To ESXI or not to ESXI...

[crazyj]

Not sure if there's anyone with similar setups/goals that could advise me on this, but here goes:

Hardware:C2100 Dell, Passthrough backplane, 48GB ECC, 120GB internal Samsung SSD

Primary Goal is for a storage server, ZFS using Napp-It likely.

I need to run logitech media server, and had hoped to run a Plex PMS.

I installed the dell supplied ESXi 5.5u3, was about to start researching how to load VMs into it - first setup a Napp-it AIO passthrough NFS, and then some sort of linux for plex and logitech.

Then I saw that someone had built a handly little installer script for omnios to install LMS. I'm hearing that Plex can also possibly be run in Omnios using a zone.

So is it worth it to bother with ESXi at all? Why not just run Omnios alone? Is there any benefit / drawbacks to doing VMs for my little setup?

 

[whitey]

I ran a ubuntu zone w/ plex loaded on smartos just fine so I'd imagine it's just abt same process and in fact I have seen @gea make some significant strides in this area in other threads arnd here. If you are just running a small handful of VM's and do not need/want vCenter and it's a single hypervisor box I see no issue w/ taking the route proposed or even ZoL w/ KVM VM and plex in there.

 

[gea]

You have three options
1. Install thos services directly to the barebone (storage) server

I would avoid this in general. While a pure storageserver is up and running within a few minutes, a complex setup gives you a lot of dependencies with the need of a backup/ recovery procedure and the danger that any update corrupts at least a part of the system

2. use ESXi as a type-1 hypervisor below all guests.
This is always full virtualisation. In case of storage you should not virtualize disk controller or disks (use pass-through).
Main advantage of ESXI is a minimal footprint and best performance for any guests due os specific drivers like a vmxnet3s vnic

3. Lightweight container based solutions
This is now included in OmniOS 151020 as beta for Linux zones. You can simply download Linux container from SmartOS.

This may be a very attractive future option for Linux VMs on OmniOS.
http://www.napp-it.org/doc/downloads/zones.pdf

 

[crazyj]

Ok. Sounds like ESXi is the way I'll go. If I understand rightly, nfs pass through of my HBA through NFS is what I need to do.

And run LMS and PMS on one or separate VMs.

For a setup like mine am I missing out on anything big with free napp-it?


Ps. Not that I'm likely to use time machine, but I do use OS X El Capitan occaissionally. I've heard it only uses smb 3 now. What's the status in napp-it / omniOS?

 

[gea]

You pass-through the HBA with disks to OmniOS for direct access with native OmniOS drivers.
You then create a ZFS filesystem and share it via NFS and SMB. In ESXi you can mount this NFS share as a datastore for VMs with parallel access via SMB for backup/clone/move or snap access via Previous Versions

Napp-it Free and the .ova server template offers all what you need

Apple switched from AFP to SMB as default protocol. The SMB3 item with some Apple specific additions is only relevant for timemachine as otherwise you need AFP, any SMB with some tweaks or iSCSI to have it working.

The SMB part of Illumos is currently 2.1. and was upstreamed by Nexenta.
As Nexenta included SMB3 in their new NexentaStor 5 you can expect SMB3 in Illumos also but with a delay,

 

[crazyj]

I've now got it running with ESXi 5.5u3 and just going through the setup for napp-in-one....

Maybe I'm just thick, but I'm not getting it when it comes to setting up the networking portion.

I would think my setup is fairly straightforward:
-wifi router with VLANs separating out an internal network and a guest wifi
(gigabit ethernet physical connections to main PC, file server, unmanaged switch)
-unmanaged switch connected to various gear around remainder of house

This has me a bit bewildered:
"- vlans
The virtual switch is connected to a physical nic and acceps untagged or tagged ethernet packages. In a simple setup, every VM has one vnic that is connected to your vswitch to allow untagged transfers.

In a typical setup, you use a portbased vlan capable external switch with untagged ports ex port1=vlan1, port 2-4=vlan2 and port 5-6 are vlan 3. Then assign all vlans to tagged ports ex port 7-8. You can then connect the tagged port 8 to your physical ESXi nic.

When you create a vnic, you can connect it to a vlan on the vswitch. If you create three vnics for a VM you can attach each vlan to a vnic."

Two physical NIC ethernet ports on this C2100.

Do I need to create multiple VNICs per VM? What's the purpose of all this? Is it to direct traffic from each VM through a VNIC to a VLAN set up in my router/switch?

What are the advantages / purposes, or is this just a requirement?

 

[gea]

This is all about options.

If you have two physical nics, you can use two ESXi virtual switches (vswitch).
On a VM you can use up to two vnics that you can connect to the vswitches (no vlans involved).

Portbased Vlans allows up to 4096 separated networks over a single physical nic. You need a physical vlan capable switch to separate the lan segments. They can be combined to a single connection (tagged link) to a single physical ESXi nic and a single ESXi vswitch.

For every vlan that is wanted in a VM, you must add a vnic and connect it to a vlan on the virtual ESXi switch.