I would like to give TrueNAS Scale a go.....

[jamesjfa]

G’Day

I think I would like to give TrueNAS Scale a go. Have been reading through the posts here and great to read of the collaboration between everyone. If you can take a moment to read through this post and perhaps offer advice or pointers.

My current setup is as follows:

Xeon 2660v3 with 128GB ECC Ram on a SuperMicro X10SRi-F
ESXi 6.7

• OpenMediaVault VM with LSi 9311-8i controller passed through with my SAS drives
• Windows 10 VM running BlueIris
• Ubuntu 20.04.3 VM running PiHole
• Windows Server 2016 as a jumphost
• OpenVPN-AS
• TrueNAS Scale VM

Within OpenMediaVault (OMV) my drives use EXT4 and are pooled together with MergerFS and SnapRAID runs once a day. I am running docker containers on OMV. I have a docker-compose file with all the containers I require. To be honest this setup just works. Hardly ever have to touch it.

However…….. where’s the fun in that.

For my new setup, I would like to try ZFS. Still need to read more about it (Datasets, ZVOLS etc etc). Gives me something new to learn.

What I am think is something along these lines:

• TrueNAS scale mirrored install on a pair of small SATA SSD’s
• Pool for VM's
• Pool for general storage
• Pool for BlueIris
• Learn Kubernetes / Helm and use my apps that way?
• Stay with docker-compose?
• Migrate ESX VM’s over to KVM in TrueNAS Scale
• Create SMB shares for computers on the LAN some of the VM’s

With KVM on Scale, can I nest ESX? Would still like to tinker with that in the background.

Thanks,
James

 

[morganL]

I can't recommend nesting ESX in KVM.... the other way around is better. However, just ripping the band-aid and going all the way to KVM would be best.

 

[shadofall]

• Learn Kubernetes / Helm and use my apps that way?
• Stay with docker-compose?

I'd suggest taking a look at truecharts.org for your app needs. its a community project to add apps to Scale. they use a modified version of helm charts to allow an "install" interface for users to work with, and to work with IX's implementation

docker-compose.. it will work. its not really supported so never know when it might break. unless you use an app that has a really complex setup. or one of the few apps that's not particularly k8s friendly. I'd personally avoid it

 

[jamesjfa]

I can't recommend nesting ESX in KVM.... the other way around is better. However, just ripping the band-aid and going all the way to KVM would be best.

Thank you. All VM's would move over to KVM. I would then run with that moving forward. A nested instance of VMware would hold any production machines. Purely a lab for testing.

Could that work? I saw a similar thing with Proxmox.

 

[jamesjfa]

• Learn Kubernetes / Helm and use my apps that way?
• Stay with docker-compose?

I'd suggest taking a look at truecharts.org for your app needs. its a community project to add apps to Scale. they use a modified version of helm charts to allow an "install" interface for users to work with, and to work with IX's implementation

docker-compose.. it will work. its not really supported so never know when it might break. unless you use an app that has a really complex setup. or one of the few apps that's not particularly k8s friendly. I'd personally avoid it

That's great. I had a look this morning and all the apps that I currently use are covered.

 

[morganL]

Thank you. All VM's would move over to KVM. I would then run with that moving forward. A nested instance of VMware would hold any production machines. Purely a lab for testing.

Could that work? I saw a similar thing with Proxmox.

Nested ESX may be possible on the right hardware, but it is not something iXsystems is actively testing or planning to support.

KVM: Deploying a nested version of VMware ESXi 6.7 inside KVM | Fabian Lee : Software Engineer

Update Nov 2021: I have written a newer article that deploys ESXi 7.0U1. If you are running KVM on an Ubuntu server, you already have an excellent Type 1 virtualization engine. Luckily, if you need to test something specific to VMware you can always run ESXi 6.7 nested inside a KVM virtual...

fabianlee.org