Hi all, this post will cover the installing of FreeNAS on VirtualBox. This will serve as the backbone for upcoming clustering posts. To be begin, you need the following:
Requirement:
– Download the latest FreeNAS here
– Download and install VirtualBox
Setup:
– Launch VirtualBox and click on New button
– Under Create Virtual Machine, enter name of server, select BSD as type and select appropriate version of FreeNAS downloaded (x86 or x64)
– Allocate at least 512mb of memory to this VM
– Create a new virtual hard drive
– Select drive type but will recommend you stick to VDI format
– Select either Dynamic or Fixed disk
– Allocate at least 4GB of space for the hard disk and choose location you want the disk created
– Select the newly created VM and click on Settings. Now click on the Empty CD icon, then click the CD icon at top right and select Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file… from the drop-down
– Locate the downloaded FreeNAS iso file and attach it
– On the Network tab, select your desired options and click OK to save the changes
– Start the VM, allow the count-down and wait for the setup files to load. Select option 1 (Install/Upgrade) using keyboard and press Enter
– Select the disk to install the OS on
– Select Yes on warning screen
– After installation is completed, press Enter and select option 4 to shutdown the VM
– After shutdown go back to Settings >Storage, select the FreeNAS iso, click on the CD icon and click on Remove disk from virtual machine
– Lets add a new hard disk for our SAN storage. Select ‘Controller: IDE‘ while on the settings screen, click the plus icon at the bottom and click Add Hard Disk
– Follow the same steps outlined above to create the additional disk. As seen I have named my second disk as SAN01
– Start-up the VM and wait for the boot-up configuration to complete. You should see the screen below with the assigned IP from the DHCP server
– Log onto a windows machine on the network and browse the FreeNAS VM IP Address (http://
In my next post, I will show us how to configure the additional storage added and setup FreeNAS for iSCSI connection.
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