Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2013 16:59:26 -0800 From: Drew Tomlinson <drew@mykitchentable.net> To: Michael Sierchio <kudzu@tenebras.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 9 On ESXi 5.5? Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP278DF0B4A8A580B5C11366DB3D50@phx.gbl> In-Reply-To: <CAHu1Y70Tcx=t9cXSu%2BsVQaR-8AuhFvyJJfF9FdHzJ0ELcdqPfg@mail.gmail.com> References: <BLU0-SMTP3715B7F52FF0ACE69A856B7B3D50@phx.gbl> <CAHu1Y70Tcx=t9cXSu%2BsVQaR-8AuhFvyJJfF9FdHzJ0ELcdqPfg@mail.gmail.com>
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On 12/2/2013 4:31 PM, Michael Sierchio wrote: > On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 4:15 PM, Drew Tomlinson <drew@mykitchentable.net> wrote: >> I recently purchased an HP Proliant ML310 to replace an old server that >> happily ran FBSD for 13 years before it died last month. >> >> Now because the hardware will support it, I'd like to learn about vSphere or >> ESXi or whatever they are calling it these days as we are beginning to >> migrate that way at work. Thus I would like to rebuild my FBSD box as a >> guest. >> >> My new server has 4, 1TB drives. The onboard RAID controller will only do >> mirroring or striping without parity. It will not do what I know of as >> RAID5 where parity info is spread across the disks. > Are you sure? I.e., are you sure it isn't just a driver issue? Do > you have the HP-specific distro for ESXi? The one you get from VMware > won't have the right driver for that RAID controller, for sure. Yes, I am sure. I do have the HP distro for ESXi. It seems I have to buy a Flash Back Write Cache (FWBC) module to get RAID5. >> I used to use ZFS and like the redundancy it provides. However I've googled >> and there seems to be a lot of posts about ZFS not working well in a virtual >> machine. >> >> Does anyone have any insight on this? Good idea? Bad idea that will bite >> me later? It is most important to me to have a machine that is reliable and >> just runs like my old one did than to do anything fancy. I like a raid1z >> pool because I could lose a disk and not lose data. However I do not want >> to cause problems by using it in a vm since they are so easy to restore from >> backups. > The only way to use ZFS pools in any reasonable fashion with ESXi is > to present iSCSI targets to the ESXi server from the host that has the > pools. Just my $0.02 ($0.11 adjusted for inflation). Thank for your thoughts. However I don't have a server with pools. It was my (probably bad) idea to create 4 virtual drives (one on each physical drive) in the ESXi software for the FBSD guest. Then create the ZFS pool in that FBSD guest. Cheers, Drewhome | help
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