Use FreeNAS VM (Docker Host) or a dedicated Pi (8 GB RAM)

[Papillon]

Hello,

I want to run some Docker containers.

I heard on many posts that bhyve is at least very unstable. And my FreeNAS server has just 8 GB of RAM.

Is it safe to use Docker Host VM (with a dedicated SSD) or I would have less issues running a Raspberry Pi for that ?

Thanks!

 

[simplextech]

Hello,

I want to run some Docker containers.

I heard on many posts that bhyve is at least very unstable. And my FreeNAS server has just 8 GB of RAM.

Is it safe to use Docker Host VM (with a dedicated SSD) or I would have less issues running a Raspberry Pi for that ?

Thanks!

With that little amount of RAM I would be careful and myself wouldn't recommend it. Go with another box for playing around with containers.

 

[Papillon]

With that little amount of RAM I would be careful and myself wouldn't recommend it. Go with another box for playing around with containers.

And if I add 8 GB of RAM ?
The CPU is an AMD Ryzen, an overkill for FreeNAS CPU usage

 

[simplextech]

And if I add 8 GB of RAM ?
The CPU is an AMD Ryzen, an overkill for FreeNAS CPU usage

It's one of those "it depends" answers. As with most things it depends on what you're intending to run and resource usage of the containers + ZFS memory use.

Dunno... I'm adding 16G to my play box.

 

[Papillon]

I see... The few docker containers doesn't require much perfs (HomeAssistant, MQTT broker and some other stuff). Thanks for your answer!

 

[sretalla]

If you just need HomeAssistant and an MQTT broker, there are jails for that which can probably run under the 8GB you have.

Those 2 things will also run perfectly in the Home Assistant Core build available for a Pi.

If the "other stuff" includes things that will want more processing power (like Plex), then add more RAM, but still consider jails instead if doing it on the FreeNAS box (at least until TrueNAS SCALE is out).

 

[Papillon]

If you just need HomeAssistant and an MQTT broker, there are jails for that which can probably run under the 8GB you have.

Those 2 things will also run perfectly in the Home Assistant Core build available for a Pi.

If the "other stuff" includes things that will want more processing power (like Plex), then add more RAM, but still consider jails instead if doing it on the FreeNAS box (at least until TrueNAS SCALE is out).

The other stuff will include planning (todo) and other ultra light softs

Actually, both runs inside jails but are extremely slow (they have a dedicated pool on a USB 3.0 drive), even minimal operations like ls on a 10 text-files directory or cat of a 3-lines config file takes at least 10sec. I've already posted here for that but no answer so I decided to stop using freenas jails and migrate to Docker containers on a SSD (and also my planning soft doesn't work on FreeBSD, only Docker container)

What do you mean by "FreeNAS box" ? Virtual Machine ?

 

[sretalla]

What do you mean by "FreeNAS box" ? Virtual Machine ?

I used the word jail in that phrase, so probably I meant on the FreeNAS server inside a jail.

If you're going to put an SSD into the equation, why not run jails on it? I think that calling jails a failure based on running them on USB is a mistake.

 

[Papillon]

I used the word jail in that phrase, so probably I meant on the FreeNAS server inside a jail.

If you're going to put an SSD into the equation, why not run jails on it? I think that calling jails a failure based on running them on USB is a mistake.

I can't run jails on the SSD because my planning soft and other stuff doesn't work on FreeBSD, only in Docker containers and FreeBSD don't support Docker since a long time so I've no other option.

And, here is the fact : running freenas jails on the (SanDisk genuine USB 3.0) key is a disaster. I can't find the bottleneck. Performance of the USB key was tested (around 60 Mo/s). The CPU usage is never higher than 2%. Obviously, gigabit ethernet.

 

[sretalla]

And, here is the fact : running freenas jails on the (SanDisk genuine USB 3.0) key is a disaster.

I don't think anybody is recommending that. Of course it's not good. The bottleneck would typically be the way that a USB controller handles (or more accurately doesn't handle) ZFS transaction groups.

You will likely find that an SSD will perform well in the exact same scenario though.

You could also (with the right amount of RAM) run a VM with docker on an SSD also.