Hello, currently I’m running FreeNAS on a whitebox build with a mix of 15 SATA/SAS drives. I recently acquired a NetApp disk shelf, and I’m interested in switching to virtualizing the FreeNAS OS and then moving the disks to that shelf.
The various guides/posts I’ve found talk about converting FreeNAS and using RDMs in VMware, or they talk about moving the storage. But I haven’t found anything that combines the two.
My current plan is to create the new VM in ESXi, then passthrough the HBA with external ports, then do a clean FreeNAS install. Next I’d connect that HBA to the disk shelf with the existing drives in it. After that is all connected, I’d import the FreeNAS config from backup.
Should this work? I’m trying to think of a “good” way of backing up the data, but it’s about 36TB so that would be pretty expensive and time consuming.
Any tips, help, etc are appreciated. Thanks!