FreeNAS on public cloud possible ? (only for testing) (SOLVED)

[Lars Jensen]

Hi all

We're using FreeNAS as storage backend (only NFS feature and of course ZFS) for scaled micro services hosting. And need to test our system with FreeNAS using a great number of NFS clients (container hosts).

We need to be able to create, test, and delete a fairly large deployment regularly. That is spin up and shut down container and FreeNAS hosts fast. To test configuration in general.

So I'm looking for a cloud provider where it's possible to install FreeNAS in a VM. I'm aware that for real production FreeNAS shouldn't go inside a VM!

Any recommendations on a clean install (like to avoid hacking the cloud provider to be able to get FreeNAS running).

 

[darkwarrior]

Hi there,

I might be wrong, but I think it will be difficult to find a hosting service that will easily accept to create VMs with "Hardware assisted Virtualization" enabled (prereq. to be able to use Docker inside of a VM) ...
Personally, if I would go with the physical server alternative. Where you could basically do almost whatever you want with it (Deploy Corral, create containers, etc)

 

[Lars Jensen]

Found https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/images/import-existing-image and GC support FreeBSD so it might be possible to make a custom image for FreeNAS

Sendt fra min Nexus 6P med Tapatalk

 

[Lars Jensen]

I just had the time to experiment with a FreeNAS instance on Google Cloud using the import image guidelines, and it's a pretty trouble free process. Though you need good technical understanding to get it done (to make an install of FreeNAS on a RAW disk for a virtual server). Added 4 disks to the FreeNAS instance and made a raidz2 pool. But as soon as the Google Cloud FreeNAS image is done you can, of course, create an instance easily.

 

[rbrookstx]

Pm me if you're still looking for this. We do it and have had great success.

 

[Dice]

Why bother with RaidzX if you don't have access to the physical drives?
Isn't it sort of implicit that the cloud provider will <assume responsibility> for not having provided data go bad?
If all drives are virtual, what would make this a better idea than a really flimsy vmware installation done badly?