I have a very simple ESXi AIO server functioning as a firewall (pfSense) and storage server (FreeNAS), which also hosts a half dozen or so VMs, and during the winter months it serves as a space heater, too. I hopped on a deal last year and bought 2 Sun F40 Flash Accelerators, passed them through to FreeNAS, and played around with with different pool layouts of the 8 drives, always used that pool exclusively as an iSCSI datastore, but I was never really happy with them.
So ... I upgraded and bought an 800 GB Intel P3700 (and it can't get here fast enough because the temporary block storage is sitting on spinning disks, and, well, that is kind of s l o w). Likely irrelevant, but my motherboard being a Supermicro X9DRi-LN4F+ doesn't have U.2 / SFF-8639 connectors so I purchased a StarTech U.2 to PCIe Adapter for 2.5" U.2 NVMe SSD adapter.
I have a few questions if you would be so kind as to assist ...
1. Is there any advantage to passing the Intel P3700 through to FreeNAS and then presenting it back to ESXi via iSCSI? I don't believe there is any to speak of, only downside (previously, the reason the Sun F40s were passed through to FreeNAS were so they could be striped and mirrored)
2. Also, it looks like there are both VMware (nvme version 1.2.1.34-1vmw) and Intel VIBs (intel-nvme version 1.2.1.15) for the drive. Is one to be used instead of the other, if so, is one preferred?
3. Anything else I should be aware of as I eagerly await all of those IOPs headed my way?
Probably totally unnecessary, but I used Excel to diagram my old and future storage architecture to present the two options. If you guessed that I don't have an IT background, you would be correct (there is probably a much better way to create such diagrams, I'm just not aware of one, and my background being Finance I could probably still use Excel blind, and quickly).
Thanks in advance for your time.
Old Config (Rightmost Column in Scope, Sun F40s have been deprecated)
New Config Option #1 (Rightmost Column in Scope, Intel P3700 = new VM datastore via iSCSI)
New Config Option #2 (Rightmost Column in Scope, Intel P3700 = new VM datastore)
So ... I upgraded and bought an 800 GB Intel P3700 (and it can't get here fast enough because the temporary block storage is sitting on spinning disks, and, well, that is kind of s l o w). Likely irrelevant, but my motherboard being a Supermicro X9DRi-LN4F+ doesn't have U.2 / SFF-8639 connectors so I purchased a StarTech U.2 to PCIe Adapter for 2.5" U.2 NVMe SSD adapter.
I have a few questions if you would be so kind as to assist ...
1. Is there any advantage to passing the Intel P3700 through to FreeNAS and then presenting it back to ESXi via iSCSI? I don't believe there is any to speak of, only downside (previously, the reason the Sun F40s were passed through to FreeNAS were so they could be striped and mirrored)
2. Also, it looks like there are both VMware (nvme version 1.2.1.34-1vmw) and Intel VIBs (intel-nvme version 1.2.1.15) for the drive. Is one to be used instead of the other, if so, is one preferred?
3. Anything else I should be aware of as I eagerly await all of those IOPs headed my way?
Probably totally unnecessary, but I used Excel to diagram my old and future storage architecture to present the two options. If you guessed that I don't have an IT background, you would be correct (there is probably a much better way to create such diagrams, I'm just not aware of one, and my background being Finance I could probably still use Excel blind, and quickly).
Thanks in advance for your time.
Old Config (Rightmost Column in Scope, Sun F40s have been deprecated)
New Config Option #1 (Rightmost Column in Scope, Intel P3700 = new VM datastore via iSCSI)
New Config Option #2 (Rightmost Column in Scope, Intel P3700 = new VM datastore)