HA Cluster

[StefanT]

Hi,

I have the following setup and I want to create a HA Cluster for some VMs.

1 x Dell C6320 ( 4 nodes, each with 2 x Xeon E5-2690 & 256GB RAM DDR4, 2 SFP+ ports & 2 Gbit RJ45 ports ) whereon I want to setup a HA Cluster with Proxmox
( no raid controller, I won't use any storage on C6320, except for the hypervisor)

1 x HP DL 385p ( 2 x Opteron 6376, 8 x 8GB RAM, HP P420i RAID controller with 2GB mem & BBU, 2 SFP+ ports ( HP 530FLR-SFP+ ) + 2 SFP+ ports ( Intel X520-DA2 )
19 x 900GB HDD 6G SAS HGST
6 x 1TB SSD SATA Samsung
to be used with FreeNAS as storage for the HA Cluster

1 x Fujitsu RX300 S6 ( 2 x E5630, 16GB RAM, LSI SAS 6Gb/s PCIe 512MB RAID controller, 4 SAS 3G 15k 146GB & 2x 4TB WD RED SATA ) as a storage for backups

1 x HP MicroServer Gen10 Plus ( Xeon E2224 & 16GB RAM, HPE Smart Array S100i SR Gen10) with 4 x 8TB WD RED SATA for offsite backups.

I've read that FreeNAS is not working very well with P420i controller used in HBA mode.
Using the controller in RAID mode would offer a better performance (with HP SSD Smart Path) in terms of IOPS etc ?

What you recommend ?
Ditch Proxmox & FreeNas and use other solutions?

Thank you for your support!

 

[mbosma]

Just a note: The HP 530FLR-SFP+ is a Qlogic nic. These Qlogic adapters don't play nice with FreeBSD. (had a bunch of problems with Freenas 11.1)

If the Freenas server is down all your vm's will go down with it, is that a calculated risk?
Have you considered using CEPH instead of a "SAN" solution using FreeNAS?

 

[StefanT]

Just a note: The HP 530FLR-SFP+ is a Qlogic nic. These Qlogic adapters don't play nice with FreeBSD. (had a bunch of problems with Freenas 11.1)

If the Freenas server is down all your vm's will go down with it, is that a calculated risk?
Have you considered using CEPH instead of a "SAN" solution using FreeNAS?

As I remeber HP 530FLR-SFP+ has Broadcom chipset. ( I will verify the NIC that I have)
Do you know to be any issues with Broadcom?
I am aware that the HP storage with FreeNAS is a SPOF. I am still considering CEPH as a solution. Still thinking about it...

 

[mbosma]

AFAIK there aren't major issues with Broadcom nics like I had with the Qlogic ones.
The exact model of the nics I used is HP NC523SFP.

You could consider replacing the P420i in your HP server for an actual HBA you want to go with the SAN route.

If you don't feel comfortable with a system like ceph you could also consider using zfs on your C630's nodes and use zfs replication + HA.
This solution is not as nice as and sophisticated as ceph but you'll still be able to failover to another node in case on dies and it makes live migration a lot faster as well.

 

[vangoose]

Just a note: The HP 530FLR-SFP+ is a Qlogic nic. These Qlogic adapters don't play nice with FreeBSD. (had a bunch of problems with Freenas 11.1)

If the Freenas server is down all your vm's will go down with it, is that a calculated risk?
Have you considered using CEPH instead of a "SAN" solution using FreeNAS?

Update firmware. I have a bunch of them, no problem with freenas if you have latest firmware.

 

[mbosma]

Update firmware. I have a bunch of them, no problem with freenas if you have latest firmware.

Nice!
I should also mention that I used this card on FreeNAS 10.x (forgot about that), maybe FreeNas 11.x has better driver support.