Good Idea or not

[Rhinofart]

I have a somewhat interesting question for my soon to be new setup at home.
I currently have an ESXi 5.1 Cluster at home. Consists of a Dell PowerEdge 2900 ( Dual Quad 2.9, 48Gb RAM), an Apple xServe (Dual Quad 3.0, 24GB RAM), an HP DL385 running as my FreeNAS box (4CPU, 32Gb Ram, and 4 x 500GB 7200 drives in RAID 5 on the HP RAID controler) It is more than overkill for what I use it for at home, and it's quite loud and I suspect expensive to keep running. Recently the wife has mentioned turning our garrage (where my "Data Center" is located) into a Family Games room or something of the sort. Now, it's awefully loud in there when my setup fails over to the Dell for whatever reason. I've since been tasked with redoing my Data Center, I've decided to play a bit.

I currently have a MacMini Server (2011 with 16Gb RAM, and a Quad i7 @ 2.0Ghz, with a 512Gb SSD, and a 12 TB Promise Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt RAID Array in Raid 5 10TB useable)
I would like to install ESXi 5.1 on that, and create a FreeNAS VM, and a basic Mac OSX Server on there. As a POC I've installed FreeNAS onto a USB and can run on the MacMini, and see the Pegasus Array fine. So, to help bolster the iSCSI speeds I've purchased a Thunderbolt to PCI chassis for on of my 10Gbe Cards so I can attach that to my MacMini. ESXi and FreeNAS can both see and use the 10Gb cards as I currently use them in my above (loud setup)

I have purchased a Pair of Shuttle SZ77R5's each with an Ivy Bridge i7 3770 Quad 3.5Ghz (non K version), 32Gb RAM, 10Gbe Card (existing), an Intel Dual Port GbE Nic, and a Kingston SSDNow300V 240Gb SSD drive to house the ESXi OS, and some local storage. To help keep things running cool, I have also purchased a pair of Asetek closed loop 92mm Watercooling Kits. These will be my ESXi Cluster.

Does anyone think having the MacMini as a FreeNAS box with the Pegasus & 10Gbe card connected directly to the FreeNAS VM will be a hinderance? Or should I just save myself some configuration and frankly some fun, and get a stand alone box like a QNAP TS-569Pro and have that as my NAS.

 

[cyberjock]

It's a good idea and a bad. Read the threads about why ESXi + FreeNAS in a VM is a bad idea. If you still want to take the risk, the risk is yours to take. But don't expect too much sympathy if things go badly because the number of people that have lost data solely because they thought they could do it in ESXi is quite high.

I'd NEVER do ESXi with FreeNAS in a VM. Too many people have lost data and I'd rather not be part of that statistic.

I won't explain it much further(and you probably won't get much from anyone else) because we end up having 1-2 people ask every week about how they have such a great idea with ESXi and FreeNAS and we're sick to death of discussing it over and over.

 

[Rhinofart]

Very excellent and to the point reply. That's exactly what I was hoping for. Someone who obviously has a lot of knowledge about FreeNAS shooting straight. I think I'll keep the MacMini as strictly a FreeNAS box, and if I do need to virtualize a Mac server, I can just fire up the xServe when needed.

Thanks mate!