Happy New Year All!
So during the holiday period I put together an X.58 platform from bits I had lying around in the man cave and since my last attempt of a storage system failed I'd thought I'd give this one a go with the all in one Nappit
For my own sanity can you please confirm as rebuilt new machine and will use nappit
Currently this is how I built this box apology in advance as this is a desktop build so nothing too fancy just spare parts I had and wanted to put to use.
Motherboard - Asus Rampage III Extreme ROG
RAM - 6G (3x2)Corsair Tri Set (yes need more) ( I had some ECC lying around 4GB set of 3, but these do not post in this board, seems they are tuned for HP?? Labelled as KTH-PL313SK3/12G
CPU - Intel Xeon X5670
GPU - Radeon 7970
SSD - Intel X.25 80GB
SSD - 2 x Sandisk 120GB (recently purchased for this project)
USB2 - Kingston 16GB
DVDRW - Sata
USB3 - Kingston 32GB (recently purchased for this project)
USB3 Sandisk 32GB (recently purchased for this project)
System is watercooled again only since I had all the waterblocks and res and pump sitting around I'd thought I'd better put them to good use - of course overkill, LOL
Will be using the onboard Intel ICH10 6 port SATA AHCI Controller for hot swaps since I have a few drives about various sizes with various files/data to back up and store, these are 2 x 4TB seagate drives, 1 x 4TB WD book drive and 3TB WD green drive and a few 1TB drives all full of photos music and other data I want to keep safe
Non of these drives connected yet only theDVDRW is connected to this controller and 1 x 80gb SSD drive
Q.1 Can I passthrough all of the ports to VM even if the DVDROM and 80Gb SSD drive are connected, it appears I can do individual ports right?
Next is the Onboard Marvell Technology Group Ltd 88SE9123 PCIe SATA 6.0 Gb/s controller which has the has 2 x 120GB SSD drives connected, this is where I want to add my datastore on one of them and then mirror it
Q.2 Is this the correct method, is this done at the OMNI level of ZFS mirror level?
I cannot find my M1015 controller so it's not yet installed, I will be adding this in when I find it and will be holding all of my zfs pools across however many drives I can afford to add eg. 8 x 5TB
OK so that is a quick summary of the HW now onto the questions which I know has been asked a few times and I just seem to complicate things but I just want to make sure for my own sanity this is how I was going to setup the All In One Nappit
This was taken from the instruction GEA added a while ago from HERE
basic steps:
- you need two Sata disks for ESXi (optionally an additional USB stick for ESXi)
Is this only for failure purposes? As I have a 16GB USB stick that is primary only to boot into esxi - using 5.5u2 - do I now need to add in say the 80GB sata ssd drive to have another esxi install for backup - could I use a different USB port as the back up since I have USB 2 and USB3 support? Alternatively I wanted to use the 80gb SSD connected to the intel controller ?
- install ESXi on first disk or on a USB stick as usual
already done on 16gb USB stick is there any benifits to go to v6? Will it help speed it up if this is on a USB 3 port and use one of the USB3 stick mentioned above. I know esxi 5.5u2 has usb3 support just how much of a difference in using exsi 6? instead Boot up speeds does not bother me for this project
- install vsphere on a PC
done
- use vsphere to create a datastore on both disk
OK which disc in particular - I don't want to use the USB for datastore and would like to use the 2 x 120GB SDD that are connected to the onboard Marvell Technology
- use vsphere to create a virtual disk (20 GB+) on both datastores
- Install Omni/OI on the disk on the first datastore (which is first in boot-order)
straight forward
- Install napp-it, connect via browser and http://ip:81
- Goto menu Disk - mirror bootdisk and mirror rpool to your second disk
straight forward
optionally
- Edit ESXi VM-settings to modify Bios of this VM: setup boot order to boot from both disks, with second first if ESXi is on first disk
If you need to use a second disk with a different ESXi install, it does not affect Omni/OI beside an optional remirror
If you use an USB stick for ESXi, you have a fully independant mirrorred Storage VM
will give it a go, but I first need to sort out the above questions
So That's it, my limited knowledge and how I wanted to get this box running.
Hope you can assist and guide me to setting this up in a way I can manage it due to my limited skills and wanting something that could be set and forget and thank you again!
