Setup advice

[Danie1d]

Hi,

I've read through a lot of info on this forum recently but I'm still struggling with what the best setup for me is.

I've got the following:
HP N54l microserver
16gig non-EEC RAM
1 x 240Gb SSD
1 x 250Gb HDD
1 x 4 Tb HDD

My plan was to run ESXi on the server, I know this is not recommended but I know it does run and since the data is not critical I was happy to run it this way. Using esxi I can also run a few other boxes on the same machine for work and general geeking around.

All that I want the NAS to do is serve is media round the house, and run Plex server and a few other bits.

I was planning on having esxi installed on the ssd, with a partition set aside for a ZIL log. Then the media on the 4tb disk, and then using some manual procedures backup my photos to the 250gig hdd from the 4tb.

Does that make sense? Is that the best way to use have everything setup?

Any help/advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[cyberjock]

Sorry, I see so much fail going on in your post I don't know where to start. I really am not interested in explaining myself because you probably have already read why. I'd seriously consider abandoning this whole idea with ESXithough. Your comments clearly show that you don't have a firm grasp of the ESXi fundamentals and you are going to be in for a surprise at the complexity and problems you are about to encounter.

 

[Danie1d]

I did read your thread on it, but at the end of it I was still unsure. My takeaway from what a lot of other people said in that thread, was that it wasn't that bad and if you aren't as worried about the integrity of your data then its not a massive concern, or do you believe I'm still missing the point?

I'm running it now and everything is working, but I didn't setup the SSD correctly in the first place so I don't have a ZIL and my transfer speeds are really slow. I understand this is due to having the sync writing in esxi into a hard drive image and not the hard drive itself. Maybe I am still not comprehending all the fails in my understanding but that is exactly why I posted.

Any help if you can be bothered is greatly received. Thanks.

 

[cyberjock]

There's a certain amount of bothered because virtualization is a very big complexity. You're literally setting up 2 systems, the real hardware and the virtual hardware. As such, I really avoid giving advice because there's no guarantee my advice is accurate for your situation. You may or may not be understanding all of the fails, but because you are virtualizing I'm not even sure I could identify all of your fails. This is why we tell people not to try it. Any problem you have means you are totally on your own and you should be ready to solve it on your own. Generally, if you have a problem and post on the forums for help we will turn our back on you the second you say you virtualize. Not because we're jerks(we are.. but for other reasons) but because it's better to give no advice than give bad advice. And historically our advice has been very bad and caused data loss because there's just too many variables to really help someone in a forum setting.

But, a partition on a disk just for the ZIL is a bad mistake. A ZIL should be dedicated to the ZIL and nothing else.

Aside from the reasons you've read for not virtualizing, if you still want to do it, feel free. But you are going to be on an island and very much alone if you have ANY error messages or ANY performance or reliability problems. We just can't help with that stuff. Gotta be your own IT guy to solve them. ;)

 

[Danie1d]

Apologies for the lack or response, been away with work and just catching up. Anyway thank you for the response, I appreciate where you are coming from. I understand what you mean about the support being very difficult, and I haven't decided what to do yet. What I was wondering was can the ZIL be based on a flash drive or is that not a good idea? I might abandon the idea of using esxi, but I'm still trying to read and understand as much as possible.

Thanks again.

 

[cyberjock]

If flashdrive = USB, that's a horrid idea. A ZIL requires respectable throughput, but low latency is a requirement. USB doesn't provide low latency by any stretch of the imagination.

I have helped a business setup FreeNAS in an ESXi box. They weren't happy with the required hardware costs since they wanted to reuse an old box. But it has worked for them flawlessly. But, I keep that kind of thing to paid support because of the complexity. Consultation work "for the win". It just took a few hours in Teamviewer, parting out a good box, etc to get it working. I told them up front that there's real risk of it dying at any moment. They understand and do nightly backups as a result.

I have been responsible for 3 boxes with FreeNAS running ESXi. None have lost data (knocks on wood). But, that could change in a heartbeat.

If you do it... PLEASE make sure you have a solid, tested, reliable backup server. You may have to rely on it at any moment, and data recovery is quite difficult(and expensive).

 

[Danie1d]

well I was thinking an older small hard drive I had connected via the usb, but I take it thats not a good plan. I got too excited and brought the ssd drive without thinking what I was going to use it for in this build.

The thing is, I'm not worried about data loss. I mean it would be a PITA if I lost it, but since its going to be a media store the only thing on there that's precious will be photos and those I will backup at least twice. The rest is not valuable as such. I get what you are saying and I am clearly inexperienced where this is involved so I will look into it further I guess.

Out of interest, and obviously if you gave me advice that lead to lost data I wouldn't take it to heart, what would be a good configuration to follow?
I could get a smaller ssd for the zil and implement that. I'm just trying to come up with a good way that utilises the h/w I have to the best of its abilities. Its not like I have loads of boxes at home and would prefer to have a one stop to run esxi plus images.

This has lead to lots of reading around and I've found way to run nas4free with virtualbox installed within it. I'm assuming this gets over the other issues you've mentioned before as the NAS will be running above the virtualisation.

 

[Danie1d]

Timing is key.......I just did some more looking and recently, in the last hour, someone has put up some details on virtualbox on freenas...... I might give it some time to play with and make sure its tested out first. but in your opinion is that theory sound?

- as you obviously know since you commented on it already.....DOH

 

[cyberjock]

Yes, virtualbox in a jail is fine. The problem is with virtualizing FreeNAS.

Reliablity ranges from "it works for weeks, then stops" to "you reboot and your data is gone".