Presenting FreeNAS server to ESXi6 as DataStore

[calmiyatake]

I am new to FreeNAS. I have successfully installed version 9.3 on a Dell Server using 32GB USB drive as boot drive. I would like to configure the local hard drive on the server to present to my Vmware ESXi6 hosts as a DataStore. How can I do that? Can someone give me some guidance or point me to a website that can give me a step by step setup of the FreeNAS server so that the local drives can be presented as a VMFS volume to the ESXi6 hosts?

 

[pirateghost]

How would you present any disks over a network to ESXi?

Via NFS or iscsi....

Set up your pool
Set up your datasets
Pick either NFS or iscsi to connect your ESXi to.
Profit?

http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/freenas_sharing.html

 

[calmiyatake]

I'd like to set it up as NFS altho I could do it ISCSI, as well. Which is easiest? ISCSI would offer me better VMware flexibility. Normally, the Volume has to be configured using the Storage software (i.e. SAN configuration). How that is "presented" to ESXi6 is unknown to me. Once it is "presented", ESXi6 can see it and accept it. It can then be setup as a VMFS datastore.

I have the FreeNAS 9.3 setup and the ESXi6 host server can "ping" the FreeNAS server BUT it can not see the volume on the FreeNAS server because the FreeNAS server has not been configured to "present" the volume to Vmware.

I have setup the pool but I think the problem I have is that I have no idea how to share it....the available options are Greek to me as to what I need to select to make it shareable to VMware/VMFS. I tried initially for NFS. I'll try iSCSI and see if I have better luck

 

[pirateghost]

NFS is the easiest and ESXi has it built in to connect to NFS. NFS is how your storage is 'presented' to your ESXi server.

You make an NFS share, and then in ESXi you connect to that NFS share....

 

[SweetAndLow]

Once you get this figured out you should describe your Dell server a little more. Most of the time they are terrible freenas servers.

 

[calmiyatake]

Thanks. got it setup and the datastore is recognized by my Vmware ESXi6 host.