Napp-it all-in-one is a concept that I brought up around 10 years ago where you use ESXi to virtualize all server and services including a ZFS storage server for general filer use but also for VMs. For this I offer a ready to use ZFS storage server template with web managemen that you can deploy ready to use within minutes, see https://napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-in-one.pdf
Main advantage
- very low downtime. ESXi is ultra stable and minimalistic.
It is more like a firmware. It requires less security fixes or updates compared to a full featured OS.
- lowest RAM footprint, mostly the fastest base to virtualize.
Count less than 2GB for ESXi
- best of all support for any type of guest systems
Free-BSD, OSX, Linux, Windows, Solarish
- easy and very fast to recover even disaster recovery (boot disk dead without backup)
re-deploy OmniOS, optionally set your HBA to passthrough and import the datapool
reinstall ESXi and re-add VMs to inventory with a right mouse click on the .vmx file in the VM folder
- perfectly suited to virtualize a fully featured webmanaged ZFS storage appliance
like OmniOS (a very minimalistic but storage feature complete free server OS with FC/iSCSI, NFS and SMB) with storage access via disk rdm or HBA pass-through . OmniOS as a Solaris fork has best of all integration of ZFS and storage services into ZFS and the OS with its kernelbased and multithreaded SMB server, NFS and Comstar, a enterprise grade iSCSI stack. There is a production long term stable edition for production use with a commercial support option and security patches when needed, see OmniOS Community Edition
ps
Based on my concept, you can also use other storage appliances like a Free-BSD based FreeNAS,
see FreeNAS vs. OmniOS / Napp-It | b3n.org
Main advantage
- very low downtime. ESXi is ultra stable and minimalistic.
It is more like a firmware. It requires less security fixes or updates compared to a full featured OS.
- lowest RAM footprint, mostly the fastest base to virtualize.
Count less than 2GB for ESXi
- best of all support for any type of guest systems
Free-BSD, OSX, Linux, Windows, Solarish
- easy and very fast to recover even disaster recovery (boot disk dead without backup)
re-deploy OmniOS, optionally set your HBA to passthrough and import the datapool
reinstall ESXi and re-add VMs to inventory with a right mouse click on the .vmx file in the VM folder
- perfectly suited to virtualize a fully featured webmanaged ZFS storage appliance
like OmniOS (a very minimalistic but storage feature complete free server OS with FC/iSCSI, NFS and SMB) with storage access via disk rdm or HBA pass-through . OmniOS as a Solaris fork has best of all integration of ZFS and storage services into ZFS and the OS with its kernelbased and multithreaded SMB server, NFS and Comstar, a enterprise grade iSCSI stack. There is a production long term stable edition for production use with a commercial support option and security patches when needed, see OmniOS Community Edition
ps
Based on my concept, you can also use other storage appliances like a Free-BSD based FreeNAS,
see FreeNAS vs. OmniOS / Napp-It | b3n.org
