Hello All,
I'm thinking about upgrading my server hardware which has gone through a variety of home lab software configurations but is currently running FreeNAS 11 on bare metal. It has done well for me over the years.
Its specs are:
Norco 24 bay rack mount chassis
Supermicro MBD-X9SCM-IIF
Xeon 1230v2
32GB ECC Ram
USB Boot drive for FreeNAS
6x 3TB drives in RAIDZ2
LSI HBA in JBOD mode
I use to be much more active with VM tinkering but fell out of if for a while when I switched jobs. Now I'm in a position where it makes sense again and I've begun using the FreeNAS VM functionality to install the ERP I use at work as a test platform and development arena. Using my existing RAIDZ2 array as storage for the (currently 5) VMs which make up the ERP application stack seems to have acceptable performance but I really haven't put anything through its paces yet. Once I start to run some transactions through the system and use the UI components I'll know more about overall performance but I'm expecting that there will be issues, especially given how much ZFS loves memory.
If I start to run into performance bottlenecks, which with this server could easily be disk, memory, or CPU (or all three), I'd like some thoughts on how I might proceed. Grabbing some used enterprise SSDs and running a ZFS RAID10 array for VM storage would be a relatively straight forward upgrade and portable if I upgraded to other hardware later. But I'm not sure what makes sense for CPU & Ram these days. I assembled the server in 2013 and haven't really kept up with the times. Obviously since this thing sits in my basement and typically runs 24/7 I'd prefer not to increase my power bill that much or have my wife complain about having a jet engine in the basement.
As for software, I've found the FreeNAS VM setup tolerable but clunky. Proxmox seems like an appealing option given the native ZFS support and much better VM environment. Any input in this area would also be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
I'm thinking about upgrading my server hardware which has gone through a variety of home lab software configurations but is currently running FreeNAS 11 on bare metal. It has done well for me over the years.
Its specs are:
Norco 24 bay rack mount chassis
Supermicro MBD-X9SCM-IIF
Xeon 1230v2
32GB ECC Ram
USB Boot drive for FreeNAS
6x 3TB drives in RAIDZ2
LSI HBA in JBOD mode
I use to be much more active with VM tinkering but fell out of if for a while when I switched jobs. Now I'm in a position where it makes sense again and I've begun using the FreeNAS VM functionality to install the ERP I use at work as a test platform and development arena. Using my existing RAIDZ2 array as storage for the (currently 5) VMs which make up the ERP application stack seems to have acceptable performance but I really haven't put anything through its paces yet. Once I start to run some transactions through the system and use the UI components I'll know more about overall performance but I'm expecting that there will be issues, especially given how much ZFS loves memory.
If I start to run into performance bottlenecks, which with this server could easily be disk, memory, or CPU (or all three), I'd like some thoughts on how I might proceed. Grabbing some used enterprise SSDs and running a ZFS RAID10 array for VM storage would be a relatively straight forward upgrade and portable if I upgraded to other hardware later. But I'm not sure what makes sense for CPU & Ram these days. I assembled the server in 2013 and haven't really kept up with the times. Obviously since this thing sits in my basement and typically runs 24/7 I'd prefer not to increase my power bill that much or have my wife complain about having a jet engine in the basement.
As for software, I've found the FreeNAS VM setup tolerable but clunky. Proxmox seems like an appealing option given the native ZFS support and much better VM environment. Any input in this area would also be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,