My home ESXi setup - will it work?

[denisl]

Hi - I'm just starting to build/plan my home ESXi server. I put together the diagram below and was hoping for some feedback on whether or not this is the right approach. I'm jumping in with both feet and will do a lot of learning as I go. Couple of goals:
1. Host my Homeseer home automation as a VM
2. Run a to be determined NVR VM for some video cameras (cameras not yet installed)
3. Run NAS to store media and manage with Plex
4. Have sync/share between family members (pics/videos/files) - owncloud?

Note that I'm not sure if the physical disks in my diagram are actually cabled the way I show them as the top 8 on one HBA on the bottom 8 on the second HBA. I still need to figure that out (look at the cabling in the server).

Appreciate the guidance.

 

[MiniKnight]

@denisl I'd think you'd be OK.

Ever consider using Xpenology? You can run Plex and camera record right from there in ESXi. I don't know if it has owncloud or homeseer but that would be easy to have for VMs.

Where are you getting the 256TB SSDs btw !!!! I'm reading those as GB

 

[denisl]

Yes my plan was to run Xpenology which is in my diagram above. Xpenology would be on a dedicated VM. I also planned on hosting Plex on a dedicated VM but I also see that Plex can run on the same VM as Xpenology. Not sure what would be best. I was thinking that since Xpenology would be providing NAS services to more than just Plex that I should keep it on a separate VM to limit risk of Plex impacting Xpenology. I was also thinking that the camera recordings could also be a seperate NAS volume managed under Xpenology (as opposed to how I have it in the diagram with directly attached to the VM).

Thanks for the feedback.
Doesn't everyone on this forum have 256TB SSD drives??? haha!

 

[lundrog]

I would be temped to use the SSD as host cache. I would then consider making a single large raid 10 or raid 5 volume if you have to stay with a single server. Makes data management more simple within VMware. You don't want to start having to migrate that data between raid volumes. Or better do two machines. I would honestly split the raid volumes into two servers. A thing to note is that your going to saturate your 1GB networking fairly fast on a single machine, depending on the number of camera's etc. If you had vCenter you could control this with two servers would also give you the ability to upgrade to VMware vCenter foundations, and migrate vm's during maintenance. Have thought about backup's? never trust raid for data protection. Also consider running the same OS on all VM's to get the best memory foot print, or density.