How good is Virtualisation on FreeNAS/FreeBSD?

[Bravo271]

Hi,

I just started with my home server which runs Proxmox as hypervisor and FreeNAS as a VM with a HBA passthrough so it has direct access to the disks.
I did it this way because my primary goal is Virtualisation.

However, at our small company there is a different priority: Primary need is storage.
Currently we're using a small Synology DS218+ or so.

But the need for at least some VMs increases. And the Synology is definitely too crappy to run some VMs.
Now my question is: How well will FreeNAS handle this? (On a cheap hardware max. ~500€ without HDDs)

We would at least need these VMs:
- 1x Windows 10
- 2-3x Debian, mostly in idle (probably I could do this in jails... would be even better.)

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I'd aim for about 1000€ plus HDDs but the software is definitely good enough, I run 2 Ubuntu and 1 Windows VMs plus 7 jails ...
The Ubuntu ones are pretty heavy running Confluence with MySQL and all. No problem.
Get a decent server platform with ECC, at least 32 G of memory and you are probably better off with an Intel CPU than with AMD.

 

[Yorick]

This, plus if you hop into resources and look at the “used up to 512Gb RAM” idea, you can build something off eBay with an older (v4?) supermicro board and Xeon, ddr3 reg memory 128GiB or more, and a good HBA, and get all that for under 500 bucks.

 

[hmidouch]

This, in addition to on the off chance that you jump into assets and take a gander at the "utilized around 512Gb RAM" thought, you can fabricate something off eBay with a more established (v4?) supermicro board and Xeon, ddr3 reg memory 128GiB or more, and a decent HBA, and get all that for under 500 bucks.

 

[ChrisRJ]

As an example for a used system, I recently purchased a used Supermicro 1U server from a co-location provider in Frankfurt for EUR 179 incl. shipping. It had a Supermicro X9SRi-F motherboard and a 4-core Xeon. I upgraded the Xeon to an E5 2670 (8 cores) for EUR 35 and added 128 GB DDR ECC memory for EUR 160. These prices vary greatly and you need to invest time. But I am really happy that I now have two (because I actually I bought all the stuff twice) nodes for XCP-ng for less than 800 Euros.

Of course, this will probably not be what you should get. But it illustrates the point that used enterprise hardware can be really cheap. And power consumption with 8 VMs (1 Win 10, 7 Linux) is around 50 watts when nothing special happens.