Homelab suggestions - advice requested

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waylonrobert

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Looking for some guidance for a homelab server. Here are my use cases:
  • Want to run ESXi 6.5 with the following VMs: Plex, Windows 7, CentOS 7 Linux for web development, and others in the future (likely a mix of Windows and Linux guests for testing/development purposes)

  • System capable of Plex transcoding 1080P

  • NAS for LAN file sharing and data backups (I already have 6x3TB WD Red drives)

  • I do not currently have a need for 10GB NICs (unless I am wrong)
Here are the options I've identified. This will be in my home, so low noise and power consumption are important, but I understand it may not be possible:

  • Build an ESXi host and use a Synology/QNAP/etc. hardware NAS for storage (assuming I'd configure ESXi to use the NAS storage via NFS/ISCSI), though I wonder what the noise/power implications of this option are (as well as IOPS/latency)

  • Build an all-in-one, but I suspect this adds some complexity for the NAS component (enlighten me if my thinking is wrong)

  • Some other option I have not considered (open to suggestions)
What would you recommend? Approximate budget is ~$500-800 (not including hard drives since I already have those). Appreciate your thoughts!
 

PigLover

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Do you have a particular reason for preferring ESX over something like Proxmox (KVM based). You can easily support all of what you describe above on a Proxmox system and serve files using NFS+Samba for a really simple All-In-One. AIO is possible on ESX too - but the best way to do it is to run a NAS-OS as one of your VMs (e.g., napp-it or FreeNAS).
 

waylonrobert

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Great question. I use ESXi at work and am more familiar with it. I have nothing against other hypervisors, I just wanted to use something I am familiar with. Is there a benefit of using Proxmox over ESXi? If going the all-in-one route, I was considering running a FreeNAS VM for the NAS, and using an HBA so it has direct access to the drives. Does Proxmox support that?
 

PigLover

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Yes - proxmox would support that.

But more interestingly, Proxmox "host" OS supports ZFS+NFS/Samba, which means you can support NAS functions from the Host. There are many advantages to this for an AIO vs hosting the NAS "inside" the hypervisor (mainly restart/error case issues from service recursion - supporting NAS functions inside the Hypervisor that may, itself, rely on the NAS for VM storage). Most of those troubles are subtle any may not come up - especially if you know what you are doing with ESX and work to avoid them.

Of course, Proxmox does not come with the pretty GUI management of a NAS-OS distro like FreeNAS, so you'd have to be comfortable with managing ZFS pools and publishing them using NFS/Samba via config files. For some people that's a show stopper - others may consider that an advantage (mostly people with lots of grey hair, like me).
 
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Patrick

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I think @PigLover is spot on.

Should be easy to do. The Proxmox ZFS I am actually a fan of at this point. If you want ESXi to be similar to work, then that makes sense but it will be more complex for an AIO.

Budget wise, you can get a Xeon D or E3 system in that price range and be fine. You could also go "big" and get an E5 V1, V2 or V3 system, albeit at higher power consumption.
 

waylonrobert

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I think @PigLover is spot on.

Should be easy to do. The Proxmox ZFS I am actually a fan of at this point. If you want ESXi to be similar to work, then that makes sense but it will be more complex for an AIO.

Budget wise, you can get a Xeon D or E3 system in that price range and be fine. You could also go "big" and get an E5 V1, V2 or V3 system, albeit at higher power consumption.
Thanks for your thoughts. Any other suggestions for hardware?
 

waylonrobert

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Yes - proxmox would support that.

But more interestingly, Proxmox "host" OS supports ZFS+NFS/Samba, which means you can support NAS functions from the Host. There are many advantages to this for an AIO vs hosting the NAS "inside" the hypervisor (mainly restart/error case issues from service recursion - supporting NAS functions inside the Hypervisor that may, itself, rely on the NAS for VM storage). Most of those troubles are subtle any may not come up - especially if you know what you are doing with ESX and work to avoid them.

Of course, Proxmox does not come with the pretty GUI management of a NAS-OS distro like FreeNAS, so you'd have to be comfortable with managing ZFS pools and publishing them using NFS/Samba via config files. For some people that's a show stopper - others may consider that an advantage (mostly people with lots of grey hair, like me).
So would Proxmox eliminate the need for an HBA? Does Proxmox support CrashPlan? I'm no stranger to the CLI, so that doesn't bother me. Any other tips?
 

ttabbal

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So would Proxmox eliminate the need for an HBA? Does Proxmox support CrashPlan? I'm no stranger to the CLI, so that doesn't bother me. Any other tips?
If you have enough connections for the disks, yes. You can use motherboard SATA and such, since you aren't doing passthrough. I have 3 H310 HBAs in my proxmox server though, just to have something to connect the drives up.

Crashplan works great. I just created a Debian container and installed it there. Then use SSH port forwarding to configure it from my desktop machine. VNC works as well. I created a ZFS filesystem and bind mount it in the container.
 

waylonrobert

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If you have enough connections for the disks, yes. You can use motherboard SATA and such, since you aren't doing passthrough. I have 3 H310 HBAs in my proxmox server though, just to have something to connect the drives up.

Crashplan works great. I just created a Debian container and installed it there. Then use SSH port forwarding to configure it from my desktop machine. VNC works as well. I created a ZFS filesystem and bind mount it in the container.
Interesting. What hardware are you running?
 

RobertFontaine

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I continue to waffle as hardware trickles in. The v1/v2 e5's are still big value dollar wise. Supermicro boards with a workstation configuration are occasionally a reasonable price (never cheap). It's hard for me to worry about power consumption in a home lab. Up front dollars are always my constraint. Proxmox as a platform provides a lot of features and I prefer the software licencing model.

On the other hand I have come to appreciate the robustness of VMWare Workstation and suspect that ESXI will be more of the same.

Happily I can continue to be indecisive until I actually manage to build a virtualization server.
 
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Evan

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Don't fool yourself, friend. You've got the disease, just like many of the rest of us here. You'll continue to be indecisive until you've re-built that server at least 3 times, perhaps many more. :)
Just because you can, not because you actually need to rebuild it either :)
But it's a bit of fun and learning so no harm. :)
 
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nthu9280

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Don't fool yourself, friend. You've got the disease, just like many of the rest of us here. You'll continue to be indecisive until you've re-built that server at least 3 times, perhaps many more. :)
Need a multiple like feature on STH forums!
Guilty as charged :)

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