1TB 2.5" HDD for Hypervisor system

[weust]

I would like to get some insight on what people (would) use as 2.5" drives for a system running a Hypervisor.
In my case it would be a free Hyper-V 2012 R2 system based on a Supermicro C2758 Superserver. Two 2.5" 1TB drives in a mirror RAID. Software RAID in Windows, nothing special as it's home situation, and I will need the expansion slot for a extra dual NIC card.

Since the drives will be running 24/7, but won't be doing heavy I/O, I wonder what a good brand/model/series would be.

 

[andrewbedia]

If they're anything like the 3.5" version, the WD10JFCX might be a good choice.

 

[weust]

Actually, that drive I had found too as a candidate

 

[Lost-Benji]

WD VelociRaptors:
Take out of caddy and use in a 2.5" chassis providing it will hold 15mm height drives and has forced cooling. 10K RPM and they work well for VM's.

 

[weust]

Doubt the Supermicro 2*2.5" caddy can hold 15mm drives.
The chassis has one fan, apart from the PSU fan.

Why the Velociraptor? I don't need the speed.
The VM's are pfSense and two 2012 R2 servers.
One for DNS/DHCP and one as a torrent machine.

Plus, aren't Velociraptors quite expensive too?

 

[weust]

Looked up the drive. A 1TB Velociraptor costs almost 200 Euro. Each.
The Red model is 75 Euro.
Sounds more home budget friendly

 

[HellDiverUK]

I like the Samsung/Seagate M8. I've had a pair of them in reasonably heavy use in RAID1 for a couple of years.

 

[Mike]

I have a pair of WD black 2.5" disks (24/7). They are 7200rpm and used to come with a 5yr warrantee, which I didn't need so far.

 

[weust]

The Samsung/Seagate M8 are older models it seems. 2012 from what I see.
Rather have more current models. Also, they are hard to get here in The Netherlands it seems.
Which is no surprise as they are older models.

The WD Black series in 2.5" doesn't offer a 1TB model, as far as I can find with a quick search on a site with a Pricewatch.

 

[Lost-Benji]

Doubt the Supermicro 2*2.5" caddy can hold 15mm drives.
The chassis has one fan, apart from the PSU fan.

Why the Velociraptor? I don't need the speed.
The VM's are pfSense and two 2012 R2 servers.
One for DNS/DHCP and one as a torrent machine.

Plus, aren't Velociraptors quite expensive too?

Oh sorry, I didn't realise you were aiming at killing the drives while using a heavy dose of "not thinking it through"

• PFSense works best on hardware, regardless of those who insist on trying to virtualise it.
• A server 2012R2 just to do DHCP/DNS? Use the PFSense, it does the job best in this case.
• A server 2012R2 just to be a torrent client OS, of please. Use Win7 or Win8 Pro and be done with it.
• Torrents on a VM on the same drives as the other VM's that will cause enough headaches when drives fail..... Torrents a best done to an old HDD that you don't care about.
• You have a pair of S22012R2 licenses (legit???) yet want to go cheap on the VM-Host with free version without a GUI?
  
• weust, WD Red's are NOT designed for OS's let alone VM's.

You haven't mentioned the chassis other than there being a Atom in the engine bay. Most SM chassis's take both 3.5" and 2.5"


How about being smart about it if you must put all eggs in one basket....
VM-Host Machine:

• 2x 120-240GB SSD's in mirror using the on-board Intel RAID (TRIM Support in RAID), install Host and 2x VM's on these.
  
• 1x 3.5" HDD to be passed through to VM-2.
  
• Server 2012R2 with Hyper-V.
• 8 or 16GB RAM (dual channel memory controller, 2, 4 or 8GB DIMM's).

VM-1: 20GB VHD + 2GB RAM

• PFSense - Gateway, DHCP, DNS & Firewall. Don't go nuts with IPS/IDS, proxy, Mail scanning or anything really else as PFSense is still very much single threaded, core count doesn't help.

VM-2: 30-50GB VHD + 4GB RAM

• Win7 or Win8 Pro (don't argue costs, you apparently have coins or a crack for Server 2012R2's), enable RDP and use it. Now go back to Host and pass the 3.5" HDD directly through to this VM (google it) and use it as the torrent drive.

 

[weust]

I have thought it through.

 

[Lost-Benji]

I don't think so, but hey, that's my 2 cents.

 

[weust]

Ask me if I care what you think.

