Virtualizing FreeNAS on desktop board?

[trizc]

My setup is:
-A780L3G AM3 760G Biostar motherboard
-AMD Athlon II 250 CPU
-3x1TB in raidz1
-3x2TB in raidz1

I was wondering if there were any good solutions for virtualizing FreeNAS so it would have access to my physical disks and then put them in ZFS RAID. I understand there may less performance but it would allow me to do more with the computer I am using. As long is performance still decent and the system is stable I don't mind.

I was looking at ESXi, XenServer, and KVM. What would be the best solution?

 

[Jesse B]

You need VT-d (or in the case of AMD, IOMMU) in order to pass through PCI devices, which is what you'd need to do in this case. So in short without any explanation, you can't really do that.

One workaround would be to install FreeBSD with a GUI, and then run VirtualBox on top of that.

 

[trizc]

if i upgraded to a 890fx that supported IOMMU, would i be able to passthrough disks connected to the motherboard? or does it have to be on the pci sata controller in order to be passed through?

 

[danswartz]

IOMMU/vt-d passes thru the entire pci device - not the disks.

 

[Wally Simmonds]

I ended up going with openindiana because Freenas wouldn't see my Dell perc 6 controller when using IOMMU. Tbh, the openindiana/nappit install was pretty painless (and uses a later version of zfs iirc) so I'd go for that if you're looking to do the all in one thing.