Help!! Freenas as storage for esxi datastore for vms

[nrichards14]

Hello anyone who can assist.
Recently we had an issue where we lost our entire SAN. On this SAN were the volumes for our datastores for all of our virtual machines. I am trying to set this FREENAS system up to help move some data and start to re-setup some vms to get our organization up and running, until we get a new system. Here is my problem. I have 4 1tb drives in this box, 2 of which are ext hds. I have setup the interface for freenas and have been onto the web interface. I created a volume using all drives in zfs in a raidz configuration. I have read online multiple places that i then have to add a zfs volume on top of that, then with this create the portal, initiator, scsi target, device extent, target/extent etc etc (see http://www.virtuallyimpossible.co.uk/configure-iscsi-san-using-freenas-8-2/) I do this and all is fine and dandy. However. I do not know how large to make this zfs volume size, or why I even need to do this. Can I not just create one volume w/ all of my drives in a raid configuration, and add iscsi to this, so esxi will pick up this volume/datastore and be able to use it? JUst really confused. If i do create the zfs volume once i have my original volume created, i can get my server to see the size I specifiy in this volume, however, once it sees the 2.5tb (after raid), it only tells me that 500gb is available for use. I just want to be able to use this w/ all of my drives in a raid config and be able to tie it into my esxi vmware environment. Please assist. I am open to any suggestions!
Thank you.

 

[pirateghost]

Let me stop you right there.

You want to use EXTERNAL drives in a production environment? For VMs/iSCSI?

You have some reading to do in the documentation....

 

[nrichards14]

We do not have any other space. I have 2 tb hard drives in this box, and two ext hds 1tb each. I need this to be the datastore that the vms store their data on. Just trying to get something temporarily set up until we can get a SAN brought backup online.

 

[cyberjock]

Rule 1: Don't use external drives with FreeNAS for many reasons(performance will be atrocious and the zpool will be unreliable)
Rule 2: ZFS and iscsi aren't necessarily the best combo. Some people have no problems and others can't get it to work reliably.

Just as pirateghost said, you have some reading to do. You don't seem to have this very well thought out. As an "emergency" measure for your organization this isn't going to work out too well for you if you guys really think external drives in a zpool with iscsi is even an option worth considering.

 

[nrichards14]

Thanks for your advice. I pulled the two ext. hds. It wasnt working, and you are right, not a good idea in a live environment. Everything I read was saying the same thing.. i knew that, but was in panic mode as to how to get more space quickly. Basically we just wanted to get some data off of our current san, so we can send it off to a data recovery center, and be able to have a place to tie into our esxi box so we can get email back up and going.