First off, my goal is to provide shared storage between my ESXi hosts and provide a level of redundancy so I can power off any of my hosts to do maintenance.
Also to preface things, I'm new to VCSA and i'm still evaluating things. I like what I see but there is still tonnes to learn before I can live migrate VMs from one host to another. CPU arch compatibility is one thing that bit me.
Setup:
A1SRi-2758F , 32GB DDR, Samsung 845DC EVO MZ-7GE960 as local datastore right now, ConnectX-4 LX
- Cyberpower Agent for UPS (needs USB connection)
- DaloRadius for guest Wifi
- OpenVPN Access Server
- pFSense 2.4
As you can see, this machine is like the core services which I will reboot not very often
X10SRH-CLN4F, E5-2618L v4 @ 2.20GHz, 64GB DDR4, ConnectX-4 LX, 2 x Samsung_SSD_960_EVO 512GB, 2 x Samsung_SSD_850_PRO_512GB (local VMFS)
- Windows 10 (sparsely used workstation)
- 2 x Windows 10 running sighthound camera and XProtect
- Unifi controller
- Ubuntu (low usage, web server, etc)
- FreeNAS Corral (PCIe HBA passthrough connected to Lenovo SA120 DAS, 7 x 4TB Raidz2)
- Xpenology (Using local VMFS as storage for 250GB of all flash, "Download" share with multiple Dockers running. Radarr, Sonarr, Organizr, Homebridge, Plex, Etc)
- RancherOS and STH Monero docker (Use excess processing)
This is my main processing machine.
ASRock D1541D4U-2O8R, XeonD-1541, 48Gb DDR4, Built in SFP+, no local storage
- RancherOS and STH Monero docker (Use excess processing)
MacMini6,2: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 16GB
- MacOS for development
- RancherOS and STH Monero docker (Use excess processing)
Now, I want to revamp my storage for all my virtual machines. I don't need great performance other than booting up and running decently. I have 2 Sandisk 3D NAND SSD 1TB extra that I could use for this project. I was thinking to do a 2 host VSAN (with some observer VM running) and could use my 2 850 Pros as the cache drive and the 1TB as the main storage running on the Atom 2578 and E5-2618L host. I am aiming for mirrored storage for VMs and resiliency to either machines going down for maintenance.
The XeonD-1541 would be a machine that would use the VSAN storage and I can VMotion between the 2618L and XeonD machine.
If I ever needed to take down the 2618L for an extended period of time, I can take down the FreeNAS VM and reconfigure it for the ASRock D1541D4U-2O8R with HBA passthrough to my DAS as well.
Has anyone gone down this path and will I be able to acheive resiliency and availability with this plan? What is the total storage I would get from the VSAN? 1TB of all flash storage?
Thanks!
Also to preface things, I'm new to VCSA and i'm still evaluating things. I like what I see but there is still tonnes to learn before I can live migrate VMs from one host to another. CPU arch compatibility is one thing that bit me.
Setup:
A1SRi-2758F , 32GB DDR, Samsung 845DC EVO MZ-7GE960 as local datastore right now, ConnectX-4 LX
- Cyberpower Agent for UPS (needs USB connection)
- DaloRadius for guest Wifi
- OpenVPN Access Server
- pFSense 2.4
As you can see, this machine is like the core services which I will reboot not very often
X10SRH-CLN4F, E5-2618L v4 @ 2.20GHz, 64GB DDR4, ConnectX-4 LX, 2 x Samsung_SSD_960_EVO 512GB, 2 x Samsung_SSD_850_PRO_512GB (local VMFS)
- Windows 10 (sparsely used workstation)
- 2 x Windows 10 running sighthound camera and XProtect
- Unifi controller
- Ubuntu (low usage, web server, etc)
- FreeNAS Corral (PCIe HBA passthrough connected to Lenovo SA120 DAS, 7 x 4TB Raidz2)
- Xpenology (Using local VMFS as storage for 250GB of all flash, "Download" share with multiple Dockers running. Radarr, Sonarr, Organizr, Homebridge, Plex, Etc)
- RancherOS and STH Monero docker (Use excess processing)
This is my main processing machine.
ASRock D1541D4U-2O8R, XeonD-1541, 48Gb DDR4, Built in SFP+, no local storage
- RancherOS and STH Monero docker (Use excess processing)
MacMini6,2: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3615QM CPU @ 2.30GHz, 16GB
- MacOS for development
- RancherOS and STH Monero docker (Use excess processing)
Now, I want to revamp my storage for all my virtual machines. I don't need great performance other than booting up and running decently. I have 2 Sandisk 3D NAND SSD 1TB extra that I could use for this project. I was thinking to do a 2 host VSAN (with some observer VM running) and could use my 2 850 Pros as the cache drive and the 1TB as the main storage running on the Atom 2578 and E5-2618L host. I am aiming for mirrored storage for VMs and resiliency to either machines going down for maintenance.
The XeonD-1541 would be a machine that would use the VSAN storage and I can VMotion between the 2618L and XeonD machine.
If I ever needed to take down the 2618L for an extended period of time, I can take down the FreeNAS VM and reconfigure it for the ASRock D1541D4U-2O8R with HBA passthrough to my DAS as well.
Has anyone gone down this path and will I be able to acheive resiliency and availability with this plan? What is the total storage I would get from the VSAN? 1TB of all flash storage?
Thanks!