Good day all,
I am looking for some advice and options for how to best configure my incoming home server rack upgrades.
Let's start with the current :
I have a 42U server rack in my basement, with sufficient cooling and 60A 240V power. I already run a few noisy, power-hungry machines
so both sound and power are not a huge issue. I have Unifi networking with a 16p10GB core switch and a 48p PEO Switch
Dell R720 (Lets call this Dell1) (16c, 32Thread and 256GB RAM, 2 x 10GBE LACP)
I also have a MS Action Pack so MS products are available and I have System Centre VMM setup too.
I am going to be able to get a number of items from my work that I want for current/future state as I will not be able to get hardware like this again (not without a decent investment)
SANs
I currently am testing the new Dell R720 with the HP MSA and soon to be the NetApp to
My initial thoughts were to move the current SFF drives from Dell1 to the HP MSA and then to throw a bunch of other drives I can get (i have about 24 1TB LFF drives) into the Netapp. Important Data is thought to be sync'd between the 2 for now, until I run out of storage.
Then to setup the 2 x Dell R720's in a Windows cluster, pointing to the 2 SANs as a fully redundant environment but then i have the thought of using True Nas core, but then I'm limited to just 1 host, no clusters. Should I be looking elsewhere?
In addition, how should i set up the storage to the best for the virtual servers? Thoughts are to use 3 of the 4 servers above for HyperV Hosts and the 4th for a Docker Host (seeing as Docker cannot be virtualized on HyperV). I can setup ISCSI from True NAS to my hosts, will provide the best performance?
Alternatively, I can use Fibre Channels on the HP MSA and fill that with SSDs for the HyperV machines and have a direct fiber connection to my primary hosts possibly?
Please help me figure out how to setup my future storage solution.
Thank you
I am looking for some advice and options for how to best configure my incoming home server rack upgrades.
Let's start with the current :
I have a 42U server rack in my basement, with sufficient cooling and 60A 240V power. I already run a few noisy, power-hungry machines
so both sound and power are not a huge issue. I have Unifi networking with a 16p10GB core switch and a 48p PEO SwitchDell R720 (Lets call this Dell1) (16c, 32Thread and 256GB RAM, 2 x 10GBE LACP)
- 7 x 5TB SFF drives in RAID 5 (75% used) : Backups, Family Photos, Videos, Plex Media, Software, Video Editing archive, Security Camera storage and some other bit and bobs
- 5 x 1TB SSD Drives in RAID 5 (75% used) : slower VM Drives, Nextcloud vhdx, in progress video editing
- 1 x 1TB NVME SSD (75%) used : Fast VM Drives
I also have a MS Action Pack so MS products are available and I have System Centre VMM setup too.
I am going to be able to get a number of items from my work that I want for current/future state as I will not be able to get hardware like this again (not without a decent investment)
SANs
- HP MSA 2040 : 24 x SFF drives, with SAS and FC connectivity
- Netapp DE 6600 : 60 x LFF drives with SAS connectivity (new controllers ordered and should arrive next week to test : NetApp DE6600 and Dell MD3060e 60 disk JBOD Review - Digital Spaceport)
- Dell R720 (Lets call this Dell2) (16c, 32 threads, RAM to be configured (256GB DDR3 Possible), 2 x 10GBE
- 2 x Fijitsu 1U Servers. Up to 24cores, up to 256GB DDR3 RAM
- 1 x Fjitus 1U up to 20core and 256GB DDR4 RAM
- 1 Lenovo 1U up to 36 core and 256GB DDR4 RAM
I currently am testing the new Dell R720 with the HP MSA and soon to be the NetApp to
- make sure they work
- figure out how I want to configure things
My initial thoughts were to move the current SFF drives from Dell1 to the HP MSA and then to throw a bunch of other drives I can get (i have about 24 1TB LFF drives) into the Netapp. Important Data is thought to be sync'd between the 2 for now, until I run out of storage.
Then to setup the 2 x Dell R720's in a Windows cluster, pointing to the 2 SANs as a fully redundant environment but then i have the thought of using True Nas core, but then I'm limited to just 1 host, no clusters. Should I be looking elsewhere?
In addition, how should i set up the storage to the best for the virtual servers? Thoughts are to use 3 of the 4 servers above for HyperV Hosts and the 4th for a Docker Host (seeing as Docker cannot be virtualized on HyperV). I can setup ISCSI from True NAS to my hosts, will provide the best performance?
Alternatively, I can use Fibre Channels on the HP MSA and fill that with SSDs for the HyperV machines and have a direct fiber connection to my primary hosts possibly?
Please help me figure out how to setup my future storage solution.
Thank you
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