6) I then tried to run PLOP iso to boot the VM, and select run from USB, but PLOP does not find PCI Device (aka Lexar 8GB USB) which has the Freenas install. BUT if I boot this USB Stick directly from the physical PC (so esxi doesn't load) it runs the Freenas startup, so the install on the USB key seems ok.
7) If I go back and boot the FREENAS iso Install again, while loading it sees the PCI Device usb key as Lexar USB on "da0" but from the install ISO, the only option on the FREENAS setup is to install/upgrade or shell, reboot etc, I want an option to run Freenas but from the identified "da0" device, is this possible?
I was hoping to be able to select the "Shell" option, and somehow run the Freenas installation from da0 (the PCI Device Passthrough Lexar USB which has the Freenas install setup) Is this possible, can I do some kind of mount and run from "da0" while in shell?
I know the install has worked on the USB Key, so I guess what I am after is like a Freenas Live CD but with an option to boot from "da0" and continue to load Freenas, is this possible?
I hope this makes sense to anyone out there. In case your wondering why?
I want one Physical Machine to run both Esxi from USB (which works), then one VM to run Freenas from another USB key via ESXi passthrough (so I still haven't used any physical harddrive yet)..... I then want to Passthrough all my Physical Drives to the Freenas VM and setup ZFS, and afterwards configure ESXi to map a datastore (either iscsi or NFS) via the Freenas VM but still allow Freenas full direct control of all the drives by passthrough these also as PCI Device(s).
So just to clarify:
-one Physical PC, with ESXi on USB bootable (ok)
-one VM with Freenas running on a Passthrough USB key (need way to boot to Passthrough PCI Device)
-Freenas configured with say 6 drives (ZFS) physical Drives using PCI Passthrough via ESXi
which is then configured to connect to the Freenas VM datastore (created from th 6 drives) either via ISCSI or NFS. This would then allow direct access, so if I wanted to pull out 6 drives and connect them to a dedicated Freenas box PC, it would be able to read the data ok (as no vmdk files are created and everything is Passthrough configured)
I hope this is clear. I understand the complexity, but I want to also adapt this to a laptop setup to make it portable, and I think I am almost there, if I can get the Freenas Passthrough USB to boot.
p.s. - I don't want to use RDM/vmdk file or connect the USB on any other machine other than the Esx HOST directly, I have also tried the formating a USB key with VMFS and tried to map to ESXi but that is unsupported and not working either. I tried all version of ESXi 5.0 al the way to 5.5 with all updates/patches with no luck. I also read all the article suggesting no the install Freenas as a VM, but remember as everything is passthrough its actually all physical though somewhat risky I know.
Appreciate any help on this.
Regards
Eilz
1) I boot ESXi from a 8GB USB Device (works fine)
2) I then passthrough the second USB Bus channel and connect a second 4GB USB Device to a free USB Slot on the same ESXi host/PC
3) I create a VM on the ESXi Host, with no disk, but add the "PCI Device" (passthrough device, which is actually the second 8GB Lexar USB Device mentioned in point 2) to the VM settings>add.
4) I start VM, and attach the ISO of Freenas to boot and install freenas onto this second passthough Lexar 8gb USB Drive, it recognises the key ok, as a "lexar usb" on "da0" and seems to install Freenas ok.
5) Once completed, I cannot boot to this Passthough'd USB Lexar 8gb PCI device although Freenas did install onto it) >>I found ESXi does not support booting from a VM via its bios to a passthrough USB device that's connected directly to the ESXi host.<<
6) I then tried to run PLOP iso to boot the VM, and select run from USB, but PLOP does not find PCI Device (aka Lexar 8GB USB) which has the Freenas install. BUT if I boot this USB Stick directly from the physical PC (so esxi doesn't load) it runs the Freenas startup, so the install on the USB key seems ok.
7) If I go back and boot the FREENAS iso Install again, while loading it sees the PCI Device usb key as Lexar USB on "da0" but from the install ISO, the only option on the FREENAS setup is to install/upgrade or shell, reboot etc, I want an option to run Freenas but from the identified "da0" device, is this possible?
I was hoping to be able to select the "Shell" option, and somehow run the Freenas installation from da0 (the PCI Device Passthrough Lexar USB which has the Freenas install setup) Is this possible, can I do some kind of mount and run from "da0" while in shell?
I know the install has worked on the USB Key, so I guess what I am after is like a Freenas Live CD but with an option to boot from "da0" and continue to load Freenas, is this possible?
I hope this makes sense to anyone out there. In case your wondering why?
I want one Physical Machine to run both Esxi from USB (which works), then one VM to run Freenas from another USB key via ESXi passthrough (so I still haven't used any physical harddrive yet)..... I then want to Passthrough all my Physical Drives to the Freenas VM and setup ZFS, and afterwards configure ESXi to map a datastore (either iscsi or NFS) via the Freenas VM but still allow Freenas full direct control of all the drives by passthrough these also as PCI Device(s).
So just to clarify:
-one Physical PC, with ESXi on USB bootable (ok)
-one VM with Freenas running on a Passthrough USB key (need way to boot to Passthrough PCI Device)
-Freenas configured with say 6 drives (ZFS) physical Drives using PCI Passthrough via ESXi
which is then configured to connect to the Freenas VM datastore (created from th 6 drives) either via ISCSI or NFS. This would then allow direct access, so if I wanted to pull out 6 drives and connect them to a dedicated Freenas box PC, it would be able to read the data ok (as no vmdk files are created and everything is Passthrough configured)
I hope this is clear. I understand the complexity, but I want to also adapt this to a laptop setup to make it portable, and I think I am almost there, if I can get the Freenas Passthrough USB to boot.
p.s. - I don't want to use RDM/vmdk file or connect the USB on any other machine other than the Esx HOST directly, I have also tried the formating a USB key with VMFS and tried to map to ESXi but that is unsupported and not working either. I tried all version of ESXi 5.0 al the way to 5.5 with all updates/patches with no luck. I also read all the article suggesting no the install Freenas as a VM, but remember as everything is passthrough its actually all physical though somewhat risky I know.
Appreciate any help on this.
Regards
Eilz