Recommend NAS on VM?

[Max Power]

I hope I posted this in the right forum. I'm new here and want to start out on the right foot.

I plan to run a ESXi on a Dell R610 with a Perc 6/i Raid controller. I still need to purchase the Hard drives and I am also not married to the hardware so I am open to suggestions.

I need to run a Hypervisor. I have used ESXi in the past and I am relatively comfortable with that. As far as VM's I will run a Centos Machine with Asterisk. A Windows 7 box and probably a few other linux OS's in the future for various small tasks.

Where I need advice is how to handle NAS. The needs of the NAS are relatively simple. I need about 2 TB of storage total. All storage needs to be accessible by Windows Clients. I need to be able to control basic security for each user as each user will have his own storage as well as a group folder. FTP access would be nice but not critical. I don't know if any software offers it but it would be nice if there were a way to make a file easily accessible by http as well. This is not a deal breaker. I will probably set up some kind of cloud backup in the future as well. I would prefer this to not run on a Windows VM.

I was initially thinking of simply running a linux box with samba however as I read there are a ton of different options for NAS and I assume they would be better. FreeNAS, napp-it, Openfiler etc. I have NO experience with any of these. I would love some opinions on which is the best way to go for this type of setup.

I was hoping to run 2 arrays, one ssd array for VM's and one SAS array for storage. Hopefully I have included enough information. Thanks to all who contribute!

 

[gea]

One (I would say the best) storage option is a web-based ZFS appliance
(like FreeNAS, NexentaStor, Solaris, OmniOS and my napp-it). If you go this route, you need

- a HBA controller like a LSI 9207, 9211-IT or IBM 1015-IT mode
Do not use a hardware raid like the Perc 6i

If you want to virtualize the NAS:
- you should pass-through the storage (HBA+disks) and virtualize the storage OS only
This requires a vt-d capable mainboard

- prefer a solution based on Intel server chipsets, Intel nics, LSI HBA and ECC RAM
If you want to build your own this board is used quite often SuperMicro X10SL7-F

You can read my howtos (based on Oracle Solaris, OpenIndiana or OmniOS) about
www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-it.pdf (barebone setup)
www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/napp-in-one.pdf (virtualized NAS)

You can also download my preconfigured ESXi ZFS storage appliance
(download, upload to ESXi, import VM and you are ready)

 

[Max Power]

Thanks for the detailed information. I appreciate the time it took to explain this. I was hoping to buy a box that I could install software and go. Being in Canada it is a bit more difficult to find all the hardware to make this work. I was not aware I needed an HBA controller and I think that's where I was getting confused.

I'll google around a little and see if I can piece together a system.

 

[lundrog]

I would do a NexentaStor system.

http://www.servethehome.com/create-nexentastor-vmware-esxi-virtual-machine/
Building my Nexenta VM using (NFS) best practices
Homelab Nexenta on ESXi - as a VM - ESX Virtualization
ZFS/ESXi All-In-One, Part 1 -
ZFS/ESXI All-In-One, Part 2 -

 

[Max Power]

So I dusted off this Dell R610 that I inherited. It turns out it has a SAS 6i/R controller not the Perc 6i.

It appears this does HBA. Is this adequate for what I want to do?

 

[lundrog]

That card is a older sas card, so it will have slower speeds, and lower max capacity per drive in raid. 2 tb I think.

Looks like ESXi will work.

VMware Compatibility Guide

 

[Max Power]

For this case I don't think speed will be an issue. Excuse my ignorance, could I buy a 'better' raid card and simply plug it in to the existing cables, backplane etc? If so will any of the cards above 'plug and play'?

Is there any disadvantage to running this hardware?

Dell R610, 2x Xeon 2.26 L5520, 24GB DDR3.

 

[gea]

With 1U cases you must care about
- can I mount other cards physically (like an IBM 1015)
- can I connect the internal drive bays to this card or is this limited to integrated cards.

Maybee an integrated Dell H200 (a newer card based on LSI 2008)
is an option.

 

[CreoleLakerFan]

From experience I recommend OmniOS + Napp-It. Superb documentation, accessible support, beautiful interface, trivially easy installation, and baked-in support for Infiniband (though the latter is less relevant for a VM).

NexentaStor licensing pisses me off. The only reason I use Nexenta is for VAAI support in my VCP lab.

The FreeNAS support community is persnickity about VM support, and Cyberjock (the FreeNAS forum moderator) is IMO an uninformed blowhard with an over inflated opinion of his own significance.

 

[Timbiotic]

Cyber jock is probably the main reason I am steering away from freenas in my next build. Been a happy unraid user for years, but decided I wanted more hypervisor at home. Definitely leaning towards zfs, but haven't landed on all in one choice for os yet. I haven't posted in the forums yet but doing the research your description of his posts is 100% accurate.

 

[vikingboy]

Cyberjock is certainly an interesting character but in no way should he put you off using FreeNAS....its a sound solution and you should at least take it for a spin to see for yourself if it does what you need.

 

[Timbiotic]

Planning on it, at this point I am leaning towards freenas or omnios, even flirting with behyve. Will probably load them all and test. But if I run into troubles with FreeNAS I don't even want to post on their forums. Was just starting to look at NexentaStor, but what about the licensing "pisses" people off?

 

[Fritz]

I'm in the process of putting together a FreeNAS box and so far I like it. I have a lot to learn when it comes to ZFS but FreeNAS seems to make it relatively easy. I've gone through a couple of reinstalls to make sure I can import my pool without issues and I've played around with various configs. I've decided to use an old Intel x25 80gig drive I had lying around rather than a USB drive. The final build will consist of 10 3TB drives in a Z2 array. I'm waiting on the final 3 drives to arrive before proceeding.

 

[CreoleLakerFan]

Planning on it, at this point I am leaning towards freenas or omnios, even flirting with behyve. Will probably load them all and test. But if I run into troubles with FreeNAS I don't even want to post on their forums. Was just starting to look at NexentaStor, but what about the licensing "pisses" people off?

The community version has a raw storage limit of 18.1T. It is also deceptively worded so that the raw storage limit appears to be the only condition of usage of the community version, but it also has a non-apparent clause that the community edition cannot be used for "production." If Nexenta store doesn't want the community edition used for production that's fine. It's hiding that clause deep in the license agreement that gets people rankled up.

FWIW, I run FreeNAS for my home server, and use either Omni-OS + NAPP-It or NexentaStor for block storage for my lab. FreeNAS itself is a nice piece of work, it's just that the community support is horrible.