FreeNas Virtual Machine for testing FreeNas

[vaibhavyagnik]

This is my humble effort to give a feel of Freenas 8 to anybody who is willing to try it out.
The current VM is using the final build of Freenas 8.0. The virtual machine has 4 hard disks, 1 of 2 GB (for Freenas) and 3 of 8 GB each configured in RAIDZ for storage. I have pre configured windows and FTP shares. Any other shares can be activated from WebGUI. The Username & password for WebGui is admin and freenas respectively
What will you need to run this VM?
1. VMware workstation 7.0 or greater of Latest VMWare Player
2. Files downloaded from this torrent
3. A computer with core 2 duo processor with atleast 2 GB RAM and 10 GB Free Space.

In Brief steps to get this Virtual machine up and running.
1. Download and Install VMware workstation 7 or later or VMware Player (VMware Player 3.0)
2. Download files from this torrent.
3. Extract files from this rar file to a place in your hard disk
4. Browse to FreeBSD folder (extracted from archive) and double click on FreeBSD.vmx This should open virtual machine inside VMware

Some points to note:
1.Before booting Freenas, ensure that you are connected to your router. This configuration assumes that the router is using DHCP.
2. After the booting is fininshed, you will recieve a list of options followed by http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XX. This the IP that you have to type in your address bar to open WebGui.
3. ftp://XXX.XXX.XXX.XX:21 ; this the address that have to type in yout address bar to open FTP. Alternatively you can also use Filezilla.
4. I will only be uploading 2 AM to 8 AM (yes, i am on BSNL 600 combo plan :lol
5. Please also tell me if you add this torrent and are not able to download. This is my first go at uploading a torrent.
6. I have a updated and licensed version of kaspersky internet security. You need no worry about malicious software getting to your computer.

Feel free to ask when in doubt.

 

[naviworks]

vaibhav

i couldnt understand. what is this all about, can you explain?

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

Hi navi,

It is a virtual machine. Meaning, it is like a seperate computer running Freenas. For example, if you have a PC running windows 7, you can install VMware player and run the virtual machine. When you run the virtual machine, it will be like 2 different OS running on the same Hardware. Thus your windows OS is called the HOST and Freenas Virtual machine will be called the guest OS.
Virtualization is used for using/testing multiple OS on same hardware, thus saving time, effort and money of installing - formating - reinstalling different OS and/or buying hardware to test other OS.
For more info on virtualization, please refer: Virtual machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and VMware: Benefits of Virtualization, Increase IT Efficiency and Virtual Management
if you try this virtual machine, your network will show you a independant Freenas Server. It will have independant IP, it can be mapped as a network drive on your windows computer, can be used as a FTP using filezilla from you windows computer. Even other devices will be able to see and share data with freenas. All in all, its like test it before you invest money sort of thing.
To summarize,
1. Your Host OS remains intact
2. Freenas will think it is actually running on indepandant hardware, it does not know it is virtual
3. Your network will also see two different machines, Host (windows) machine and Guest (Freenas) machine
4. You will be able to share data between various devices on your network as if doing with an actual freenas server
5. You can add shares, add NFS shares, add hard drives for expanding storage of NAS or migrating from RAIDZ to RAIDZ2, remove hard drive to see the performance when RAID has degraded.

Potential Pitfalls
1. Although it appears as a physical machine on network, you wont be able to gauge the actual read/write speeds because, the virtual machine shares the network card with host os as well as the hard disks will be accessed by two OS simultaneously
2. It is not a replacement for an actual Nas. Incase if your physical hard dirve fails, you lose the Freenas virtual machine also.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask if more clarifications are required.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Virtual machines are, indeed, wonderful for testing stuff, trying out installations, or occasional use of a different OS. I have eight of them on my Ubuntu system, under Virtual Box. Most are just test beds of of different installs (and they don't all work!) but I make occasional serious use of the WinXP VM.

A lot of people are buying this technology (literally, in the commercial word, rather than our free/open source versions) because they are being made to believe that they can get two or more machines for the price of one. This is not true. Virtualisation, on the PC platform, adds an extra level to everything, as well as a lot of duplication of core operating-system features. There is a lot of overhead.

Of course, if you happen to have an IBM mainframe in the next room, then virtualisation is the order of the day, and has been for a long time.

One hint: not all PC CPUs support virtualisation, and among those that do, you may have to find the BIOS setting that enables it. So, if you install it, and it just doesn't, don't give up: check the BIOS!

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

One hint: not all PC CPUs support virtualisation, and among those that do, you may have to find the BIOS setting that enables it. So, if you install it, and it just doesn't, don't give up: check the BIOS!

True. I am facing the same problem. I had created a MAC OSX leopard virtual machine on my brothers laptop (core i3). tried to run the same on my pc, would not load, reason my e7400 does not support hardware virtualization (VT-x) and VT-x is required for running 64 bit os in a virtual environment. This virtual machine, however should not be a problem for anyone as i have created it on my PC so any PC with a decent processor and 2 GB RAM should be sufficient for running this Virtual machine.

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

hmm...interesting..amahi + XBMC and Freenas without RAID are winnning