Hello all!

[TFS_Rein]

Hi my name is Rein, and I've been a lurker for awhile. Wanted to finally post and introduce myself. I'm a network/server admin at a large bank and I loved FreeNAS so much at home I pushed to have it setup in the office.

Currently at home I'm using:
HP DL180G6 2x intel xeon l5520, 48GB RAM, IBM m1015 in HBA Mode, 6x2TB Assorted drives in RAIDZ2.
The server runs xenserver hypervisor. I have the disks running in passthrough via this method, and xenserver tools running via an image a fellow forum member created. To make sure the passthrough is working correctly, I loaded freenas onto a USB drive and booted straight to it. It's able to correctly see the drives and data whether FN is loaded virtually or physically. I have 16GB assigned to the FN VM. I have a couple jails running (plex, owncloud, etc) and they are all working great!

This replicates to a N40L microserver with 4x3TB reds in raidz1 with 8GB of ram.

This way I figure even if the Virtual setup takes a dump, I'll still have my data available.

At work we have:
two HP DL 180G6's each with 24GB of ram, 2x l5520 CPU's, and 10 2TB drives in RAIDZ2 with an LSI HBA. The primary one stores backups, and replicates them offsite to the secondary DL 180. No Virtualization going on with these

What do you guys think? any recommendations/things I missed/things I should know?

Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

I wouldn't do the disk passthrough as you are doing. It's been a total disaster for ESXi users that did disk passthrough and so its not recommended. Almost nobody does Xenserver as a hypervisor with FreeNAS, so you are totally on your own to solve any problems that may develop.

Check out the guides in the how-to section on how to virtualize properly and you'll see that disk passthrough is a no-no. It's probably the biggest no-no there is for FreeNAS.

 

[TFS_Rein]

Thanks for replying!
I went through those guides and I know virtualizing FN is not recommended nor easy. I have made sure my data on the 6x2TB is accessible whether FN is running virtually or physically, and it is backed up in its entirety on another machine so I am at minimal risk for losing data.

Initially that method I posted was the only one I could find regarding passthrough to Xenserver's VM's. In response to your warning though, I went back to google and I think I have found how to pass the entire controller to the VM and the SMART Data with it rather than just attach them as removable devices.

I'll post back with results when I get a chance to try it out.

 

[TFS_Rein]

I have PCI passthrough working in my FN VM now. I can successfully run smartctl -a /dev/da* in the Vm and pull all relevant SMART data. For those interested, I found this helpful:

yes pci passthrough is possible in XCP and xenserver 6.2. Though you have to do this through the command line: xe vm-param-set other-config:pci=0/0000:06:00.0 uuid=[UUID] Where "06:00.0" is the id of the passed through device (you can find a list lunning the "lspci" command to find the id's of your devices) and "[UUID]" is the uuid of the VM you want the device to be assigned to. (you can find this in the general tab of your vm in xencenter)

I shutdown my VM, undid my removable devices hack, rebooted Xen. With the FN VM still down, I found the UUID of the VM as well as the ID of the PCI device and ran the command.

Code:

xe vm-param-set other-config:pci=0/0000:05:00.0 uuid=2b1bd48c-fb42-93bb-f91b-f7cbeaf3e0ac

If you want to remove the PCI Passthrough:

Code:

xe vm-param-remove uuid=2b1bd48c-fb42-93bb-f91b-f7cbeaf3e0ac param-name=other-config param-key=pci

Started up the Vm and it worked out great!