Running FreeNAS VM/Proxmox

[Pheoxy]

As it says in the title how viable would running FreeNAS in a VM on Proxmox via passing through the zfs disk's via passing through the sata controller and using a VM disk for the System Disk.

I'm planning on testing it on an old box to see if it would enable it to use FreeNAS 10 on release.
It can't mount gpt due to the weird bios and just stalls on start. So I'm planning on checking if this will in effect bypass that but I don't know if the ZFS pool will be partitioned using gpt and if that will result in the same thing.

Planning to use it as an old backup box. At the moment I use an externel drive and before I just install Linux on it I want to try getting this working.

My new system works great, but as I struggled to ever get FreeNAS working on my old system after 9.3 update I'm wondering if you guys have any opinions or advice to see if this might work as a workaround.

Obviously this is not going to be a recommended daily driver.

 

[m0nkey_]

FreeNAS does not perform well on ProxMox (if at all). Many people have tried and all come to the same conclusion. If you really must virtualize FreeNAS, use VMware ESXi. If you have to ask how to virtualize it properly, then you shouldn't be virtualizing it.

 

[decibel83]

Hi,
I'm also trying to virtualise FreeNAS on Proxmox with disk passthrough, it's working but the web interface is very very slow (I don't know if access to share is also slow, I will check ASAP).
Do you know why FreeNAS is so slow on Proxmox?
There are really no way to make it faster? Other operating systems are not so slow on Proxmox.

Thanks!

 

[Meyers]

I'm also trying to virtualise FreeNAS

You'll want to post your full hardware specs and how you have Proxmox and the FreeNAS VM set up.

When you say "disk passthrough" do you mean this?

 

[vshaulsk]

I have been running freenas 11.2-u6 in proxmox as my backup NAS. I have it doing some smb shares and also it is the replication target for my production Freenas. It is almost as snappy as my main Freenas machine and I can transfer files over the network at full 10gb speeds. The only thing which is not working is the new UI... cpu, memory, load and temp information are not showing up (which was expected)

Hardware:
Proxmox 5.4 running in a dell R720
Freenas VM:
OS disk - virtual disk
Memory - 24gb
Network - two virtual nics (using the virtio configuration within proxmox)
I use hardware pass-through in order to pass an LSI 9300-8e controller to the VM; this is attached to an external disk shelf
Freenas VM sees the data disks within the shelf correctly including all the smart data.
Two pools confirgured:
- HDD pool 4 x 5 disk raidz1
- SSD pool 4 disk in a stripe

This setup is working solid for the past few month and the performance has been good for the workload [ replication target and smb shares]

 

[blueether]

I have a test ibm x3560 m3 that I have proxmox and freenas (11.2 u5) and it works fine untill I try and pass through the SAS controller, any hints?

 

[vshaulsk]

It took me a few tries in order to get things working....

1) make sure to follow the Proxmox guide on how to get PCI / PCI-Express passthrough working

2) If not used by anything else you blacklist the driver used by HBA (this may not be completely necessary )

I keep the machine type set to Default (i440fx) vs setting it to q35
I passthrough the HBA as a PCI device and not PCI-Express. The performance seems the same and I find it has less issues.

- When passing the HBA via the proxmox GUI, I select "All Functions", but do not select "ROM-bar"

I found that if I select "ROM-bar" I am not able to passthrough the HBA.

 

[blueether]

Well that seems to have worked (I thought I did have it working months ago but couldn't seem to get it to work again)

- When passing the HBA via the proxmox GUI, I select "All Functions", but do not select "ROM-bar"

I think that this was the issue - much better

 

[Dice]

There is more a suitable place on the forum to continue this discussion regarding Proxmox:

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/forums/hypervisors/