 

[andrewbedia]

I'm going to agree with Lost-Benji. Something about what you are doing doesn't smell right in the slightest.

Ask me if I care what you think.

You can get upset if you want, but your nasty remarks are not appreciated in this forum. If you can't refrain, then please find yourself a different forum that will put up with that.

 

[weust]

Because useless replies are appreciated here?
Doesn't matter what forum you go too, there are always people that have difficulty reading and understanding, and replying to what is actually asked.

 

[HellDiverUK]

To be fair to weust, I think Lost-Benji's answer was unnecessarily condescending in tone.

weust, the M8 is still a current model, it's just now sold by Seagate as the ST1000LM024. It's old, but it's solid.

 

[weust]

Checked a bit further, and I thought the drive was hard to come by, but it's just not in stock in more stores. But is still easy to get.
And it's €25 cheaper per item then the WD Red. Which is nice considering all I want in the server.

 

[spazoid]

You do not want multiple Windows OS' and torrents running on a Windows software mirror. Just a couple of Windows installations on a single spinner (which is the performance you're going to get) will suck. Add torrents and you'll regret it very quickly.

Virtualized pfsense isn't that great. I've been doing it for half a year or so and I'm actively looking for hardware to put it on. I will probably wait and see if pfsense 2.2 improves the experience, but I refuse to get my hopes up prematurely.

So, my 2 cents: Try virtualizing pfsense, but be prepared for a less-than-ideal experience. Put your VM's on SSD and torrents on a separate spinner.
Oh, and let pfsense do your DNS and DHCP - it's better at it than Windows.

 

[Mike]

You do not want multiple Windows OS' and torrents running on a Windows software mirror. Just a couple of Windows installations on a single spinner (which is the performance you're going to get) will suck. Add torrents and you'll regret it very quickly.

Virtualized pfsense isn't that great. I've been doing it for half a year or so and I'm actively looking for hardware to put it on. I will probably wait and see if pfsense 2.2 improves the experience, but I refuse to get my hopes up prematurely.

So, my 2 cents: Try virtualizing pfsense, but be prepared for a less-than-ideal experience. Put your VM's on SSD and torrents on a separate spinner.
Oh, and let pfsense do your DNS and DHCP - it's better at it than Windows.

Could you eloborate on what is not so great about virtualised Pfsense, and on which platform?

I've seen the torrents come up as severe IO-suckers in this topic, though I would argue on the use pattern for that to really be an issue. Even if it is you could limit the IO on that specific machine or process, right? All too often the advice is to simply throw more resources and hardware at stuff but to be fair, people are doing the same thing with the €25,- Raspberry Pis they got for christmas.
Also what is so great about Pfsense's DNS and DHCP daemons, and bad about Windows? Both can do more or less the same, with the exception that Windows is actually a decent authoritative DNS server plus with all it's bindings to the directory.

 

[spazoid]

Could you eloborate on what is not so great about virtualised Pfsense, and on which platform?

My pfsense box (2.1.5) is virtualized on ESXi (5.5) with an Intel NIC passed through for the WAN connection and a vmxnet3 NIC for the LAN connection.
I see a very high CPU usage even with moderate throughput (50-60 mbits). We're talking 100% with 1 vCPU. The weird thing is, though, that the virtual OS doesn't see this. From the pfsense box, CPU usage is reported as being in the 2-10% range by both the pfsense monitor and top. Lots of other people are having the same issues.
There have been other smaller issues that might be due to myself, pfsense or the fact that the pfsense box is virtualized, but the above is 100% due to pfsense being virtualized, and I've been unable to find a fix for it.

I've seen the torrents come up as severe IO-suckers in this topic, though I would argue on the use pattern for that to really be an issue. Even if it is you could limit the IO on that specific machine or process, right? All too often the advice is to simply throw more resources and hardware at stuff but to be fair, people are doing the same thing with the €25,- Raspberry Pis they got for christmas.

Limiting IO will make it a horrible experience when you need to use the box. Everything will slow to a crawl, including the downloads. More resources is the solution IMO.

Also what is so great about Pfsense's DNS and DHCP daemons, and bad about Windows? Both can do more or less the same, with the exception that Windows is actually a decent authoritative DNS server plus with all it's bindings to the directory.

I'm sure Windows DNS is fine - DHCP not so much in my experience. My point on why I wouldn't do this on Windows in this case is simply consolidation. Why run a Windows machine for DNS and DHCP when you have pfsense doing your routing? Sounds like a waste of 4+ GB vMEM.