(quiet) ESXi server upgrade recommendations

[leonroy]

I currently have a HP G6 server with P410 RAID running my home vSphere setup. It hosts stuff like JIRA, Confluence, Zabbix and a few other bits and pieces I use for learning and running my day to day (non critical) business activities.

Nothing requires 24/7 uptime, but obviously don't want it down for more than a day or two.

The server has 4x 2.5" SAS 146GB drives and works great. It's super quiet, reasonably low power, 128GB RAM etc.

Problem is I'm really hitting the limit of that 146GB pool (4x in a RAID 10 array) and the price of larger SAS drives is pushing into SSD territory.

Would the P410 controller do okay with SATA SSD drives instead of SAS?
Would I be better off getting a newer server?
What's the current popular prosumer server for those maintaining a vSphere setup at home?

Budget's approximately £2.5k but obviously since this is from my personal funds less would be preferable!

 

[gea]

My opinion
- HP G6 is ok (if you can replace the disk controller)
- HP P410 is not ok (prefer a 6G or 12G HBA)
- use SSD only if you want performance for VMs, optionally add a raid-1/z from disks for files or backup use

I prefer using a ZFS storage solution instead a local ESXi raid due a higher level of datasecurity
and the ZFS cache and snap options. With shared NFS/SMB storage it offers also a easier handling of VM backup/copy/move.

My suggestion:
- add an HBA like an LSI 9207-8i (pure HBA, no raid) or LSI 9300-8i (flash with araidless IT firmware)
- use a 960G mirror or raid-10 from 480G SSDs, prefer enterprise class SSD like Samsung PM/SM 863 with powerloss protection
- add a datapool from disks (ex 1-2TB mirror or raid-z)

- use a ZFS storage appliance as a VM. I offer one as a free download based on OmniOS, a free Solaris fork,
see http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-in-one.pdf