RDM hard drive stops responding in FreeNAS VM

[natrat22]

Not sure if this is some kind of issue with the RDM or FreeNAS but am starting here :smileyhappy:

I've successfully created a physical RDM connecting an external 1TB hard drive to my ESXi 4.1 hypervisor and assigning the drive via a raw device mapping to the FreeNAS VM.

(followed instructions here for creating the RDM - http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/SATA_RDMs.php)

I've formatted the drive from within FreeNAS as UFS (the whole 1TB) and mounted it successfully and can access it from my PCs via FreeNAS CIFS/SMB.  Tested creating files - ok.

I then attempt to copy my media files backup to the drive, which appears to work when it first starts, in fact it successfully copies the entire "movies" folder from another computer (224GB) using Cobian Backup but as soon as it finishes that folder and moves to the next it fails.  When i try and access the share on the drive again i get a not found error (I can still access \\freenas and see my shared folder which is the 1TB drive but can no longer get into that folder).   It's like the drive has become unmounted, or failed.  FreeNAS still shows the drive mounted, and visible, and ok, esxcept on the main screen under disk usage wherei t says no disk configured.

If i go and mount the drive again in FreeNAS, i can then see the disk usage on the main page which reflects rthe size of the folder that successfully copied..  However I still can't access it.

any ideas?  this is sounding more like a FreeNAS issue i guess.

nathan

[natrat22]

Further to this, it seems to be related to drive mounting but I don't know where to look for where or why it failed.

In FreeNAS if i go into Shares under CFIS/SMB and try and recreate the share, it can no longer find the mount point /mnt/media  even though under disk/mount it is visible, and ok, and the front page shows the drive and its free space.

Still no closer to know if this is an ESXi/RDM issue or FreeNAS.  I may format the drive NTFS and re-add the RDM and mount it in FreeNAS as preformatted and see if that makes any difference.

[DSTAVERT]

Welcome to the Communities

Is there any reason you are using RDM? Unless there is some very special reason I would just use the disk as a datastore and give as much as you like to the FreeNAS VM. Use RDMs to solve issues that can't be solved otherwise.

[natrat22]

I’d like to be able to take the disk out and put it on another PC if ever needed, but mainly I can’t seem to create a drive on a datastore for a VM to use larger than 256GB.

[DSTAVERT]

You just need to change the block size for the datastore. Remove all VMs from inventory on a datastore and then delete the datastore. In the configuration tab select storage and add. You will have an oportunity to change block sizes. Use 4 or 8MB