Has anyone got FreeNAS working on VMware ESXi ?

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whitey

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Yeah no issue at all, VERY happy as in would not look back. I have some 1/2 a dozen arrays running in home lab and running a VDI stack w/ almost 200 VM's in a co-lo. ROCK solid!

That guide a pretty spot on. Reference it/use it each time I do a new config or one of my running systems.

What issues are you encountering?
 
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whitey

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9.10 has built in vmxnet3 drivers and open-vm-tools so that's good. No real challenges that I can think of off hand if you're familiar w/ vt-D and have compatible HW.
 
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JohnnyBeGood

JohnnyBeGood

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whitey said:
Yeah no issue at all, VERY happy as in would not look back. I have some 1/2 a dozen arrays running in home lab and running a VDI stack w/ almost 200 VM's in a co-lo. ROCK solid!

That guide a pretty spot on. Reference it/use it each time I do a new config or one of my running systems.

What issues are you encountering?
Click to expand...
I've tried few times and last one I was stuck at step where it talks about changing MTU basically my ESXi become not accessible and I every time I had to reinstall ESXi.
Here my thread on FreeNAS forum. PROBLEM - Can changing MTU to on FreeNAS VM cause ESXi not be able to connect? | FreeNAS Community
I'm trying to do it again but I'm afraid I'll be stuck at the same spot.
 
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whitey

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Here's the important thing, get standard 1500 mtu working first THEN come back and optimize. To not silo/isolate yourself it's easier w/ dedicated nics for stg/IP SAN/NAS traffic but if your sharing nics (especially for ESXi mgmt traffic) you MUST ensure you get jumbo configured properly END-TO-END and proper vlan trunk/tags assigned and cooresponding vSwitch/port group/port-profile setup to match. For jumbo mtu you gotta hit Phys switch (could be global config, per interface/vlan etc...consult your switch documentation or let me know what it is and I may be able to help), virtual switch, vmkernel port, and guest-OS if you intend to use it to that level. For simple stg you can stop one hop up.

But yeah start simple/KISS principle, then tune/tweak to hearts content.

EDIT: Ohh and BTW, save yourself some pain and don't EVEN mess w/ jumbo if you don't have a 10G network. Not worth it for nominal gains at 1Gbps v.s. complexity/additional configs tradeoffs. W/ 10G and up...ESSENTIAL!
 
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whitey

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OK, so I just read your freenas thread...SMH asshats, just a bunch of banter and no real help/suggestions. HELL I have been known to be terse at times but that is something else. Ping me in IM or we can keep on here and I can help you out brother soup to nuts. Gonna have to level set on env and some requirements but it isn't too bad.

These guys know, I am the screenshot KING :-D We'll light it up!
 
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JohnnyBeGood

JohnnyBeGood

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Ok, no I do not have 10G network, to help others in case they run into same issue I would like to keep it in here and if it comes to something specific we can always do TeamViewer.

So, I installed latest version of ESXi 6.0 Update 2 and I'm starting over.
I'm confused about this section 5. Create a Virtual Storage Network.
In his case he's using 10.55.0.0/16 but in my case all of my devices are on 192.168.1.0/24
My ESXi is has static 192.168.1.111 as IP assigned thru my pfSense router I have this free range 192.168.1.111-192.168.1.120 that is out of DHCP server range.
In my case that would look something like
1. VMware Storage Network 192.168.1.112
2. FreeNAS Storage Network IP 192.168.1.113
Am I missing something?
 
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whitey

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OK so it looks like your config/network is fairly simple...flat layer 2 network (not a bad idea at all and actually best practivce to setup a dedicated IP SAN network on a seperate vlan if you got a managed switch but lets just keep it simple for now). In this case you are on the right track. Do you have more than one nic in your ESXi hypervisor host? If so simply create two standard vSwitches (you likely already have one for mgmt, vSwitch0) so create one more (vSwitch1) and assign a spare nic to that vSwitch. Then configure a vmkernel port w/ a free IP on your 192.168.1.x/24 subnet and also setup a VM portgroup on that vSwitch1 w/ your FreeNAS AIO vnic interface on that portgroup. Config/enable vt-D on the hypervisor for your HBA and install FreeNAS w/ the vt-D HBA device attached and configure FreeNAS w/ a free ip again on that 192.168.1.x/24 network. Setup ZFS pools, setup shares, etc.

BOOM, that should get ya cookin 'high level' to be able to mount NFS storage from FreeNAS to the Hypervisor.
 
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whitey

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No it's not required but sure the hell makes things easier/safer if your are tinkering/new to these types of configs so you do not silo/isolate yourself. W/ a flat/layer 2 network I say your pretty darn safe though w/ a single vSwitch0 and single nic...GigE nics are almost thrown out these days w/ 10G nics being had for $30-60 all day long, dual porters even. 2cents. So yeah just follow my guidance and nix second vSwitch1 idea and lay it all on vSwitch0. Should be golden.

Can I/we get some specs on HW, memory in particular and disks? Need to have a 2 vCPU/8GB vRAM/memory config is my suggestion to start w/. Hope ya got that HOG maxed out at 32GB memory
 
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whitey

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BTW, I cry everytime I see how much one of those (read systems integrators) TS140's cost and how little you get unless you got it free/fallen off back of truck but then again I had my X9/E3 Xeon heydays just whiteboxed soup to nuts and I was tired of paying the 'vendor tax'. It's criminal that they are not even putting dual GigE nics on those and let me guess no OOB mgmt?
 
JohnnyBeGood

JohnnyBeGood

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whitey said:
BTW, I cry everytime I see how much one of those (read systems integrators) TS140's cost and how little you get unless you got it free/fallen off back of truck but then again I had my X9/E3 Xeon heydays just whiteboxed soup to nuts and I was tired of paying the 'vendor tax'. It's criminal that they are not even putting dual GigE nics on those and let me guess no OOB mgmt?
Click to expand...
It was on sale and I got it for $200 so not bad I guess!
 
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whitey

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Not bad, cost ya what $200-250 more to stuff 32GB ECC memory in it, been awhile since I looked at that RAM.
 
JohnnyBeGood

JohnnyBeGood

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Ok, yet again I reinstalled ESXi and this is how my configuration looked like:

net.JPG

Completely skipped section that explains how to change MTU to 9000.
Configured passthrough did reboot and I was not able to access it anymore.
Did I configured anything wrong with the network above?
 
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whitey

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JohnnyBeGood said:
Ok, yet again I reinstalled ESXi and this is how my configuration looked like:

View attachment 3036

Completely skipped section that explains how to change MTU to 9000.
Configured passthrough did reboot and I was not able to access it anymore.
Did I configured anything wrong with the network above?
Click to expand...
Yeah you don't need a vSwitch1 (you have no phys nics assigned/avail for it which equals completely isolated storage unless you ONLY want this host to connect to it then yes you could take this route but I am not EVEN muddying the waters w/ that discussion right now. Should be no issue to have vmk0 (mgmt) and vmk1 (vmkernel IP SAN conn) IP's assigned on same vSwitch0. If you lose mgmt, you can always reset very quickly via DCUI (yellow config screen). No need to re-install.
 
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CreoleLakerFan

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whitey said:
OK, so I just read your freenas thread...SMH asshats, just a bunch of banter and no real help/suggestions. HELL I have been known to be terse at times but that is something else.
Click to expand...
The guys who frequent the FreeNAS forums are assholes, led by the chief asshole forum moderator. I will never have anything to do with that forum until the attitude completely changes, which is going to require a change in moderation.
 
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