How do I do zfs?

[Basshead]

I've heard a lot of people argue for zfs over hw raid. So I decided for my esxi server why not.

I put two of the same exact model hard drives in my old dell optiplex 790 and I put the usb in and I can't figure out how to do zfs.

[OhYou_]

im like 45% sure esxi does not support zfs for the install disk
Best practice should be hardware raid 1 for esxi installer. and then a separate box running as a NAS should be used as the datastore.

 

is this for a home lab?

really stupid homelab practice is to install esxi on its internal drives.
then buy a cheap HBA that runs in IT mode
install one vm of freenas or your choice of NAS os to the dell internal drive.
plug in the HBA and connect some additional drives to it
pci-e passthrough the HBA to the freenas vm
Boot ESXI, boot the VM, create a zfs pool on the vm, mount the pool in esxi as a network datastore, install all further VMs to the NAS datastore.
if it ever loses power, you have to go into cli and force a rescan of network datastores after your NAS vm has booted, its great.

[shadowlabs-dev]

You cant do a zfs boot pool with exsi, it wants it own seperate boot drive.

[Basshead]

On 2/12/2024 at 5:42 PM, shadowlabs-dev said:

You cant do a zfs boot pool with exsi, it wants it own seperate boot drive.

The sarcasm of this response is not targeted at you but to the others on this forum who seem to have a life goal of telling everyone how HW RAID is dead.

 

Oh wow! So your telling me that if I want to mirror my boot drive that I CANNOT use zfs and I SHOULD use HW RAID. I really hope people can learn to consider that other people's ideas are valid even if old. (Like how does the age of a technology negate the validity of an idea using said technology?)

[Basshead]

On 2/12/2024 at 5:34 PM, OhYou_ said:

im like 45% sure esxi does not support zfs for the install disk
Best practice should be hardware raid 1 for esxi installer. and then a separate box running as a NAS should be used as the datastore.

 

is this for a home lab?

really stupid homelab practice is to install esxi on its internal drives.
then buy a cheap HBA that runs in IT mode
install one vm of freenas or your choice of NAS os to the dell internal drive.
plug in the HBA and connect some additional drives to it
pci-e passthrough the HBA to the freenas vm
Boot ESXI, boot the VM, create a zfs pool on the vm, mount the pool in esxi as a network datastore, install all further VMs to the NAS datastore.
if it ever loses power, you have to go into cli and force a rescan of network datastores after your NAS vm has booted, its great.

Thank you very much!

I appreciate the info and will look into this. While I may not go that elaborate route, I think it's interesting and worth looking into.