My company is looking into rolling out a FreeNAS server as a SAN. I’d like to get familiar with FreeNAS before I have to install it on the real server.
I run UNRaid here at home, and was hoping to install FreeNAS as a VM guest with several small vdisks so that I can become familiar with creating and managing vdevs and pools.
However, when I create and start the VM, it just hangs at the initial bootloader.
Any ideas? I’ve looked on the Unraid forums and the FreeNAS forums and I’m not really finding anything that matches my particular problem. SO, I decided to pick your brains (and Wendell’s if he’s watching) to see if you have any suggestions.
I don’t have the spare hardware in my lab right how that I could set up a bare metal FreeNAS box, either. So I was hoping to use a VM. Yeah, I know it will be slow and stupid, but I really want to familiarize myself with FreeNAS before the boss is looking over my shoulder.
Interesting. I can get the installer to boot on a VirtualBox vm on my laptop, but I don’t have enough RAM in the laptop to meet the minimum specs for FreeNAS.
Tried all that with no change. Using FreeBSD template. I tried both i440fx-4.2 and Q35-4.2. OVMF.
Built a new VM using SeaBios instead of OVMF and with boht i440 and Q35 I still hang but this time it shows the “Booting…” message but never progresses beyond that.
I was able to boot and install in VirtualBox but after install it says there’s no hard disk – but I have not troubleshooted that further yet, it could still be some boneheaded thing I did in the config on that one.
in VirtualBox you need to create virtual hard drives. it’s been a while since I used VirtualBox, but I think under options for your VM. There’s a hard drive tab. There you can create virtual hard drives you want the VM to have access too.
But I still can’t get 11.2 or 11.3 to boot the installer. Has anyone had any success with this?
I know it should be on bare metal, but I don’t have enough bare metal in my home lab to set this up right now – I’m hoping just to poke around and learn about FreeNAS before I have to deploy the real deal.
