My first build and I need some input before I rush in please?

[ExperientialLearner]

I'm new on the forum and so here saying hello and to ask for some pointers please.

I'm at the planning stage of deploying my FreeNAS which is to replace an aging and slow Netgear ReadyNAS, which has has about 3TB in use.

I have installed and played with Openfiler, Rockstor, Ubuntu/Centos etc but have decided that FreeNAS suits my requirements best mainly for ZFS as I have a spare HP Z600 with ECC RAM together with some spare items like an NVME and a couple of SSDs.

I'm currently running ESXi 6.7U1 on the Z600 and intend to use this box to host FreeNAS as my research shows that running the FreeNAS on Vdisks is ok provided provided I have some redundancyfor the OS boot?

For the main data storage disks I was intending to run on a SAS/SATA controller in passthough mode hooked up to an external disk storage unit.

I suppose my questions are:

1. Does this route sound sensible, provided I follow the "Yes you can virtualise FreeNAS" route? (https://www.freenas.org/blog/yes-you-can-virtualize-freenas/)

2. Any recommendations for a cards to connect to external storage?

3. Any recommendations for an external DAS storage units that can take about 8 disks?

Any input would be greatly appreciated thanks.

 

[lukyjay]

Hi

As long as you can passthrough your controller there is no issue. I use the highly recommended card from eBay at about $70 which supports eight drives. ESXi passes this through with no worries. https://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/

Redundancy isn't really necessary (for home use) if you take backups of your configuration any time you change a setting. If you lose your data store you can just reinstall FreeNAS, restore your configuration backup then import your existing pool. Less overheads and you're storing a few kilobytes of data as opposed to cloning everything.

 

[ExperientialLearner]

Hi

Thanks for the input I appreciate it. I'm still intending to do this but have got caught in re-locating my Z600 motherboard into an standard ATX case.
The backup option of the FreeNas sounds sensible and reduces the overhead so thanks.