Recommendation for ESXI datastore

[KillerJupe]

I'm new and but have been searching around and haven't found a good answer yet.

I inherited an IT dept with a limited budget but "big" storage needs and a few software licences.
Veeam, and vsphere licences

We have 2 servers that are identical.
SM w/ dual E5's and 64gb of ram.

I have one new production server with about 10tb of storage.

One old server is populated w/ 20 4tb 2.5" sata drives (direct connected w/ HBA's).

My thought are:
1. Set up old server 1 as another esxi 6.0 host (no hardrives)
2. Set up old server 2 as Freenas 9.3 w/ the 20 4tb drives
3. Create a datastore on the FN server
4. connect esxi host to freenas
5. use veeam to replicate and backup the production server to the backup server. It will hopefully only be used for nightly backups so the slow drives won't really matter.


My questions are:
1. Should I use NFS, CIFS, or iSCSI to make the esxi -> FN connection. I believe iscsi is the best choice, but i've also seen where it says i should keep iscsi usage to under 50% of total raid capacity.
2. Does this even sound like a good plan for long term usage?
3. I know the more vdevs the faster the performance, but i figured 10 drives by 2 z3 configuration would be the way to go.

Thanks for any advice, sorry if this is in the wrong area :/

 

[cyberjock]

For the ESXi <-> FreeNAS connection iSCSI is the most preferred. You will want to set sync=enabled on the zvol manually though.

NFS isn't a bad choice either, and if you want to use NFS for some particular reason, go for it.

CIFS isn't an option. ;)

 

[KillerJupe]

Thanks for the suggestion... and all the other posts you reply too.
I'll try to get the connection working to see how its going.

Does the rest of the setup seem reasonable?

Thanks,
D

For the ESXi <-> FreeNAS connection iSCSI is the most preferred. You will want to set sync=enabled on the zvol manually though.

NFS isn't a bad choice either, and if you want to use NFS for some particular reason, go for it.

CIFS isn't an option. ;)

 

[cyberjock]

Sure. More RAM is always better, especially for VM workloads. So if you can afford to get more RAM (ebay is a *great* place to buy RAM, 64GB for $110) I'd say go for it.

 

[KillerJupe]

The hba controllers are LSI 9211-8i in IT mode running P20
with 4tb samsung disks.
I don't get any warning about the wrong firmware version, so not sure if i should downgrade it to p16.

 

[gpsguy]

FreeNAS 9.10 (the latest version) needs firmware P20. I presume that's what you are running, since you aren't seeing any warnings. Earlier versions of FreeNAS needed older versions of the LSI firmware.

I don't get any warning about the wrong firmware version, so not sure if i should downgrade it to p16.

 

[Rick Arman]

For the ESXi <-> FreeNAS connection iSCSI is the most preferred. You will want to set sync=enabled on the zvol manually though.

NFS isn't a bad choice either, and if you want to use NFS for some particular reason, go for it.

CIFS isn't an option. ;)

Any details on why iSCSI is preferred over NFS? And does it matter what the VM workloads are?

 

[bigphil]

Any details on why iSCSI is preferred over NFS? And does it matter what the VM workloads are?

Because FreeNAS only supports the VMware vaai primitives when connecting over iSCSI to a device based extent.