Import RDM disks in nas4free ESXi6

marcos · Post by **marcos** » 03 Nov 2015 08:08

Hello, everybody

I've been looking for it, but I have not been able to find an answer to my question:

I've got 3 SATA disks with a raid Z1 pool in them. They are currently running in a bare metal nas4free.

I'd like to put that nas4free in an ESXi 6 host, as a VM, but there's no PCI passthrough posibility.
if I make a nas4free VM in ESXi 6 and I import those disks (already full of data in their ZFS pool) as RDM disks in physical compatibility mode, will I be able to use my existing data?

I'm thinking about following this guide, but there's no mention about what I ask.
http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/SATA_RDMs.php

Thanks in advance

PD: RDM stands for Raw Device Mapping

Post by **b0ssman** » 03 Nov 2015 08:15

please read
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?th ... ine.12484/

marcos · Post by **marcos** » 03 Nov 2015 15:34

I know what you mean, bossman, I've already read that topic, there are even some mentions to RDM disks at the end of the paragraph..
The truth is that this is a very small implementation, with just three disks for a "testing" enviroment, mostly for my homework with virtual machines in sphere 6. I wouldn't mind losing some performance

If I just could use the same box I'm using for nas4free for pfSense as well (in virtualbox,in bhyve, as a jail or whatever) that could solve a few problems, but running pfSense "inside" nas4free doesn't seem to be an option.

So anybody knows anything about importing written RDM disks in a VMware Sphere 6 virtual machine?

Thanks

Post by **b0ssman** » 03 Nov 2015 15:57

using rdm is not about performance its about loosing your data. if things go wrong there is a big chance that you wont be able to recover your data.

marcos · Post by **marcos** » 03 Nov 2015 23:05

b0ssman wrote:using rdm is not about performance its about loosing your data. if things go wrong there is a big chance that you wont be able to recover your data.

I really appreciate your concerns, but most of those data got their backup, and as I said, it's mostly a testing enviroment full of disposable VMs.

So, it's that "doable"? (even unsopported in any format)
If I create a nas4free virtual machine in ESXi 6 and I assign those 3 disks in RDM, will I see my data there after importing them in the nas4free VM?

Post by **b0ssman** » 04 Nov 2015 07:22

no. the rdm is not a direct format. you need to create the rdm storage, which would overwrite your data.

erico.bettoni · Post by **erico.bettoni** » 04 Nov 2015 11:30

If you have backup I recommend recreating the pool inside the new VM and restore your data.
You give the disks as raw to nas4free and go from there.

XigmaNAS

Import RDM disks in nas4free ESXi6

Import RDM disks in nas4free ESXi6

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