Looking for constructive suggestions and recommendations

[ProTard]

Good afternoon (my time) I just joined to get some quick information.

First of all, if you’re reading this I would like to thank you for your time. Second, while I’m a FreeNAS noob, I have been working in the IT field in enterprise environments for over 20 years and would consider myself technical. Third, I haven’t RTFM yet or any or the all-important guides and required sticky threads.

With all that being said... I’m in the process of building up a home lab environment using VMware vSphere and I’m looking for a cost effective 2 or 4 TB centralized storage solution to run virtual machines on. I need it to support both vMotion, Storage vMotion, HA and DRS. And before you ask, no… I’m not a VMware Noob, as I’ve been designing and architecting VMware solutions since back in the 2.x days. I also don’t plan on implementing FreeNAS on a virtual machine or use my environment for anything production related.

I’m trying to determine if I should go with a “free” software solution like FreeNAS, Openfiler, the free version of StarWind, the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator. Or if I should purchase a dedicated NAS appliance from Netgear, Synology, Qnap, etc…

I have four (4) of the identical systems listed below and was thinking of using one of them for FreeNAS and the other three as VMware ESXi hosts. While I believe my hardware meets all the requirements to run FreeNAS, some of threads in the forums have led me to believe that I’ll have to spend day’s tweaking FreeNAS to make it work with multiple ESXi 5.5 hosts and the performance will be slow. Is that true?

HP Z600 Workstation (4 of each)
Intel® Xeon® Processor X5650 6 Core 2.66GHz, 12M cache, 6.40GT/s QPI, DDR3 1333MHz, HT, Turbo
24GB's RAM (PC3-10600 DDR3-1333 ECC Registered DIMMs)
6-SATA 3.0 Gb/s Interface with Integrated SATA 3.0 Gb/s RAID Controller (0/1/5/10)
WD VelociRaptor WD1600HLHX 160GB 10K RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5
2 internal 3.5" bays and 2 external 5.25" bays
HP 16X DVD-ROM SATA Drive
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 295 256MB PCIe Graphics Card
Single Integrated Broadcom Gigabit LAN
Intel PRO/1000 PT Quad Port LP Server Adapter
QLogic 8GB Fiber channel HBA
650W 85% (80PLUS) Efficient Power Supply
See: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13277_na/13277_na.PDF​

*Note: The VelociRaptor’s and QLogic 8GB Fiber channel HBA’s (can’t afford a fiber switch and SAN) will be removed from each system, and I would install two or four 2TB Western Digital Red NAS or Seagate NAS hard drives (which are better?) in the system running FreeNAS. ESXi and FreeNAS will be installed on SanDisk Low-profile 16GB Cruzer Fit USB Flash Drives.

I have planned on using two (2) Netgear GS108Tv2 ProSafe 8-port Gigabit Smart Switchs, one for the data network and one for storage network with jumbo frames enabled, see: See: http://www.netgear.com/images/gs108tv2_ds_10dec0918-5336.pdf

Thank you in advance for any constructive information

 

[cyberjock]

The second you said you didn't RTFM or the stickies I stopped reading. I have no idea what your question is, but if you can't send time to do your own research to answer your own question first you will hate it on this forum...

 

[ProTard]

Thank you Cyberjock,

Your reply along with its expressed attitude has helped me decide that a dedicated NAS appliance is a far better solution then wasting the resources of one of my systems and my time tinkering with FreeNAS. It all comes down to using the right tool for job.

If you think about it, the cost for the hardware required to run FreeNAS is approximately the same as good NAS appliance, and you don’t have to spend day’s tweaking it or dealing with some of the holier than thou attitudes on the forums.

Also while reading some to forum posts I’ve notice that a few members really seem to enjoy berating other people looking for help. That’s so pathetic... get a life.

 

[cyberjock]

You're very welcome. There's a learning curve to building the appliance yourself. Some people aren't willing to spend the time or money. That's totally cool, not everyone wants to spend the time or money learning. For people like yourself there are plenty of commercial offerings that can do what you want. iXsystems even sells FreeNAS servers so feel free to contact them.

But, here in the forums we're all unpaid volunteers. It's not really worth our time if you haven't even appeared to try to solve problems on your own. That's the plain and simple truth.