[SOLVED] ZFS on host system, "?" on VM guest

[BurningSquirrel-de]

Hello,

I read some posts about this topic and I had to admit I am confused now. So excuse my maybe redundant question, but I hope it becomes clear for me then.

Is there a way to embed the host ZFS more effectivly in a guest VM, as than create a drive in the guest and (for example) install Ubuntu with a simple ext4 filesystem?

And when yes, how is the smarter way of using the host ZFS in the VM?

Thanks,

Fabian

 

[sterzy]

Hi,

I am a little confused by what exactly you want to accomplish? Do you want to use ZFS on your host and some other FS (ext4, ntfs etc.) in your vm? If so, then you likely just have to setup your host on ZFS. What FS your VM will use depends entirely on how you set up your VM. On the host the VMs disks will appear as a zvol. To the VM none of that will be visible and it will just use whatever FS you tell it to use.

For example: If you set up Windows VM, by default that will just use NTFS. On your host you will just see that disk as a zvol.

If you set up a different OS, it will really depend on your choices there.

 

[apoc]

Is there a way to embed the host ZFS more effectivly in a guest VM, as than create a drive in the guest and (for example) install Ubuntu with a simple ext4 filesystem?

That is the virtual disk approach (zvol)

And when yes, how is the smarter way of using the host ZFS in the VM?

Depends on what you want to do.
You can expose the zfs as a file share from the host via NFS or SMB. Depending on your usecase this is clever, or not...

But you can't write directly into the hosts zfs filesystem. You need the access /abstraction layer that handles file locking etc.

 

[BurningSquirrel-de]

Hi,

thanks for all answers.

After I read the posts, my assumption was that there could be a way to connect the zfs filesystem from the host with a kind of "slave" zfs in the guest.

But after your answers I think that it was my mistake and I totaly missunderstood the text in the post. Now I am relieved that I don't have made a basic mistake with my VMs and I can keept them running as their are.

Thanks!