Hi all,
Currently thinking about giving my home server a bump up in storage space (and speed as well). Currently I am running a "hyperconverged" system (ESXi 6.0U2 with FreeNAS VM) with the specs:
S2600CP4 w/ 2x Xeon E5-2640
256GB DDR3 ECC (50% reserved for FreeNAS VM)
12 x 2TB mixed drives (Seagate Barracuda LP / HGST Ultrastar) in a 2x Raidz2 pool (6 drives in each vdev)
Passthrough of onboard Intel SAS controller + additional LSI 9211 controller.
The ESXi host connects through NFS to the pool on the freenas VM. However I am thinking of going to iSCSI since many seem to recommend it. I run plex and some other services who connects through NFS to the freenas directly as well.
However due to lack of performance, nearing full capacity as well as tired of changing drives all the time (got these for free) I'm thinking of giving it a bump up.
- Completely new VM for a new freenas instance
- 8x WD Red Pro 6TB (all passed through the single LSI9211 controller)
- 2x Intel 750 800GB ssd's (in hand already)
Now to the questions:
- I've read various posts on NFS vs iSCSI for ESXi and Freenas. Some say NFS is better, some say iSCSI. The only cons I have with NFS so far is that my ESXi host at a random time stopped using the correct vmkernel to connect to the NFS storage. Several other people had this issue as well, so I would think iSCSI is better?
- Since I'll be doing an 8 disk pool, would mirror be best or is Raidz2 the way to go? I'm not too fond of losing 12TB of capacity for a little performance gain. The NAS is used for movies, backups and to host storage for a few VM's as well as my vSphere lab environment. I would like the cache to work the performance.
- I am looking into the possibility of splitting the 2 750 SSD's. These devices are so powerful that I would like to use them for both l2arc and zil if that's possible. Or is this just a bad idea?
- Could someone recommend a good UPS which is certified to work with FreeNAS?
- I have a possibility to make the system physical as well on another S1200BTL (xeon e3-1230) setup with 32GB ECC ram. Would it be better to go physical than virtual?
Thank you,
Chris
Currently thinking about giving my home server a bump up in storage space (and speed as well). Currently I am running a "hyperconverged" system (ESXi 6.0U2 with FreeNAS VM) with the specs:
S2600CP4 w/ 2x Xeon E5-2640
256GB DDR3 ECC (50% reserved for FreeNAS VM)
12 x 2TB mixed drives (Seagate Barracuda LP / HGST Ultrastar) in a 2x Raidz2 pool (6 drives in each vdev)
Passthrough of onboard Intel SAS controller + additional LSI 9211 controller.
The ESXi host connects through NFS to the pool on the freenas VM. However I am thinking of going to iSCSI since many seem to recommend it. I run plex and some other services who connects through NFS to the freenas directly as well.
However due to lack of performance, nearing full capacity as well as tired of changing drives all the time (got these for free) I'm thinking of giving it a bump up.
- Completely new VM for a new freenas instance
- 8x WD Red Pro 6TB (all passed through the single LSI9211 controller)
- 2x Intel 750 800GB ssd's (in hand already)
Now to the questions:
- I've read various posts on NFS vs iSCSI for ESXi and Freenas. Some say NFS is better, some say iSCSI. The only cons I have with NFS so far is that my ESXi host at a random time stopped using the correct vmkernel to connect to the NFS storage. Several other people had this issue as well, so I would think iSCSI is better?
- Since I'll be doing an 8 disk pool, would mirror be best or is Raidz2 the way to go? I'm not too fond of losing 12TB of capacity for a little performance gain. The NAS is used for movies, backups and to host storage for a few VM's as well as my vSphere lab environment. I would like the cache to work the performance.
- I am looking into the possibility of splitting the 2 750 SSD's. These devices are so powerful that I would like to use them for both l2arc and zil if that's possible. Or is this just a bad idea?
- Could someone recommend a good UPS which is certified to work with FreeNAS?
- I have a possibility to make the system physical as well on another S1200BTL (xeon e3-1230) setup with 32GB ECC ram. Would it be better to go physical than virtual?
Thank you,
Chris