VMware virtual disk as layer between incompatible physical disk and UNRAID


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Hi, As some have probably seen, there has been discussion somewhat recently about about Fusion io driver support in UNRAID. The way i interpenetrated the discussions, its unlikely to be supported/reliable unless someone puts in a lot of work.

 

Basically Fusion io would be an excellent cache drive but the requirement of a Slackware driver means using this will not work in UNRAID without a lot of work.  However if you are using Windows 10 or ESXI these work great with the manufacturer provided drivers.

 

Currently i run my UNRAID as a VM on ESXI host with my PCIe HBAs passed through so UNRAID can see all my disk shelfs as if they were running bare metal. My idea is that since these Fusion io drives work well with ESXI, what if i instead of passing through the whole PCIe drive i just make a VMware virtual disk on it and attach that to UNRAID. VMware would act like some sort of translation layer that would allow UNRAID to see a generic drive of the approximate size and performance of the Fusion io drive without having to load its required driver to communicate directly.

 

I understand some drive information will not be accessible from UNRAID since it will see it as a generic vdisk, but i am hoping this is not a problem since VMware will be able see the actual drive information and handle all necessary functions. 

 

Though my question is about [ Fusion io drive <-> VMware vdisk <-> UNRAID ] i think it can be opened to generally any drive using a hypervisor as a translation layer, not just Fusion io and VMware. 

 

I would love to try this on my own but i don't own any of the Fusion io drives. I was hoping to get enough of a general verdict here before i decide to purchase them or not.

Yes, the goal would be to get a pair and mirror them because, well that's what i want to do. No, i am not interested in the Oracle F20/40/80/160/320 series for various reasons.

 

Pro's/Con's? Am i overlooking something or drawing false ideas? thanks!

 

Links to other Fusion io in UNRAID topics 

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/fusion-io-iodrive-ii-1-2tb-drives-0-09-or-0-08-gb.23423/page-6#post-244608

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/85308-fusion-io-drivers/

 

 

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