NFS or iSCSI for VMware Lab

[dwchan69]

With the latest TrueNAS (13U6) and ESX 7.8 and 8.0, is NFS still a easily solution than ISCSI for VM? This is for a non-production environment where most of the VM provisioning, installation, testing, etc are either automated or no critical data would be kept. In short, performance prioritize over data protection. The TrueNAS HW spec listed below
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12Core 3.5GHz
Gigabit MB with 1 LOM GB NIC
128GB of RAM (Max out)
LSI SAS 9300-16I 12GB/S HBA (in IT Mode) to 8 Seagate EXOS 8 TB HD
LSI SAS 9300-8i 12GB/S HBA (in IT mode) to Samsung 870 EVO 4 TB (2 now, plan to scale up to 8 total)
Boot drive - 128GB SSD 3D TLC NAND PCIe Gen 3 x2 NVMe M.2
2 - Intel® Optane™ SSD P1600X (58GB) plan for SLOG or L2ARC for the HDD pool (not in used yet)
Dual port Mellanox CX314A ConnectX-3 Pro
Dell PowerConnect 8132F Switch

Intel x540 Dual 10GB on ESX host, running to the same Dell PowerConnect 8132F Switch.

The plan is to allocate all the SSD for VMware workload (datastore for VM, not production critical), and all the HDD for production critical data (backup files, configuration data, scripts, video, etc). For starter, given the server maximum memory top out at 128GB, would it still be better to go with NFS versus iSCSI ?

Second, can I just create a pool with all 8 ssd (each as its own vdev) and strip them together to get the maximum performance?

Third, given it is SSD, would L2ARC or SLOG matter here?

Any input would be much appreciated

 

[ChrisRJ]

Third, given it is SSD, would L2ARC or SLOG matter here?

SLOG is only useful in the context of sync writes. Just turn those off and you will have better performance than with the best SLOG. At the expense of data safety, of course.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

With the latest TrueNAS (13U6) and ESX 7.8 and 8.0, is NFS still a easily solution than ISCSI for VM?

I think it depends what you are most comfortable using. As a crusty old Unix guy, NFS makes more sense to me. I also like being able to see the files directly in the file system and move them around if the need arises. Plenty of people are more comfortable with block storage. Just be aware that the path to success is different for block storage as opposed to NFS. There are excellent articles in the resource section for each.

 

[dwchan69]

I think it depends what you are most comfortable using. As a crusty old Unix guy, NFS makes more sense to me. I also like being able to see the files directly in the file system and move them around if the need arises. Plenty of people are more comfortable with block storage. Just be aware that the path to success is different for block storage as opposed to NFS. There are excellent articles in the resource section for each.

 

[dwchan69]

Would you happen to know the name of the articles? Also, in terms of actual thin provisioning, I would assume NFS is the better approach as with iSCSI (block), TrueNAS will allocate the entire space right out of the gate?

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Would you happen to know the name of the articles? Also, in terms of actual thin provisioning, I would assume NFS is the better approach as with iSCSI (block), TrueNAS will allocate the entire space right out of the gate?

I am travelling at the moment, so I am not near my systems or notes. jgreco has a primer on high speed networking that is very heplful. NFS will use synch writes, so you need an SLOG to get good write performance on 10G or higher connections. Lots of RAM is the best thing to give you good read performance.