From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 3 00:17:01 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5993BF7D for ; Tue, 3 Dec 2013 00:17:01 +0000 (UTC) Received: from blu0-omc4-s24.blu0.hotmail.com (blu0-omc4-s24.blu0.hotmail.com [65.55.111.163]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 21FFA16B5 for ; Tue, 3 Dec 2013 00:17:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from BLU0-SMTP371 ([65.55.111.137]) by blu0-omc4-s24.blu0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675); Mon, 2 Dec 2013 16:15:55 -0800 X-TMN: [WOwjAnDw5N3kaAHmBMHocfnlFE4eaAZ1] X-Originating-Email: [drew@mykitchentable.net] Message-ID: Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([69.62.230.77]) by BLU0-SMTP371.phx.gbl over TLS secured channel with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675); Mon, 2 Dec 2013 16:15:51 -0800 Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2013 16:15:47 -0800 From: Drew Tomlinson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.1.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD 9 On ESXi 5.5? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 131202-2, 12/02/2013), Outbound message X-Antivirus-Status: Clean X-OriginalArrivalTime: 03 Dec 2013 00:15:52.0091 (UTC) FILETIME=[D3758EB0:01CEEFBC] X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 00:17:01 -0000 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. I had hoped to use the 4 drives as one logical 3 TB drive with parity. But since I can't, I have set it up as 4 single drives and therefore have 4 different drives in which I could create virtual drives for my FBSD guest. It was my thought that then I could use these 4 virtual drives and build my FBSD on ZFS, just as I would if it were bare metal. 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. Thanks, Drew