![freenas vmware workstation 11 freenas vmware workstation 11](https://assets.linuxhelp.com/scr/0101218b12879cf422a6550cc6a751eb.png)
Remember, this hard disk will be used to install the Operating System only. Once you browse the downloaded FreeNAS ISO, it will automatically detect the OS version.ģ) Set a hard disk size for the Operating System. It may impact the performance of VM.Ģ) Create a virtual machine in VMware workstation. If you do not have enough RAM, then you can try with lower capacity. Since I have enough resources on my PC, I could configure a VM with 8GB RAM. NOTE: The current version requires a minimum 8GB of RAM. At the moment you can find FreeNAS 11.2 as on writing this guide.
#FREENAS VMWARE WORKSTATION 11 HOW TO#
How to Install FreeNAS Server on VMware workstation?ġ) Download the latest stable version from the official site here. For example, if you have the physical FreeNAS box, or install it on VirtualBox or any other virtualization software, you can follow the same below steps to set up disks. Also, remember that the steps involved in configuring iSCSI disks in FreeNAS as shown below remain the same on any platform.
![freenas vmware workstation 11 freenas vmware workstation 11](http://dalaris.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/050715_2019_HowtoInstal14.png)
But setting up and configuring the iSCSI disks involves several steps. Installing FreeNAS on VMware is simple and straight forward. I found that these two famous free NAS software can be installed in the computer and make NAS. These free storage virtualization software make your computer hard disk as network access storage and allow other clients to access the disk directly through the network. So, there is some free open source NAS software available to install on computers or servers to build a NAS system with existing hard disks and partitions. But for the testing purpose in VMware, we can’t have the expensive physical NAS devices to configure a cluster with high availability in VMware. These NAS devices support iSCSI, that can be used to set up a Windows failover cluster. Every NAS devices have plenty of features and tools to make it scalable, secure and accessible. The controller will have its own Operating System to manage the disks and allow the access. In the physical environment, NAS is a hardware device with hard drives and it is accessible via the network port. We can use this storage to setup Microsoft Windows server cluster. This method gives the ideal test lab setup to have NAS as a virtual machine on single computer hardware. Here I’m going to show how to install FreeNAS on VMware Workstation and configure iSCSI disks. Not only the server or client Operating Systems but even we can also install network storage Operating Systems on VMware as a virtual machine.