FreeNAS system

[mikeusdev]

Hi,

I would like to have an advice on the following hardware that I would like to buy to build a FreeNAS system. I need the system as a backup unit and for running from time to time one or two virtual machines. I already have 2 hard disks and that's why they are not in the list.
Also, since I only have a router in my network, I thought about buying a switch as well. I will have 2 client machines and the backup system running simultaneously.

Kingston 4GB DDR3-1066 CL7
Cisco SG300-10 - 8+2-Port 10/100/1000
Fractal Design Array R2 Mini ITX NAS - 300W
Asus E45M1-I DELUXE

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Kind regards.
Michael

 

[bfishernc]

What type of VMs? Served by NFS? On ZFS? From experience, this takes some disk IOPs capability. Also, will probably need more RAM memory.

(I'm still a newbie... Take my notes with a grain of salt)

 

[mikeusdev]

VMs can be an email server and/or another server (SQL and/or Web). I have no idea about NFS or ZFS. I thought that setting up a FreeNAS box would "solve" the NFS/ZFS issues. But I am really new to NAS and FreeNAS.

 

[bfishernc]

ZFS is how the drives work together (basically software RAID), and NFS is the sharing protocol your VMs likely need (and CIFS for windows, etc). FreeNAS itself needs to be configured to know how you want it to work.

Like you, I didn't understand all of this until I got started. It's not too hard if you can follow the GUI documentation. I still don't know all the console commands, etc. Check out the documentation on the main website - it helps a lot.

 

[mikeusdev]

OK. I will use software RAID 1 with two disks and for the VM I simply access them through the GUI to work directly on them or use the networking (TCP/IP) capabilities of the operating systems (client and server).

Does anyone have comments on the hardware's choice?

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

are the vm's running on the freenas system? If so you might want to consider just using the built in freebsd 'plugin' jail. This way there is no overhead of running a VM (extra kernel running, VM kernel doesn't have access to raw disks), jails are much more efficient in my opinion, only problem is the jails are only freebsd, while VMs could be any OS.

 

[mikeusdev]

So, if I understand correctly, it will be easier to install an OS (Linux) on the machine and then run FreeNAS on a virtual machine. This will allow to run the other virtual machines, if required, as well. Would that be correct?
What about the hardware requirements? Is the hardware that I posted enough for my purpose?

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

I don't know how easy it would be to get Virtualbox on FreeNAS. FreeNAS's system is read only, so packages aren't supposed to be installed on it. New packages should be installed in the FreeBSD jail, but I don't know if FreeBSD jails can support virtualbox.

If you need linux virtual machines I would run linux as the base OS, and FreeNAS on it as a virtual machine. But if you run FreeNAS as a virtual machine it won't have direct disk access (unless you set it up to in virtualbox or whatever). The question is, what virtual machines do you need to run, can you just run all your services on a FreeBSD jail (this is the most efficient method, just one kernel running directly on hardware with direct access to all hardware). In my opinion FreeBSD is a great platform to run services on, just gotta lear how to add packages, everything is pretty strait forward.

Hardware-wise I love my e350 for FreeNAS because it can support 16GB of ram and it is very low power. Also it supports AMD-VT, I believe, so that's good for virtualization.

 

[mikeusdev]

Thanks for your answer.

I have a few virtual machines with their own operating systems (Centos and Zimbra for Email; Windows Server 2008 for IIS and SQL Server; openSUSE and Subversion as a code source version control systems). I use virtual machines, because it is easy for me (a developer) to create a snapshot and test some features or an application I develop. Also, I don't have deep sys admin knowledge, so I don't have to investigate a lot of time to learn OSes or their features.

The problem that you mentioned, is that the FreeNAS virtual machine will need to have access to the disks. I use VMware Workstation for running the virtual machines. Do you think that it is possible to have access to the disks? I saw that VMware has a "Shared folder" option; is it maybe this option that will allow FreeNAS to access the physical disks?

The goal is to have 2 machines as a backup system and synchronize data changes from one system to the other. I think that I was suggested to use FreeNAS and rsync to achieve my goal. Does anyone have any experience or suggestion about this idea?

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

no shared folder is file access, ideally you'd want device access.

Ok, I see you really need a wide rande of VM's. I'm not the guy to ask then, lol, I just use FreeBSD jails, and Virtualbox for server testing on my desktop. I do know in virtualbox you can pass devices directly to virtualmachines, and I bet you can do it in VMWare too. But I have no idea how...

EDIT
quick google search gave me this, goodluck
http://serverfault.com/questions/145032/how-do-you-passthrough-native-sata-drives-to-a-guest-on-esxi

 

[survive]

Hi mikeusdev,

So from what I gather from the above posts you want a box you can use for backups and to host some virtual machines for development work, correct?

To be blunt, I really don't think FreeNAS is the best tool to do what you want to do....unless you are planning to develop directly on FreeBSD I think the plug-in environment is just going to add at least one layer of needless complexity that you really don't want to deal with. Don't get me wrong, FreeNAS is a great system for storage and the plug-in system using FreeBSD jails is a proven implementation of operating system-level virtualization but this plan just screams "wrong tool for the job" to me.

Is there any reason why you don't just get an external drive to use for backup (or some enclosures for your existing drives), load your workstation up on RAM and get yourself a nice big SSD to store your VM's on and then just do you development work in VMware Workstation?

-Will

 

[mikeusdev]

Thanks for your answer. Actually, your proposed setup is what I have always had: an external enclosure (DAS-Direct Attached Storage) that I used as a backup unit. The problem is that the enclosure broke and I now have to wait 1 month to get the unit repaired. Also, since the enclosure was configured with RAID, I risk to lose the whole data too. Therefore, I am now looking for a solution that will enable me to access the external unit through the network but also have it synchronized with another unit, to minimize the risk of losing data. I really do not know what the best solution would be...

 

[mikeusdev]

After some further reading, I think that I will go for an easier solution: two Linux boxes that will synchronize their data (Lsync for almost realtime synchronization) and VMware for running, when needed, my virtual machines inside on of the Linux boxes. I think that this way, I will avoid setting up a complex system and environment that I will later need to maintain and troubleshoot.

Thanks for all the suggestion and comments!