How-To: Setup FreeNAS 8 for use as a Virtual SAN

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Everyone

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I put a lot of work into this, and thought the FreeNAS community would benefit from it...
http://www.fixtheexchange.com/Budget-Laboratory-Part2-iSCSI-Virtual-SAN-with-FreeNAS-8

I wasn't sure if it should go here, or under Installation. It covers both Installation and Configuration.

FreeNAS has worked great as a Virtual SAN for me. I've connected iSCSI LUNS from it to VMWare ESXi. I've also used the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator to connect to my FreeNAS Virtual SAN to setup to Windows Server 2003 to use as shared storage for an Exchange 2003 cluster.

I did this all on my own before even looking at the documentation or digging into the forums here, so if I've missed anything, or could have done anything better, let me know, I'd be happy to update the how-to article.
 

Everyone

Dabbler
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Very nice (and detailed!) write-up.
Thanks. :D

I spotted something that I missed, and have updated the article. I forgot to include a step where you associate the extent with the target. This important step is now the last one in the article.
 

Mohave_steve

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Everyone,

Very nice detailed write up. Thank you for taking the time to put it together. Worked great for a single drive volume using a device extent but I cannot use a device extent on a ZFS2 volume. Did I miss something?

Thanks

Steve
 

Everyone

Dabbler
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Everyone,

Very nice detailed write up. Thank you for taking the time to put it together. Worked great for a single drive volume using a device extent but I cannot use a device extent on a ZFS2 volume. Did I miss something?

Thanks

Steve

Do you mean RAID-Z2? Did you create the ZFS volume after creating the RAID-Z2 volume?

For example, I added 5 drives to my FreeNAS, created a volume, selected all 5 drives, selected ZFS as the filesystem, and RAID-Z2 as the group type. Then I created a ZFS Volume on it. After doing that, I can select it as a device extent. Only unused drives and ZFS Volumes will show up in the disk device drop down when adding a Device Extent.

Device Extent is just one way of doing it. You can also just use a regular Extent instead, which will have you browse to the path on the volume you want to create it on. This allows you to use free space on an existing volume, as it just creates a folder for it in the path you choose.
 

Mohave_steve

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I missed that step.

Thank you for catching that for me! I really appreciate your assistance.

Thanks again.

Steve
 

chris crude

Patron
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i can't access the link :/
Maybe it's because you brought a 6 year old thread back to life and the link didn't last that long? Maybe because FreeNAS 11 is currently supported and no-one wants to troubleshoot FreeNas 8? Just a guess.
 
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TheNoob19

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Maybe it's because you brought a 6 year old thread back to life and the link didn't last that long? Maybe because FreeNas 11 is currently supported and no-one wants to troubleshoot FreeNas 8? Just a guess.
its ok now, i read the link. but i didn't know the definition of Vsan has changed of the years...
 
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