FC FreeNAS 9.10 -> ESXi

[veloccitu]

Running: FreeNAS-9.10.2-U6 (561f0d7a1) with a QLogic 4GB FC card to an ESXi server with the same card.

System is working with an iSCSI setup, but I am wondering if that is the best setup for this? This is a lab environment and my media storage, speed is important. System board can only take 24GB max memory, and I see a recommendation for 32GB with iSCSI. Just wondering what my other options are as the FC setup was... not what I expected? Again working well just seeing what else I have.

 

[kdragon75]

recommendation for 32GB with iSCSI

This is highly dependent on the number of VM's the number of hosts and workloads. If you have less than 1-2 hosts and less than 10 light duty VM's you can definitely run on less that 32GB. It will run better with more but if you don't have any performance issues, don't worry about it.

Ideally you would the fibre channel cards as there is less overhead on both the san and the host but that requires a bit of fiddling in FreeNAS (UI stripped out from TrueNAS). Do some searching on the forum here and you will find everything you need to make the FC work. Tell us more about your network and Vmware setup and we can advise if its worth changing anything.

 

[veloccitu]

I would definitely fit under the light duty load then.

Currently this is a single host with a few VM's only used in a lab type environment, any mission critical applications sit on the host's DAS. Initial setup was to do a mockup of a 5 host 100VM Dell Compellent setup at one of my clients sites but I decided to move my media server and few VM's with high disk usage over once it was setup because.. Hey I had it up why not!

FreeNAS host is a Dell T3500 with 24GB of memory, a 40GB SSD L2ARC (part of testing, I know its not recommended with memory at 24GB), 5x Seagate Constellation 2TB 7200RPM SAS drives in RAIDz1. iSCSI over the 4GB QLogic FC to ESXi 5.5 (I think...). That host is a Dell R710 with 8x 600GB 10K SAS drives in a RAID 10, bunch of memory and proc cores. Network is mostly virtual but physical connections are on a Cisco 2960.

Performance doesn't have to be crazy but I do like to get the most out of the hardware available and I am a FreeNAS noob. Been reading on setup but when I google FC + FreeNAS I don't find a lot so far.

Thanks for the help thus far!

 

[kdragon75]

iSCSI over the 4GB QLogic FC to ESXi 5.5

Its iSCSI over IP or SCSI over Fibre Channel(over Ethernet in some cases.) (usually just called Fibre Channel). One or the other.

40GB SSD L2ARC (part of testing, I know its not recommended with memory at 24GB)

Meh, try it out. Run like you normally would for a few day and check out the L2ARC hit ratios and usage. If the usage is high and hits are high, play with some bench marks the would use the L2ARC and see how it goes. That's what home labs are all about.