PS - I PM'd gea on another forum, so sorry mate, it was a double PM hope you can chime in
edit - corrected RAM part number that I was trying to use and added some pictures
PEACE
Kosti
So during the holiday period I put together an X.58 platform from bits I had lying around in the man cave and since my last attempt of a storage system failed I'd thought I'd give this one a go with the all in one Nappit
For my own sanity can you please confirm as rebuilt new machine and will use nappit
Currently this is how I built this box apology in advance as this is a desktop build so nothing too fancy just spare parts I had and wanted to put to use.
Motherboard - Asus Rampage III Extreme ROG
RAM - 6G (3x2)Corsair Tri Set (yes need more) ( I had some ECC lying around 4GB set of 3, but these do not post in this board, seems they are tuned for HP?? Labelled as KTH-PL313SK3/12G
CPU - Intel Xeon X5670
GPU - Radeon 7970
SSD - Intel X.25 80GB
SSD - 2 x Sandisk 120GB (recently purchased for this project)
USB2 - Kingston 16GB
DVDRW - Sata
USB3 - Kingston 32GB (recently purchased for this project)
USB3 Sandisk 32GB (recently purchased for this project)
System is watercooled again only since I had all the waterblocks and res and pump sitting around I'd thought I'd better put them to good use - of course overkill, LOL
Will be using the onboard Intel ICH10 6 port SATA AHCI Controller for hot swaps since I have a few drives about various sizes with various files/data to back up and store, these are 2 x 4TB seagate drives, 1 x 4TB WD book drive and 3TB WD green drive and a few 1TB drives all full of photos music and other data I want to keep safe
Non of these drives connected yet only theDVDRW is connected to this controller and 1 x 80gb SSD drive
Q.1 Can I passthrough all of the ports to VM even if the DVDROM and 80Gb SSD drive are connected, it appears I can do individual ports right?
Next is the Onboard Marvell Technology Group Ltd 88SE9123 PCIe SATA 6.0 Gb/s controller which has the has 2 x 120GB SSD drives connected, this is where I want to add my datastore on one of them and then mirror it
Q.2 Is this the correct method, is this done at the OMNI level of ZFS mirror level?
I cannot find my M1015 controller so it's not yet installed, I will be adding this in when I find it and will be holding all of my zfs pools across however many drives I can afford to add eg. 8 x 5TB
OK so that is a quick summary of the HW now onto the questions which I know has been asked a few times and I just seem to complicate things but I just want to make sure for my own sanity this is how I was going to setup the All In One Nappit
This was taken from the instruction GEA added a while ago from HERE
basic steps:
- you need two Sata disks for ESXi (optionally an additional USB stick for ESXi)
Is this only for failure purposes? As I have a 16GB USB stick that is primary only to boot into esxi - using 5.5u2 - do I now need to add in say the 80GB sata ssd drive to have another esxi install for backup - could I use a different USB port as the back up since I have USB 2 and USB3 support? Alternatively I wanted to use the 80gb SSD connected to the intel controller ?
- install ESXi on first disk or on a USB stick as usual
already done on 16gb USB stick is there any benifits to go to v6? Will it help speed it up if this is on a USB 3 port and use one of the USB3 stick mentioned above. I know esxi 5.5u2 has usb3 support just how much of a difference in using exsi 6? instead Boot up speeds does not bother me for this project
- install vsphere on a PC
done
- use vsphere to create a datastore on both disk
OK which disc in particular - I don't want to use the USB for datastore and would like to use the 2 x 120GB SDD that are connected to the onboard Marvell Technology
- use vsphere to create a virtual disk (20 GB+) on both datastores
- Install Omni/OI on the disk on the first datastore (which is first in boot-order)
straight forward
- Install napp-it, connect via browser and http://ip:81
- Goto menu Disk - mirror bootdisk and mirror rpool to your second disk
straight forward
optionally
- Edit ESXi VM-settings to modify Bios of this VM: setup boot order to boot from both disks, with second first if ESXi is on first disk
If you need to use a second disk with a different ESXi install, it does not affect Omni/OI beside an optional remirror
If you use an USB stick for ESXi, you have a fully independant mirrorred Storage VM
will give it a go, but I first need to sort out the above questions
So That's it, my limited knowledge and how I wanted to get this box running.
Hope you can assist and guide me to setting this up in a way I can manage it due to my limited skills and wanting something that could be set and forget and thank you again!
PS - I PM'd gea on another forum, so sorry mate, it was a double PM hope you can chime in
edit - corrected RAM part number that I was trying to use and added some pictures
PEACE
Kosti
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