FreeNAS VM for home lab/home server?

[AndrewZ]

I'm hoping that within the next year I'll be able to expand my lab to have two hypervisor hosts and a storage (FreeNAS) server. Unfortunately that's a year away and I have storage pain (not enough storage!) now. My current server is a Lenovo TS440 YUX model (Lenovo RAID 500 card, 8 drive bays) with 32 GB ECC RAM. Currently the server is running ESXi.

If I can actually expand my lab in the future, I'll turn the Lenovo into a dedicated FreeNAS server providing storage to two ESXi (or other hypervisor) hosts. Until then I'm stuck with doing everything on one server.

Since I only have the one server, and I have to redo my storage layout now, I'm pondering trowing a small disk on the Lenovo's SATA controller to provide storage for a FreeNAS VM with the RAID controller passed through to the VM. Once the FreeNAS VM is booted FreeNAS would serve up the RAID/HBA's storage to ESXi via an internal iSCSI or NFS network.

Disk wise I currently have two 3TB disks and two 2TB disks. I'm planning on adding an additional four 2TB disks to use up all 8 of the drive bays attached to the RAID controller.

A few things I haven't figured out:

• Is the minimum 8 GB of RAM enough? I'm a bit tight on available memory on this server. I'll add more memory to FreeNAS as data is migrated from Linux Samba file servers to FreeNAS, but I'll have to start with the minimum 8 GB.
  
• Can the Lenovo RAID 500 be flashed into IT mode? Based on what I've read so far it is a re-branded LSI 9240-8i. In ESXi lspci identifies it as LSI / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS SKINNY Controller so I haven't been able to confirm that. Going to shut down and open the case tonight to see if I can confirm that.
  
• Would FreeNAS and the flashing the LSI card to IT mode help write performance? This card doesn't have any write cache so it's RAID performance is rather poor.
  
• If things go as planned will it be easy to move FreeNAS from a VM to the native OS on the Lenovo server?
  
• Does FreeNAS allow running services such as CUPS and SANE (Scanner Access Made Easy)? More memory I can give to FreeNAS if so.

Thank all. From what I've seen reading on the forums so far FreeNAS seems to have a fairly positive community. :D

 

[joeschmuck]

Is the minimum 8 GB of RAM enough? I'm a bit tight on available memory on this server. I'll add more memory to FreeNAS as data is migrated from Linux Samba file servers to FreeNAS, but I'll have to start with the minimum 8 GB

8GB is the minimum for a standard file server however you didn't specify the protocol you are plannig to use or if you are plannig to use iSCSI. Some things require much more RAM.

If things go as planned will it be easy to move FreeNAS from a VM to the native OS on the Lenovo server?

It should be a piece of cake. All you need is a copy of the configuration file and you can migrate to your hearts content.

Does FreeNAS allow running services such as CUPS and SANE (Scanner Access Made Easy)? More memory I can give to FreeNAS if so.

Not natively. You may be able to put these into a VM on FreeNAS however if you are already running ESXi, why run any VMs on FreeNAS is what I say. I'd run FreeNAS just as a storage medium if you are running an ESXi platform already.

 

[AndrewZ]

Thanks! Your reply is much appreciated. After doing some math I found my datastore was much more full than it should have been. After a bit of digging I found a 1.5 TB VMDK belonging to a VM I thought I had deleted. Suddenly redoing my storage setup isn't as high of a priority. :)

Back to long term planning and acquiring additional hardware for hypervisors for me.

 

[joeschmuck]

1.5 TB is a good sized VM. Glad you found it to recover some of your storage. If you are looking to increase your storage then my advice is to look for some holiday sales in the near future, that is whayt I'm doing. I just had a drive failure, poped in a reasonable drive to hold the system over for now and hopefully I will find a good sale between now and December on 6TB drives.