FreeNAS and Virtualbox Oracle VM problem

[phongle123]

So I've got FREENAS installed but when I start it up it says "FATAL: Could not read from the boot medium. System halted."

 

Please help.

[Windows7ge]

I've heard of linux OS's having boot loader issues when installed on certain VM applications. Not sure if FreeNAS fits in that category.

 

Why are you running FreeNAS on a vm? Just playing with it?

[Arudis]

FreeNAS specifically recommends not running production machines in a VM. Your specific issue is usually a symptom of either a faulty drive or the type of disk image used for the vm. If you have old hardware lying around, I would suggest experimenting with that instead. 

[phongle123]

@Windows7ge, @Arudis

 

I watched a current video and while it worked for others in the other video by just creating a new HD Image. In v11 you had to create the HD Image under a SATA controller. 

 

Someone told me in another thread that v9 and under weren't good for VM. But v10 and support it very well. 

[Arudis]

3 hours ago, phongle123 said:

@Windows7ge, @Arudis

 

I watched a current video and while it worked for others in the other video by just creating a new HD Image. In v11 you had to create the HD Image under a SATA controller. 

 

Someone told me in another thread that v9 and under weren't good for VM. But v10 and support it very well. 

While running it in a VM is possible, the people who have been doing it for a while will all tell you that the warnings are there for a reason. FreeNAS and zfs really want unobstructed access to the hardware. 

 

With that said, you might need to look at iommu for your particular motherboard and see if passing the whole controller to the guest OS is doable.  Also you don't want to try to boot from the zfs pool. 

 

Cyberjock wrote a guide that did a really good job of warning me of all the ways that I messed up my own pool. Didn't find it until after I had lost 3tb of data that I foolishly didn't have backed up; but,  when I started over, I took a lot more of it to heart.  https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/slideshow-explaining-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

http://www.freenas.org/blog/a-complete-guide-to-freenas-hardware-design-part-i-purpose-and-best-practices/

This was useful too.  

 

After experimenting with these I came to the conclusion that I really just needed to spin my own. External access was never an option I was willing to consider and I knew Linux better than I knew BSD. But reading through all of this gave me a better understanding of why my setup failed, why performance was never really where I thought it should have been and why you should heed those warnings. Experimenting in a VM is OK but you really need to put it on bare metal when you finally decide what to do.  Good luck. 

[dalekphalm]

On 12/14/2017 at 4:46 AM, Arudis said:

While running it in a VM is possible, the people who have been doing it for a while will all tell you that the warnings are there for a reason. FreeNAS and zfs really want unobstructed access to the hardware. 

 

With that said, you might need to look at iommu for your particular motherboard and see if passing the whole controller to the guest OS is doable.  Also you don't want to try to boot from the zfs pool. 

 

Cyberjock wrote a guide that did a really good job of warning me of all the ways that I messed up my own pool. Didn't find it until after I had lost 3tb of data that I foolishly didn't have backed up; but,  when I started over, I took a lot more of it to heart.  https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/slideshow-explaining-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

http://www.freenas.org/blog/a-complete-guide-to-freenas-hardware-design-part-i-purpose-and-best-practices/

This was useful too.  

 

After experimenting with these I came to the conclusion that I really just needed to spin my own. External access was never an option I was willing to consider and I knew Linux better than I knew BSD. But reading through all of this gave me a better understanding of why my setup failed, why performance was never really where I thought it should have been and why you should heed those warnings. Experimenting in a VM is OK but you really need to put it on bare metal when you finally decide what to do.  Good luck. 

I would just like to point out that FreeNAS running as a VM can work flawlessly, as long as you properly plan.

 

First, you need a proper Hypervisor that supports PCIe Passthrough. ESXi is the prime example here. Next you'll need either a motherboard with two SATA controllers on it, or you'll need a PCIe SATA/SAS HBA (or a RAID Card in IT mode, if said card supports IT mode). Lastly, you need hardware that supports PCI passthrough, (VT-d, I believe).

 

I've been running FreeNAS on ESXi 6.5 for ages, with absolutely zero issues.

 

With that in mind, I sure as hell wouldn't use VirtualBox

 

Using PCIe Passthrough, in conjunction with an HBA, allows direct and full access to the drives, allowing ZFS to read full SMART data and operate optimally.