I am planning an all-flash virtual SAN cluster, so I need a minimum of two storage nodes with 10Gbps+ between them and a witness node where at least gigabit network. However, I also have a 200W total power budget which limits the node choices a lot.
As an experiment, I built a Xeon E3 1240L V5 server, which uses 33W idle and 51W at full power. It satisfies my power requirements but cost me £450 (w/ 16GBgold bars RAM sticks) after weeks of eBay sniping. It may not sound a lot, but 450x3 is definitely over my budget.
Then, I came across Intel NUCs, especially the NUC7 i5/i7 ones with Thunderbolt 3. I found a couple of eBay deals for complete, used kits with RAM and NVME SSD for <£400 each. They are not only cheaper but use almost half of the energy as well.
The only drawback is the limited expansion, but I found out you can do peer-to-peer networking over Thunderbolt and drivers are available for all major OSes. I hope with one (relatively) cheap Thunderbolt hub on each, I can connect three of them in peer-to-peer mode. (Or falling back to P2P between two and 1Gbe to the witness box.)
Has anyone attempted similar setup or Thunderbolt networking? Do you think it is doable?
As an experiment, I built a Xeon E3 1240L V5 server, which uses 33W idle and 51W at full power. It satisfies my power requirements but cost me £450 (w/ 16GB
Then, I came across Intel NUCs, especially the NUC7 i5/i7 ones with Thunderbolt 3. I found a couple of eBay deals for complete, used kits with RAM and NVME SSD for <£400 each. They are not only cheaper but use almost half of the energy as well.
The only drawback is the limited expansion, but I found out you can do peer-to-peer networking over Thunderbolt and drivers are available for all major OSes. I hope with one (relatively) cheap Thunderbolt hub on each, I can connect three of them in peer-to-peer mode. (Or falling back to P2P between two and 1Gbe to the witness box.)
Has anyone attempted similar setup or Thunderbolt networking? Do you think it is doable?