hey folks.
I setup a FreeNAS box in my homelab to hold/run VM's that are part of my ESXi cluster.
This is purely a development/testing type of environment and a playground.
What started out as a quick and dirty setup, has slowly started to evolve to really looking at my setup and figuring out how to maybe get some better performance out of it as well as use best practices.
My setup:
(2) ESXi 7.0 nodes
(1) VMCenter 7.0
(1) FreeNAS box, running 11.2U7 --
Specs: Dual Core Intel CPU, 16gb memory, (2) 2TB Red Drives in a pool as mirror
NFS mount to ESXi to hold VM's centrally
(1) One NIC for mgt
(1) One NIC was configured for iSCSI, but not sure if i need that
(2) Two unused NICS that i've thought about 'bonding' for more 'pipe'
The VM's are all Linux variations of some sort.
not a lot of databases, but that may change moving forward.
The setup works, but I have maybe noticed a bit of a performance hit when moving around in my VM's. I do not think its bad, but I notice it and it bugs me.
I dont have a ton of FreeNAS experience other thatn what I have setup.
I open to suggestions and recommendations
I am also not bound to FreeNAS, so if there is a better solution to use, I am happy to listen. This is bit of a new area for me.
Much obliged friends!
TCG
I setup a FreeNAS box in my homelab to hold/run VM's that are part of my ESXi cluster.
This is purely a development/testing type of environment and a playground.
What started out as a quick and dirty setup, has slowly started to evolve to really looking at my setup and figuring out how to maybe get some better performance out of it as well as use best practices.
My setup:
(2) ESXi 7.0 nodes
(1) VMCenter 7.0
(1) FreeNAS box, running 11.2U7 --
Specs: Dual Core Intel CPU, 16gb memory, (2) 2TB Red Drives in a pool as mirror
NFS mount to ESXi to hold VM's centrally
(1) One NIC for mgt
(1) One NIC was configured for iSCSI, but not sure if i need that
(2) Two unused NICS that i've thought about 'bonding' for more 'pipe'
The VM's are all Linux variations of some sort.
not a lot of databases, but that may change moving forward.
The setup works, but I have maybe noticed a bit of a performance hit when moving around in my VM's. I do not think its bad, but I notice it and it bugs me.
I dont have a ton of FreeNAS experience other thatn what I have setup.
I open to suggestions and recommendations
I am also not bound to FreeNAS, so if there is a better solution to use, I am happy to listen. This is bit of a new area for me.
Much obliged friends!
TCG