Hi Experts,
I'm trying to setup a FreeNAS server so I read a lot of forum/post/blog etc etc to better understand what are the best practices when you try to configure a home made FreeNAS server. I understand that virtualisation is not the best with ZFS (yes dangerous also), but I'm trying to figure out what acceptable compromise I can make to get things done.
First, here is my hardware: DELL PowerEdge R430 with PERC H730 with 1x Xeon E5-2640-v3, 128GB RAM (ECC) and 4x 2TB 12Gb/s SAS drives configured in RAID10.
Second, here is my goal: I would like to use that hardware to host one Linux server, one Windows server and of course FreeNAS to host a File Server. My best would be to be able to get all these OS in the virtualized environnement so they will be protected against hardware failure.
My question: I understand that the best case would be to give to FreeNAS access to the physical drives, so I'm trying to figure out a way to be able to get both (physical drives and VMFS for the 3 OS).
I'm trying to setup a FreeNAS server so I read a lot of forum/post/blog etc etc to better understand what are the best practices when you try to configure a home made FreeNAS server. I understand that virtualisation is not the best with ZFS (yes dangerous also), but I'm trying to figure out what acceptable compromise I can make to get things done.
First, here is my hardware: DELL PowerEdge R430 with PERC H730 with 1x Xeon E5-2640-v3, 128GB RAM (ECC) and 4x 2TB 12Gb/s SAS drives configured in RAID10.
Second, here is my goal: I would like to use that hardware to host one Linux server, one Windows server and of course FreeNAS to host a File Server. My best would be to be able to get all these OS in the virtualized environnement so they will be protected against hardware failure.
My question: I understand that the best case would be to give to FreeNAS access to the physical drives, so I'm trying to figure out a way to be able to get both (physical drives and VMFS for the 3 OS).
- Let say I add 4 more drives in the system to hold the File Server's data, I know I can tag these drives as Non-RAID (within iDRAC), but I will still need to create VMFS with these drives to be seen by the FreeNAS OS because I can't passthrough the whole RAID controller (PERC H730). So I guess that would not be a good solution ?
- I read that LSI 2308 / IBM M1015 controllers are the suggested controllers (in IT mode) to use VT-d to passthrough the HBA to the ZFS server. I wrote to DELL to be able to understand if it will cause any problem to get 2 RAID controllers in the system (even if one is HBA), and they cannot answer. Is anybody aware of any compatibility issues with that use case ?
- Any other suggestions ?
