Setup suggestion for ESXi/NAS server

[Jbiss]

Build’s Name: T.B.D.

Operating System/ Storage Platform: ESXi 4.1 and ...
CPU: Intel Xeon X3440
Motherboard: Supermicro X8SIL-F
Chassis: Norco RPC-4220
Drives: 8 x 2TB Samsung HD204UI, 4 x 500Gb Seagate, 2 x 160Gb Seagate
RAM: 4 x Kingston 4Gb DDR3 ECC
Add-in Cards: Areca ARC-1880i, Intel SAS Expander (24 port)
Power Supply: Antec 550W

I'm looking for suggestions on setting up my server. I am currently setup with ESXi 4.1 on a USB key and the datastores are on a RAID 5 with the four 500Gb Seagate drives and a RAID 1 with the two 160Gb Seagate drives.

What I would like to setup is an iSCSI or NFS (inside a VM) that would have access to the 12TB (RAID6 with the eight 2TB drives). This would provide storage to ESXi and also provide lots of room for a centralized NAS to store music, movies and other. It's very similar to the All-in-One Napp-it solution discussed on the forum.

How well would ZFS work on top of a hardware RAID6? I would like to stick to hardware RAID instead of software RAID.

What suggestions do you have to do this setup? I want to have an ESXi server and a NAS that can serve the 16TB hardware RAID6.

I've been looking at FreeNAS, Solaris Express 11, Nexenta Core and other but just can't decide what route to choose.

 

[PigLover]

ZFS works fine on top of hardware Raid6. From the very beginning, ZFS was designed to work on top of advanced storage controllers. You don't have to do anything special. Just set up the Raid6 to present a single logical unit (LUN) for each raid group to the OS and then use those LUNs as singe-drive vdevs in ZFS.

ZFS works better when you let it manage the Raid with RaidZ. ZFS does file-level integrity and can co-ordinate that with the block-level integrity done by RaidZ. While there is obviously a performance penalty for parity-raid (raid 5/6) compared with a hardware solution, the performance difference is minimal (ZFS zealots will try to argue that there is no performance penalty - that ZFS software raid is just as fast - but that is an indefensible claim and is part of the reason ZFS the ZFS zealots "turn off" so many people. More accurate description is that any performance deficit is de-minimus).

So the big question is: why do you want to use the hardware Raid if your are using ZFS? Other than being comfortable with it, I don't understand the value proposition. If you are going to use hardware raid, then use hardware raid. Many times it is the right solution. But if you are going to do ZFS, then do all of ZFS, including using its built-in raid support. Mixing ZFS and hardware raid just does not seem to make sense.

 

[Jbiss]

I was planning on going with ZFS for two reason. The first is that is supports data deduplication and the second (I know it's not a good reason) is that all the NAS software I come across uses or recommends ZFS.

 

[PigLover]

The question isn't why ZFS - its more why the desire to mix hardware raid with ZFS.

 

[Jbiss]

I would like to stay with hardware RAID because I know it and I find it easier to manage. I'm not saying software RAID isn't as good, I just haven't taken the time yet to properly learn it. For now I feel safer using hardware RAID. As for using it with ZFS, I'm hearing a lot of good things about it. I could just as well use another filesystem also though.

 

[T_Minus]

What did you end up going with @Jbiss and how's it working out for you?