Standalone Freenas migration to Proxmox + Freenas

white_noise

Dabbler
Joined
Feb 22, 2015
Messages
17
I am wondering if i can do this:

Currently running Freenas standalone in its own server with 4 drives raidz2 and 1 SSD as its boot drive.

I would like to consolidate some items:

On my new server setup Proxmox with an LSI IT mode HBA card to pass the drives through, install Freenas onto it and then pass through the 4 drivers and restore everything.
 

blueether

Patron
Joined
Aug 6, 2018
Messages
259
Very do-able, it is how I have my 2 boxes set up.

There are a few more people that use ESXi than proxmox I think but either should work well.

I pass the raw boot drive through (it is on an onboard sata port) and boot freenas that way and pass the pci HBA through to freenas. Doing it this way I can take all the drives out and run bare-metal again with out any effort.
 

white_noise

Dabbler
Joined
Feb 22, 2015
Messages
17
I pass the raw boot drive through (it is on an onboard sata port) and boot freenas that way and pass the pci HBA through to freenas. Doing it this way I can take all the drives out and run bare-metal again with out any effort.


Perfect!
I was interested in how you handled the boot drive so that's good to know.
 

blueether

Patron
Joined
Aug 6, 2018
Messages
259
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Dice

Wizard
Joined
Dec 11, 2015
Messages
1,410
A while ago (10.x) It was recommended to prepare a VM setup of FN, by first installing on metal and then export a config file of the basics to have as a backup in case the virtualization endeavor would not go too well.
Ie, the point made relevant to your case - you could migrate with the config file to restore a fresh installation on proxmox without having to forward the boot drive of freenas on top of the HBA.

Im looking to do the maneuver of migrating FN from ESXi to Proxmox myself quite soon. I expect to rely on the config file.
 

alieNus

Dabbler
Joined
Mar 23, 2018
Messages
30
Very do-able, it is how I have my 2 boxes set up.

There are a few more people that use ESXi than proxmox I think but either should work well.

I pass the raw boot drive through (it is on an onboard sata port) and boot freenas that way and pass the pci HBA through to freenas. Doing it this way I can take all the drives out and run bare-metal again with out any effort.

would you say, that using proxmox is better than ESXi? I'm thinking also about moving my FreenNAS to ProxMox VM, so I can move all my jails to LXC. What do you think?
 

SillyPosition

Dabbler
Joined
Dec 31, 2018
Messages
20
I myself am very tempted to migrate my freenas server into a virtualized freenas within proxmox ve.
I would love to hear if you guys have any specific suggestions to best tackle this.
Today I run with a very capable server, and cant run VMs properly since bhyve isn't that great...that's the main reason.

I have freenas with encrypted drives, with the key entered manually on boot via the UI.
My intention is to setup proxmox, passthrough the entire disk controller to the freenas VM and give it full control on the drives.
This way the process theoretically would work, I assume?
Any tips on the best procedure to do it?
My boot drives is two USB sticks that are mirrored, I assume that I can just leave everything in place?
Where should I install the OS into? given that I want to passthrough the entire disk controller to the VM?
 

Inxsible

Guru
Joined
Aug 14, 2017
Messages
1,123
I built a VM server and used ESXi for a short while before switching over to Proxmox. I have no regrets. I create LXC containers for each individual service and NextCloud is in its own VM. I still use FreeNAS as the datastore for all the services that need to store data and have mounted the freenas shares onto each VM/Container that needs to save data.

I did not virtualize my FreeNAS though since I already had it up and running. I just moved my few jails over to LXC. The FreeNAS box now serves only as a file server and media server (Emby jail). All other services are in LXC containers on Proxmox.
 
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