Build Help

[rdborg]

Hi to all, I have recently setup a dedicated ESXI host box for a small office enviornment with internal storage drives but the space & storage options are quite limited.

I need some opinions about a FreeNAS build i intend to use.

Basically i wish to build a deidcated FreeNAS machine with server grade hardware so on and also add a Quad Port NIC to via PIC-E to it.

The ESXI Host also has a quad nic with LACP connected to a capable enterprise netgear switch and setup with LACP as it serves 6-8 working desktops to thin clients... + some other low usage virtual servers no issue with network speed here.

My intention is to remove all drives from the ESXI box, place them in the NAS box and add some others and configure raid and then server an NFS/iSCSI from freenas as a data store on esxi that hold all virtual machine files..

Since they are fully working desktops for an office i think 1 GB connection would be saturated easily since the hdd data will be going to and from freenas/esxi and nost just remote desktop connection as it is directly at the moment

Finally my question is - Would LACP (quad intel nic) on the ESXI host and the FreeNAS machine with quad ports give better speeds when communicating to and from freen NFS datastore > ESXI host > Thin Clients & Back

Thanks

Ryan

 

[Zredwire]

Multiple NICs on ESXI can work well when setup correctly. Multiple NICs on Freenas don't always work so well. ISCSI can be okay I guess but getting NFS to work over multiple paths is pretty new stuff and I never got it to work. If your ESXI and Freenas machines are going to be physically close to one another I would put a 10Gb card in each and just use a SFP+ twinax cable between the two. Before I combined my ESXI and Freenas into one machine, I had them connected with 10Gb and twinax cable. I think I paid $25 for the Freenas 10Gb card and $40 for the ESXI 10Gb card (both were used).

 

[rdborg]

Multiple NICs on ESXI can work well when setup correctly. Multiple NICs on Freenas don't always work so well. ISCSI can be okay I guess but getting NFS to work over multiple paths is pretty new stuff and I never got it to work. If your ESXI and Freenas machines are going to be physically close to one another I would put a 10Gb card in each and just use a SFP+ twinax cable between the two. Before I combined my ESXI and Freenas into one machine, I had them connected with 10Gb and twinax cable. I think I paid $25 for the Freenas 10Gb card and $40 for the ESXI 10Gb card (both were used).

Thanks for your reply.. i am not sure about it also.. usualy quad nics bonded work well with multiple connections like virtual machines from esxi server to multiple thin clients that gets distributed or file transfers from and to multiple devices.

I like the idea of having 2 cards and directly connecting them.. it crossed my mind but i was not sure how it would be done.. since it would have to be setup in a specific way to route datastore/nfs traffic one way and then have the esxi server vms and the freenas server files via samba also and other platforms via normal 1gb ethernet.. any help would be appreciated.

Thanks