Hi guys, my name is Anderson, and I'm new here but have been studying very hard about TrueNAS lately and I'm familiar with freenas, old school on unix, freebsd, linux (servers basically for network infrastructure and internet services providers) and also (unfortunately) windows servers as well.... whatever pays the bills, rite?...just kiding…lol
Anyway, I'm here to ask if possible for your kind attention and some of your time to help me decide what path is the best choice for me on a "new" storage server. I need to choose one of these options to use in production environment, for a virtual machines pool of servers in a 10gb network SFP+ (each server has 2port 10gb and both will be used for performance boost 20gb and redundancy connections with L3 switchs also redundant).
I'm using for virtualization xenserver (XCP-ng) for several years and I’ve been very happy with it, no complains at all.
Here is my current hardware setup choices that I already have, feel free to suggest any upgrades that are better done before installation then after it's on production.
Option 1: Dell T430 PERC H730 Adapter 1GB cache memory (with battery integrated) in HBA mode, 1 CPU 8C/16T, 128GB RAM, 8x 3.5 drive bay
For this one, as it does not have many drive bays, I was planning on using all 8 drive bays with 8x 3.84 TB Intel DC S4500 SADA SSD, and buy an adapter card PCIe for NMVe (Dell BOSS Controller Card - PN: 403-BBVQ), with 2 small SSDs to install truenas OS (I want to install directly the OS without virtualizing as it will be dedicated to this, but accept any suggestions in this matter as well).
Is this the best choice? NMVe card to OS? Some people recommends using USB thumb drives for OS, but I’m not sure if it's reliable on a production storage.
Option 2: Dell R440 PERC H730P Adapter 2GB cache memory (with battery integrated) in HBA mode, 1 CPU 10C/20T, 128GB RAM, plus a Dell SAS 12Gbps HBA external controller.
My plan for this one is to get an external drive case with SAS controllers to connect to my R440 server, with up to 25x 2.5 drive bay, and initially use the same 8x 3.84TB SSDs, but connected in this SAS external card, and room for some more drives.
I have today something like 40 VMs running, with used storage of 6.5 TB approximately.
Question 1: in both scenarios, is really ssd cache pcie important? Or it's better to add more RAM? Or both?
Question 2: I really want to use RAIDZ3, as it is more secure and reliable, correct?
Question 3: What about storage replication? Is it possible, and does it apply on VDIs? Or is it best to just backupVMs on another storage (my current setting), and restore them in another place in case of disaster? I read about TrueNAS Scale, but it’s not yet in a production level usability.
FYI: I already have another T430 with 64GB ram, with H330 HBA card and 8x 2TB common sata drives for backup.
Sorry for the long post and I really appreciate any inputs, suggestions, even critics are welcome!
Thanks a lot!
Best regards.
Anyway, I'm here to ask if possible for your kind attention and some of your time to help me decide what path is the best choice for me on a "new" storage server. I need to choose one of these options to use in production environment, for a virtual machines pool of servers in a 10gb network SFP+ (each server has 2port 10gb and both will be used for performance boost 20gb and redundancy connections with L3 switchs also redundant).
I'm using for virtualization xenserver (XCP-ng) for several years and I’ve been very happy with it, no complains at all.
Here is my current hardware setup choices that I already have, feel free to suggest any upgrades that are better done before installation then after it's on production.
Option 1: Dell T430 PERC H730 Adapter 1GB cache memory (with battery integrated) in HBA mode, 1 CPU 8C/16T, 128GB RAM, 8x 3.5 drive bay
For this one, as it does not have many drive bays, I was planning on using all 8 drive bays with 8x 3.84 TB Intel DC S4500 SADA SSD, and buy an adapter card PCIe for NMVe (Dell BOSS Controller Card - PN: 403-BBVQ), with 2 small SSDs to install truenas OS (I want to install directly the OS without virtualizing as it will be dedicated to this, but accept any suggestions in this matter as well).
Is this the best choice? NMVe card to OS? Some people recommends using USB thumb drives for OS, but I’m not sure if it's reliable on a production storage.
Option 2: Dell R440 PERC H730P Adapter 2GB cache memory (with battery integrated) in HBA mode, 1 CPU 10C/20T, 128GB RAM, plus a Dell SAS 12Gbps HBA external controller.
My plan for this one is to get an external drive case with SAS controllers to connect to my R440 server, with up to 25x 2.5 drive bay, and initially use the same 8x 3.84TB SSDs, but connected in this SAS external card, and room for some more drives.
I have today something like 40 VMs running, with used storage of 6.5 TB approximately.
Question 1: in both scenarios, is really ssd cache pcie important? Or it's better to add more RAM? Or both?
Question 2: I really want to use RAIDZ3, as it is more secure and reliable, correct?
Question 3: What about storage replication? Is it possible, and does it apply on VDIs? Or is it best to just backupVMs on another storage (my current setting), and restore them in another place in case of disaster? I read about TrueNAS Scale, but it’s not yet in a production level usability.
FYI: I already have another T430 with 64GB ram, with H330 HBA card and 8x 2TB common sata drives for backup.
Sorry for the long post and I really appreciate any inputs, suggestions, even critics are welcome!
Thanks a lot!
Best regards.
