Hi,
I'm working towards my first server build (wife and budget permitting) and I'm hoping to gain some community insight into the setup that I'm proposing.
Disclaimer: I'm new to this. I'm not even sure if what I'm proposing is doable, let alone the best way to approach it. Any and all feedback is welcomed.
Build’s Name: all-in-wonder-if-I-can-pull-this-off
Operating System/ Storage Platform: ESXi 6: napp-it, pfsense, plex
CPU: Xeon E3-1231 v3 (not purchased yet)
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F
Chassis: Fractal Designs Node 804
Drives:
No boot yet (USB)
4x WD Red 4TB
4x Samsung 850 Pro 256gb
2x Intel 320 320 160gb
RAM: 32gb Crucial ECC
Add-in Cards:
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550w (not purchased yet)
Other Bits:
Usage Profile: ESXi host, NAS (napp-it, considering FreeNAS), plex transcoding (was planning on doing an ubuntu VM for this), PFSense (Firewall/IPS/Proxy/VPN). I may add some additional VMs down the road but no plans for anything resource hungry.
I'm trying to sort out the best way to carve up the storage.
The 4x WD drives will be passed through to napp-it on the LSI 2308 (ZFS, two mirrors). leaving 4x SAS ports for expansion when $ allows
I had planned to run the Intel SSDs on two of the 3gb/s SATA ports, mirrored for napp-it datastore.
I lucked out on the 4x Samsung SSDs. I had hoped to find 2x 500gb to mirror for the main datastore but ended up with 4x 256 instead. I don't know if I'm better off using only two of them mirrored on the 6gb/s SATA or all four striped on the 3gb/s ports. Maybe even put the SSDs on the HBA? The 8TB of storage will last me a while.
Any thoughts on how I should maximize the storage hardware on hand? I'm not sure which of the VMs would benefit more from the I/O perf of the 6gb/s ports.
Also, given the CPU/Memory that I'm proposing, how would you allocate resources to the three VMs?
Thanks.
I'm working towards my first server build (wife and budget permitting) and I'm hoping to gain some community insight into the setup that I'm proposing.
Disclaimer: I'm new to this. I'm not even sure if what I'm proposing is doable, let alone the best way to approach it. Any and all feedback is welcomed.
Build’s Name: all-in-wonder-if-I-can-pull-this-off
Operating System/ Storage Platform: ESXi 6: napp-it, pfsense, plex
CPU: Xeon E3-1231 v3 (not purchased yet)
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F
Chassis: Fractal Designs Node 804
Drives:
No boot yet (USB)
4x WD Red 4TB
4x Samsung 850 Pro 256gb
2x Intel 320 320 160gb
RAM: 32gb Crucial ECC
Add-in Cards:
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550w (not purchased yet)
Other Bits:
Usage Profile: ESXi host, NAS (napp-it, considering FreeNAS), plex transcoding (was planning on doing an ubuntu VM for this), PFSense (Firewall/IPS/Proxy/VPN). I may add some additional VMs down the road but no plans for anything resource hungry.
I'm trying to sort out the best way to carve up the storage.
The 4x WD drives will be passed through to napp-it on the LSI 2308 (ZFS, two mirrors). leaving 4x SAS ports for expansion when $ allows
I had planned to run the Intel SSDs on two of the 3gb/s SATA ports, mirrored for napp-it datastore.
I lucked out on the 4x Samsung SSDs. I had hoped to find 2x 500gb to mirror for the main datastore but ended up with 4x 256 instead. I don't know if I'm better off using only two of them mirrored on the 6gb/s SATA or all four striped on the 3gb/s ports. Maybe even put the SSDs on the HBA? The 8TB of storage will last me a while.
Any thoughts on how I should maximize the storage hardware on hand? I'm not sure which of the VMs would benefit more from the I/O perf of the 6gb/s ports.
Also, given the CPU/Memory that I'm proposing, how would you allocate resources to the three VMs?
Thanks.