Help with choosing right storage - ESXi, NAS in VM or HW RAID?

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Adam84

New Member
Jan 18, 2016
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Hi Guys,

I want to build my first home virtualization server, based on free ESXi 6.0. It main tasks will be:
1 x Home File Server (photos, family media, etc) <-- this it the most critical data
1 x OwnCloud
1 x Windows 7 PRO for testing .NET web applications
1 x Linux Server for testing PHP web applications
Possibly other - mainly for lab/learning/testing

The hardware is not bought yet, but I will use some spare parts, it will be something like:
Core i5 4570, H77 Asrock board mATX, 32GB RAM, mATX Case, 2x3TB WD RED + some SSDs - for higher performance datastore, Seasonic G360, usb stick for ESXi boot

The main requirements for me are:
- the build must be in single mATX case - cool, green and quiet. I do not wan't additional boxes or NAS.
- disks in RAID1 (mirror), so I would not have to worry for single disk failure (off site backup will be done anyway)
- I would like to keep my build architecture clean and simple from software and hardware perspective

Everything but the storage seems clear. Keeping in mind that it has to be single box with disks in mirror, I am considering:
  • Additional VM (OpenFiler? FreeNAS?) with disks passed through with RDM and data store mapped back in ESXi with iSCSI
  • Additional VM (OpenFiler? FreeNAS?) with disks passed through additional cheap controller and data store mapped back in ESXi with iSCSI
  • Buying some LSI (e.x. 9211-4i) controller from HCL with RAID1 and configuring it directly as a datastore (no cache = slow hdd performance)
  • Buying more expensive controller (e.x. 9260-8i) with 512MB cache and configure it directly as datastore
Personally I would look forward RAID1 from hardware controller solution. First two options are popular but I think they are away from simplicity (which was my condition) and far away from reliable.

Is the high price of good hardware RAID1 with cache worth it? Maybe any other propositions?
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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My suggestion:

Local ESXi storage=
- slow storage (no ramcache, controller cache does not really help)
- unsecure storage (at least compared to newer filesystems like ZFS)
- support for single shorttime snaps only (should delete them as fast as possible)
- backup/ restore of VMs is slow and inconvenient

- a general use fileserver based on virtual disks on vmfs is a bad idea
(slow and unsecure)

I would suggest the following:
- use a shared ZFS storage VM.
I prefer Solaris based solutions where ZFS comes from with best ZFS integration.
You can try my napp-it ZFS storage VM based on OmniOS, a free Solaris - a fullsize webmanaged NAS/SAS solution.
You can download my ready to use ZFS Storage Template for ESXi with Webmanagement for free. You only need to import.

- While you can use physical RDM for storage, the best of all solution is a dedicated HBA like an LSI 9207, or
older ones like LSI 9211, IBM M1015, Dell H200 etc that you pass-through to your storage VM with ZFS software raid.
This allow OmniOS to see all disks with its own driver without any reconfiguration.

- Create a ZFS pool/filesystem and share via NFS. Use this in ESXi to store all other VMs onto.
Share the filesystem with SMB as well for clone/backup/restore. Do regular snaps (previous versions of a VM).

- use SMB shares for general use fileservices or iSCSI when needed

You may use a hardware raid for ESXi itself and a local datastore with OmniOS.
But as ESXi and the napp-it storage VM are installed and reinstalled after a crash within a very short time, this is not needed. All services that require configuration and backup/restore are VMs on secure ZFS.