Firstly, I did try to search, but I couldn’t find anything specific to what I am trying to accomplish. If I missed it I apologies and if you could link to it I will go read that thread. A Pre thank you to any information you can provide.
What I am trying to do.
I am planning on building a Threadripper based VMware ESXi Host for my house. My goals are to be able to host multiple VMs for my house to serve various services. I also want the flexibility to stand up temp VMs to test software or system configurations for my work.
All of this is pretty simple for me as I have been managing VMware ESX servers since version 2. Where I have run into a bit of a question mark is that I also would like to separate compute and storage. I would really like to utilize an UnRaid/freeNAS ZFS backend linked via iSCSI at 10Gb (maybe?) to the compute esxi host. I have multiple reasons for wanting to do this, but other options may be available that I do not know about. I know very little about UnRAID/FreeNAS.
So my questions...
Is this possible or am I trying to make UnRAID/FreeNAS do something it wasn't designed to do?
Has anyone configured unraid to link to VMware ESXi as the storage location for hosted VMs?
Is there anything I should consider?
What I am trying to do.
I am planning on building a Threadripper based VMware ESXi Host for my house. My goals are to be able to host multiple VMs for my house to serve various services. I also want the flexibility to stand up temp VMs to test software or system configurations for my work.
All of this is pretty simple for me as I have been managing VMware ESX servers since version 2. Where I have run into a bit of a question mark is that I also would like to separate compute and storage. I would really like to utilize an UnRaid/freeNAS ZFS backend linked via iSCSI at 10Gb (maybe?) to the compute esxi host. I have multiple reasons for wanting to do this, but other options may be available that I do not know about. I know very little about UnRAID/FreeNAS.
- Being able to replace HDD to easily increase storage without having to migrate data/rebuild
- If I need more compute horse power having storage be separate I could quickly and easily build a second ESXi host and also utilize vMotion.
- I have some extra hardware that would be great for a storage node.
- Being able to configure caching drives on my storage node should greatly increase speed.
So my questions...
Is this possible or am I trying to make UnRAID/FreeNAS do something it wasn't designed to do?
Has anyone configured unraid to link to VMware ESXi as the storage location for hosted VMs?
Is there anything I should consider?