storage for home esxi cluster

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Mikey0843

New Member
May 20, 2015
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Hey guys, i am in the midst of planning my next server upgrade and would like your opinion on it.

For the Lan-Party on my school i had to make an esxi cluster (im in the organisation of the lan-party). this brought me on the idea to sell my current server gear and make myself an cluster at home. But i cannot figure out what to do with storage. My current setup consist of:

1 single esxi host which holds:
dual intel l5630
24gb of ecc ram
4x 60gb ssd in raid 5 on a dell h310 raid controller
1 mellanox connectx-2 10gbe
1 freenas server
intel g1840
12gb of non-ecc ram(i know this is bad for ifs but i got everything running of an UPS)
4 toshiba 4tb drives on a flashed dell h310
1 chelsio 10gbe
1 small monitoring/remote acces server.
intel g1840
4gb of ram
old 80gb 2,5 inch hdd
And an quanta lb4m.

I am working on getting a deal for a 3-node dell c6100 with 6x l5630 and 144gb ram total(48 in each node) and all the caddies. This might become 2 nodes with dual l5630 and 48gb ram and 1 node with 1 l5630 and 12gb ram if they don't accept my offer(tight budget). But i don't know how to do the storage. One of the nodes will become a freenas server with at least my 4tb drives. I have a couple options to do the storage:

1. use the freenas server as a san with 1 dell h310 and 4x 60gb ssd and 4x 300gb 10k drives as esxi storage. get 3 dual port 10gbe mezzanine cards and sell the lb4m to buy an lb6m.
2. buy 2 dual port 10gbe mezzanine cards but only use 2 port to connect to the lb4m and use star wind virtual san with passthrough of the onboard or dell h310 controller.
3. only buy a 2 node system and use the old freenas server with a quad port 4gb hba instead of the 10gbe card. and dual port 4gb hba in each of the nodes.
4. buy completely separate low-power san and use 4gb ha's.

What do you think is the best option? or am i doing it completely wrong now?

Also long time lurker :)
 

Net-Runner

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Feb 25, 2016
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Mikey0843

New Member
May 20, 2015
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I was also thinking of using starwind Vsan but doesn't that require a fast dedicated connection for the synchronization? i could also use the 2 10GBe ports for that, and use 2 1GBe ports in LACP for freenas.