So what if you manually create a link with serial numbers, then restart udev?

Well it turns out I didn't give myself enough credit!  I started wondering if this was a VMware issue rather than unRAID based on gfjardim's response - as mentioned, the UUID of the disk wasn't being presented to unRAID properly.  Then, I found the solution!

 

- Shut down your unRAID VM

- Edit the Properties of the VM

- Go to the Options tab, Advanced, highlight General and click on 'Configuration Parameters'

- Click 'Add Row' and type the following:

 

disk.EnableUUID

 

with a value of:

 

TRUE

 

Start up your VM and now all the scsi vmdk's have UUID's assigned and can be added to the array!  Time to repurpose the SSD I had RDM'ed for cache and move cache to a VMDK on my ZFS pool.  Winner!

 

EDIT:  In my excitement, I forgot to give credit where credit is due - I found the information in the following blog post.. while the poster wasn't experiencing exactly our issue, it made sense that enabling the option may fix it for us too.

 

http://diznix.com/2011/05/21/the-case-of-vmware-and-the-missing-scsi-id/

Just did a test copy with the .vmdk in place as cache.. easily saturated the gigabit interface on the source PC (Win8) with 1Gb file transfer:

 

Thank you!!! I can now go to sleep

 

I had a feeling it was not the unRaid but the vm as well.

 

Great team work

 

My unRaid is now complete.

 

Cache via ZFS

torrent drive via RDM

M1015 for the drives.

 

PERFECT!!!

 

Great work there!! Taught an old dog a new trick too!!! Thanks for sharing!

I'll break out the post with the fix in it to a thread with a more specific title to make it easier for other folks to find. 

Wow awesome investigative work guys!!! Someone should ping Johnm with this info so he can add it to his instructions for people who may be interested in this option.

 

Anyone try a speed test from another guest OS with both using vmxnet3? Curious what the speeds are like.

I am getting ~160MB/s (peaks at about 230MB/s) to a .vmdk cache drive on my ZFS array from an ubuntu VM.

I am getting ~160MB/s (peaks at about 230MB/s) to a .vmdk cache drive on my ZFS array from an ubuntu VM.

 

Excellent! Time to buy another M1015 to set up a ZFS array haha

 

Now this big questions is: OpenIndiana/Napp-it or FreeNAS? Hmm...

I am getting ~160MB/s (peaks at about 230MB/s) to a .vmdk cache drive on my ZFS array from an ubuntu VM.

 

Excellent! Time to buy another M1015 to set up a ZFS array haha

 

Now this big questions is: OpenIndiana/Napp-it or FreeNAS? Hmm...

 

 

What about openfiler? Does anyone use that?

I am getting ~160MB/s (peaks at about 230MB/s) to a .vmdk cache drive on my ZFS array from an ubuntu VM.

 

Excellent! Time to buy another M1015 to set up a ZFS array haha

 

Now this big questions is: OpenIndiana/Napp-it or FreeNAS? Hmm...

 

 

What about openfiler? Does anyone use that?

 

As far as I can tell OpenFiler doesn't support ZFS. It's Linux based. There are hacks to get ZFS to work in Linux but I'd rather not go that route.

There is not a package for the distro used by OpenFiler, but ZOL is available for many distros http://zfsonlinux.org/

There is not a package for the distro used by OpenFiler, but ZOL is available for many distros http://zfsonlinux.org/

 

It's still a hack though.

I thought SCSI vmdk is not supported in unRAID? It did not work last time I have tried it - it wont let you mount it.

 

I remember while back, only vmdk IDE that will work in unRAID.

 

 

SCSI is fine if you follow my tweak a few posts back

SCSI is fine if you follow my tweak a few posts back

 

Yep, I saw. Im gonna try it out tonight.

 

You got it to work without using RDM?

Sure did

Just did a test copy with the .vmdk in place as cache.. easily saturated the gigabit interface on the source PC (Win8) with 1Gb file transfer:

 

 

I did the same setup with disk.EnableUUID is to TRUE.

 

I am only getting 60-70MB/sec on the cache disk. Any idea how to improve the speed?

 

It is SATA disk.

 

 

What type of SATA disk?  If it's an older/smaller disk, it may not be capable of any faster speed than that.  My test above was done on a SATA 3 SSD, so there is no chance of the hardware slowing things down.

 

 

What type of SATA disk?  If it's an older/smaller disk, it may not be capable of any faster speed than that.  My test above was done on a SATA 3 SSD, so there is no chance of the hardware slowing things down.

 

It is Samsung HD502HJ 500 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive

 

Well it turns out I didn't give myself enough credit!  I started wondering if this was a VMware issue rather than unRAID based on gfjardim's response - as mentioned, the UUID of the disk wasn't being presented to unRAID properly.  Then, I found the solution!

 

- Shut down your unRAID VM

- Edit the Properties of the VM

- Go to the Options tab, Advanced, highlight General and click on 'Configuration Parameters'

- Click 'Add Row' and type the following:

 

disk.EnableUUID

 

with a value of:

 

TRUE

 

Start up your VM and now all the scsi vmdk's have UUID's assigned and can be added to the array!  Time to repurpose the SSD I had RDM'ed for cache and move cache to a VMDK on my ZFS pool.  Winner!

 

EDIT:  In my excitement, I forgot to give credit where credit is due - I found the information in the following blog post.. while the poster wasn't experiencing exactly our issue, it made sense that enabling the option may fix it for us too.

 

http://diznix.com/2011/05/21/the-case-of-vmware-and-the-missing-scsi-id/

 

I did NOT have this set.  I wonder if I did at one point and it got removed somehow.  I added it, but it doesn't seem to make a difference since I modified the SCSI adapter type.