Sphinxicus
Dabbler
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2016
- Messages
- 32
Hi All
Looking to get a sanity check on my potential build. I’m looking to virtualise Freenas on an ESXi host (6.5 or 6.7*).
Freenas usage
The windows7 VM will need to have some external USB drives and 8 internal HDD’s passed through to it so my plan was to pass-through the onboard SATA controllers to that VM and also pass-through the rear USB 3.0 ports to it.
*Caveat here that I have read about some issues with ESXi 6.7 not allowing onboard SATA ports to be passed through. Hopefully this will be fixed in 6.7u1 if not then 6.5 seems to work.
I will pass through the LSI M1015 to the Freenas VM so that it can manage the 7 drives I will give it directly.
Read/Write performance is not a priority here. I am not looking to saturate 10GbE as I have none of this tech available to me. My network is all 1GbE. I would like to make use of the dual Gigabit nics as I can configure etherchannel on my cisco switch but as long as it performs as good as or better than my shocking transfer rate of 15MB/s on my current NAS then I’ll be happy. Stability and data integrity is what I am aiming for.
Backups will be performed regularly to the NAS that this is replacing which in turn backs up to a series of external 8TB USB drives on a round-robin basis.
Parts to purchase
Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSM-F-O
CPU: E3-1230v6 (with stock heatsink/fan)
RAM (will be increased when funds allow):
1 x 16GB Crucial CT16G4WFD824A (DDR4-2400 ECC UDIMM)
OR
1 x 16GB Kingston KVR24E17D8/16 (DDR4-2400 ECC UDIMM)
Depending on price at the time of purchase
PSU: Corsair RM1000x (1000w 80 Plus Gold)
Storage:
6 x 3TB WD Reds in Z2 (to give approx. 8.3TiB usable capacity)
1 x 1TB WD Purple (to store CCTV footage - don’t need redundancy for this)
1 x Samsung 970 EVO 250 M.2 NVME (for ESXi Datastore to house Freenas boot disk and other VM’s)
Boot disk for ESXi (I've read on these forums that the 3.0 drives get a bit hot and they are the same price so may just go for the USB 2.0):
1 x SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB USB 2.0
OR
1 x SanDisk Ultra Fit 16GB USB 3.0
M.2 x4 PCIe 3.0 NVME adapter (to mount NVME drive in x4 PCIe slot)
2 x Mini SAS Reverse breakout cable (which seem to be as rare as hen’s teeth in the UK /Ireland:()
1 x UPS with the ability to shutdown ESXi host gracefully (need to research that one)
Parts I already own
1 x APC UPS SC450RMI1U (no serial cable or shutdown software though)
1 x LSI M1015 (flashed to p20 IT mode)
2 x SFF8087-8087 SAS cables
1 x 4u 24bay rackmount case with 6Gb Backplane with 6 Mini SAS ports (this fits an ATX PSU and gives me the option to expand storage)
8 x Various sized SATA HDD's from Iron Wolfs to Hitachi He8's (these will not be part of any ZFS pool as explained above)
Future Purchases if required/when funds allow
Another 16GB RAM
A SAS expander like IBM 46M0997 or RES2CV360 if I need to add any more drives/ZFS pools.
Q: As I'm looking to pass the rear USB3.0 controller through to the Windows VM, does that mean i am limited to booting ESXi from the USB2.0 controller or is the internal USB3.0 mort on the motherboard ran from a separate controller and therefore usable for a bootable USB?
I think that covers it all and I don’t think I left anything out. Does it pass the “will it Freenas” test? Am i missing anything or heading for a mess?
Thanks!
Looking to get a sanity check on my potential build. I’m looking to virtualise Freenas on an ESXi host (6.5 or 6.7*).
Freenas usage
- No more than 3 concurrent users accessing at any one time.
- To store images/video and allow them to be edited via adobe Lightroom/photoshop/premiere.
- To store movies/TV shows to be streamed to a raspberry Pi connected to a TV (via plex).
- To Archive CCTV footage to from a separate physical box at monthly intervals (this data is not critical but nice to have)
- Freenas
- Plex (max 2 x 1080p streams but more likely only a single stream at a time)
- Owncloud
- Windows7
The windows7 VM will need to have some external USB drives and 8 internal HDD’s passed through to it so my plan was to pass-through the onboard SATA controllers to that VM and also pass-through the rear USB 3.0 ports to it.
*Caveat here that I have read about some issues with ESXi 6.7 not allowing onboard SATA ports to be passed through. Hopefully this will be fixed in 6.7u1 if not then 6.5 seems to work.
I will pass through the LSI M1015 to the Freenas VM so that it can manage the 7 drives I will give it directly.
Read/Write performance is not a priority here. I am not looking to saturate 10GbE as I have none of this tech available to me. My network is all 1GbE. I would like to make use of the dual Gigabit nics as I can configure etherchannel on my cisco switch but as long as it performs as good as or better than my shocking transfer rate of 15MB/s on my current NAS then I’ll be happy. Stability and data integrity is what I am aiming for.
Backups will be performed regularly to the NAS that this is replacing which in turn backs up to a series of external 8TB USB drives on a round-robin basis.
Parts to purchase
Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSM-F-O
CPU: E3-1230v6 (with stock heatsink/fan)
RAM (will be increased when funds allow):
1 x 16GB Crucial CT16G4WFD824A (DDR4-2400 ECC UDIMM)
OR
1 x 16GB Kingston KVR24E17D8/16 (DDR4-2400 ECC UDIMM)
Depending on price at the time of purchase
PSU: Corsair RM1000x (1000w 80 Plus Gold)
Storage:
6 x 3TB WD Reds in Z2 (to give approx. 8.3TiB usable capacity)
1 x 1TB WD Purple (to store CCTV footage - don’t need redundancy for this)
1 x Samsung 970 EVO 250 M.2 NVME (for ESXi Datastore to house Freenas boot disk and other VM’s)
Boot disk for ESXi (I've read on these forums that the 3.0 drives get a bit hot and they are the same price so may just go for the USB 2.0):
1 x SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB USB 2.0
OR
1 x SanDisk Ultra Fit 16GB USB 3.0
M.2 x4 PCIe 3.0 NVME adapter (to mount NVME drive in x4 PCIe slot)
2 x Mini SAS Reverse breakout cable (which seem to be as rare as hen’s teeth in the UK /Ireland:()
1 x UPS with the ability to shutdown ESXi host gracefully (need to research that one)
Parts I already own
1 x APC UPS SC450RMI1U (no serial cable or shutdown software though)
1 x LSI M1015 (flashed to p20 IT mode)
2 x SFF8087-8087 SAS cables
1 x 4u 24bay rackmount case with 6Gb Backplane with 6 Mini SAS ports (this fits an ATX PSU and gives me the option to expand storage)
8 x Various sized SATA HDD's from Iron Wolfs to Hitachi He8's (these will not be part of any ZFS pool as explained above)
Future Purchases if required/when funds allow
Another 16GB RAM
A SAS expander like IBM 46M0997 or RES2CV360 if I need to add any more drives/ZFS pools.
Q: As I'm looking to pass the rear USB3.0 controller through to the Windows VM, does that mean i am limited to booting ESXi from the USB2.0 controller or is the internal USB3.0 mort on the motherboard ran from a separate controller and therefore usable for a bootable USB?
I think that covers it all and I don’t think I left anything out. Does it pass the “will it Freenas” test? Am i missing anything or heading for a mess?
Thanks!