Fog Server on VMWare - ln -s /mnt/hgfs /images ?

[RobertFontaine]

Virtualizing the Fog Server and thinking that I should keep the images on the metal so that the VM doesn’t explode to a silly size. I did a little googling but didn’t see anyone recommending this.

Is this a silly idea? What is best practice?

Thanks,
Robert

[george1421]

If I understand what you are asking, you want to keep a thin fog server with the images stored some place else.

It can be done, but not how maybe you like.

You can store your images on a NAS or another server running linux. This setup is a bit more complicated but can be done. There are a few issues with doing it this way too.

But I think it just adds more overhead since you still need to backup these images, why not just store the images on your fog server and avoid having multiple machines supporting your fog install?

[george1421]

Also in the FWIW bucket, you can’t NFS share a nfs mounted drive (i.e. reshare a mounted share). That is not allowed.

[RobertFontaine]

I will have between 800GB and 1TB of images. Looking for an interim solution while I assemble the lab.

Running about 10 test machines that I need to be able to test win7/8.1/10 various sp’s/anniversary/creators etc against.

They will go on a NAS (freenas) , raidz2 or 3 probably a sc846 with a couple of dozen 4TB spinners.

Virtual server in the dungeon will either be esxi (vmug advantage) or proxmox.

• (I have been very happy w/ vmware workstation to date but am finding it limiting for the current lab). I have a stack of s3500 600gb to mirror for the virt server and a couple of 2670e5s/128gb to drive it.

NAS will likely also be overpowered. have a v3/v4 serverboard that I will spend the next 6 months building up.

I figure I will put my primary ad on centos on the vm server and use freenas for the secondary. I have the server 2016 licences but I prefer *ix and it’s my dungeon so I get to pick.

At some point I will probably be forced to configure and install the microsoft deployment tools and monitoring but till then I will probably have a look at nagios

Currently tieing the junk together w/ a 24 port 1 gig switch and pfsense on an i5. I’ve started collecting 10gbe nics and will probably break down and add the second switch. (most of the test hardware is limited to 1gbe so mostly I don’t need).

[george1421]

@RobertFontaine I don’t know of anyone that has used freenas in this proposed setup. I know that commercial nas’ will work. With that said, I can give you guidance on using a synology NAS and a windows server as a fog storage node. You should be able to adapt the guidance for freenas.

For your setup you will use the FOG server (master node) as the command and control server, with the NAS configured as a (pseudo) FOG storage node. You will install the location plugin into the FOG master node and use it to direct all clients to capture and deploy to the NAS.

On the nas you will need to create two NFS shares (i.e. /volume1/images and /volume1/images/dev. You must a local user account that can read and write from the nfs shares. You will also need to install a FTP server to access /volume1/images and /volume1/images/dev. You will need to install the tftp service too.

Again these are just examples of what needs to be setup to make the FOG master node think the NAS is a fog storage node.
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/9430/synology-nas-as-fog-storage-node
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6941/windows-server-as-fog-storage-node-proof-of-concept-blog

The last bit is I think you can change the configuration in FOG to make the nas the master node. This should addresses the other issues.

[RobertFontaine]

So second try might work then …

cp images images.old
edit the fstab…

vmhgfs-fuse on /mnt/hgfs type fuse.vmhgfs-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other)

vmhgfs-fuse on /images type fuse.vmhgfs-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other)

cp old to new.

[george1421]

@RobertFontaine What you are doing (reading between the lines).

You are mounting the exported nfs shares from you nas onto your fog server and then trying to nfs export them from the fog server?

[RobertFontaine]

@RobertFontaine said in Fog Server on VMWare - ln -s /mnt/hgfs /images ?:

So second try might work then …

cp images images.old
edit the fstab…

vmhgfs-fuse on /mnt/hgfs type fuse.vmhgfs-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other)

vmhgfs-fuse on /images type fuse.vmhgfs-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other)

cp old to new.

took a bit to find the syntax… always hated the difference between fstab and mount.

.host:/images / vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

[RobertFontaine]

@george1421 said in Fog Server on VMWare - ln -s /mnt/hgfs /images ?:

@RobertFontaine What you are doing (reading between the lines).

You are mounting the exported nfs shares from you nas onto your fog server and then trying to nfs export them from the fog server?

If that is what I am doing I suspect that this will also fail. I’m not clear on the mechanism that vmware is using to map the host folder to the vm file system but that hasn’t kept me from trying… symbolic link - nope, hard link - nope, change the mount point - maybe?

[george1421]

@RobertFontaine If will be interesting to see if you can make it work.