c.fuhrmann
Dabbler
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2020
- Messages
- 12
"You are using ESXI. How are you passing the disks into the VM? This should be done with some sort of hardware passthrough that needs VT-d. "
I hope this picture shows what you need:
View attachment 42847
The other HDDs are similar "plugged" into the FreeNAS-machine.
The storage in ESXi for this HDD is:
View attachment 42848
This system worked very well the last years...
"Also, could you post the output of zpool status?"
I hope this is what you need:
View attachment 42851
Chris Fuhrmann
Awesome to hear that you were able to recover your system.Ok - after all I got help via TeamViewer from Michael Dexter, Gainframe.
I'm not shure to repeat all steps, but:
He unmounted the disks from FreeNAS and then from ESXi. Then investigating all disks / volumes. Fopund no errors. Mounting them agin and adding in FreeNAS. Then "zpool import" - this showed (after all unmounting etc.) there are data avaliable from DATE - and the date was exactely the time, when the NAS power supply crashed. Imported it and all was good!
I'm now backing up all my data twice. Afterward I'l build a new system. First installing a bare FreeNAS on my hardware and on a stick to start the NAS without any other HDD. Second installing (the newest) ESXi and on that installing FreeNAS with passthrough for the HDDs. Thats just the better way, everyone tells!
Awesome to hear that you were able to recover your system.
Moving forward, the combination of ESXi and HBA passthrough is a very viable option. I have been running this in production (personal server) for many years now. I boot ESXi from a USB key. I have 2 SSDs that are used for ESXi local datastores and this is where I store the FreeNAS VM as well as my pfSense VM. So far it has been very reliable (touching wood) and easy to maintain. Take a look at my signature for the layout.
Awesome part is that once FreeNAS boots, all of my other VMs become available via NFS shares from FreeNAS back into ESXi. I chose NFS for simplicity. iSCSI is another option but for my needs, it does not add significant value.
Anyway, happy FreeNAS-ing!
No, wait...sorry for this completely newbie question, but did I gather from this discussion that if I use FreeNAS, and someone inadvertantly switches off the NAS at the plug, that the whole things falls over when you try to reboot it?
As @HoneyBadger states, the OP set himself up for failure by not reading the plethora of posts that clearly tell people to NEVER EVER do what he did in a production environment!!No, wait...sorry for this completely newbie question, but did I gather from this discussion that if I use FreeNAS, and someone inadvertantly switches off the NAS at the plug, that the whole things falls over when you try to reboot it? If so, then perhaps FreeNAS isn't a local replacement for my use of (surveillance capitalist) Google Drive..?
As @HoneyBadger states, the OP set himself up for failure by not reading the plethora of posts that clearly tell people to NEVER EVER do what he did in a production environment!!
Personally, I have been running FreeNAS (TrueNAS now) on an ESXi (5.5, 6.0, 6.5) system with HBA passthrough for many years. Due to a faulty UPS, I have had the power suddenly fail to my ESXi system and, touch wood, nothing has ever gone wrong. I host multiple VMs on TrueNAS storage and they are stable, even after unexpected power failures.
All in all, TrueNAS has been a fantastic system for me. There are some pitfalls that can get you. Some are just annoying, some are disasters waiting to happen. That said, these forums are full of great advice and helpful people. Do a bit of reading and research before you decide to take the TrueNAS and/or ZFS plunge. One downside of ZFS is it is unforgiving. Like a vicious kick in the nuts unforgiving. Even now, I wish I had setup my production pool as a pair of 8 disk Z2 vDevs instead of 6 disks (I backup everything to a pool with 2@9 disk Z2 vDevs so I could push the limits on my production pool...). For me to adjust this now is a metric F-tonne of time and effort... But, such is life. Perhaps some day the ZFS magicians will figure out how to add a drive to a vDev (I will hold my breath...).
Cheers,
ZFS may be overkill for what you are looking for... That said, TrueNAS does a lot more than just store files. It is pretty cool for a lot of things.@Scharbag @HoneyBadger ... thanks again (see above). Would you say that TrueNAS Core is a sledgehammer to crack a nut in my case - backed-up network storage of no more than 1 TB and about the same amount of storage again for a media server; no need for differential permissions for a maximum of 5 users?
@Scharbag @HoneyBadger ... thanks again (see above). Would you say that TrueNAS Core is a sledgehammer to crack a nut in my case - backed-up network storage of no more than 1 TB and about the same amount of storage again for a media server; no need for differential permissions for a maximum of 5 users?
When you use a commercial cloud like Google, they protect themselves against physical incidents like a fire in a datacenter. They also have very rigourous procedures and risk of logical incident is low.
While that's generally true, there's no particular guarantee that your data is safe, secured, or protected from harm.