- Joined
- Feb 2, 2018
- Messages
- 1,401
Hi,
Recently, I bought a used server (R820 ; 32 Core ; 256G RAM) as an upgrade for my ESXi server. Thanks to that, I moved my main FreeNAS from its T-130 to the T-330 I freed. The 8 drives are paired in 4 mirrors and a single pool. The server is maxed out on RAM (64G) and there is only a last PCI slot in which I can put a PCIe SSD card. More info in my sig.
The server is used for storage for my private cloud service (NFS storage presented to the web frontend) as well as for iSCSI for the ESXi. iSCSI is configured with jumbo frames over 4 dedicated 1G Ethernet ports. They are all connected peer-to-peer, no switch. Round-Robin is also in place after 1 request.
The cloud does not need any significant performance and was already more than happy with the previous 5 HDD RaidZ-2 and 16G of RAM I had. The question is more about the performance for iSCSI and the ESXi. These two can never have enough... Not that I have any specific problem as of now; I am just looking on how to achieve the most and highest performance with what I have.
From what I found in the forums, the ideal would be to add 2 SSDs, one as SLOG and one as L2ARC. Because I can fit only 1 card, I am wondering which of these two is the most important to provide first. My understanding is that the SLOG should go in first.
As of now, I have about 12 VMs. I intend to grow that to about 20 soon enough and maybe more. The R820 has its own local storage as Raid-10, also with 8 drives. FreeNAS does not need to do it all. Also, because the iSCSI link is over 4x 1G, no need to go above and beyond that limit. I have no plan getting 10G Ethernet anytime soon.
Any advice on the model of PCIe SSD I should go for ? Because there will be a single one, should it be SLOG or L2ARC ?
Budget is up to 500$ but is elastic...
Thanks in advance for sharing your own experience and knowledge,
Recently, I bought a used server (R820 ; 32 Core ; 256G RAM) as an upgrade for my ESXi server. Thanks to that, I moved my main FreeNAS from its T-130 to the T-330 I freed. The 8 drives are paired in 4 mirrors and a single pool. The server is maxed out on RAM (64G) and there is only a last PCI slot in which I can put a PCIe SSD card. More info in my sig.
The server is used for storage for my private cloud service (NFS storage presented to the web frontend) as well as for iSCSI for the ESXi. iSCSI is configured with jumbo frames over 4 dedicated 1G Ethernet ports. They are all connected peer-to-peer, no switch. Round-Robin is also in place after 1 request.
The cloud does not need any significant performance and was already more than happy with the previous 5 HDD RaidZ-2 and 16G of RAM I had. The question is more about the performance for iSCSI and the ESXi. These two can never have enough... Not that I have any specific problem as of now; I am just looking on how to achieve the most and highest performance with what I have.
From what I found in the forums, the ideal would be to add 2 SSDs, one as SLOG and one as L2ARC. Because I can fit only 1 card, I am wondering which of these two is the most important to provide first. My understanding is that the SLOG should go in first.
As of now, I have about 12 VMs. I intend to grow that to about 20 soon enough and maybe more. The R820 has its own local storage as Raid-10, also with 8 drives. FreeNAS does not need to do it all. Also, because the iSCSI link is over 4x 1G, no need to go above and beyond that limit. I have no plan getting 10G Ethernet anytime soon.
Any advice on the model of PCIe SSD I should go for ? Because there will be a single one, should it be SLOG or L2ARC ?
Budget is up to 500$ but is elastic...
Thanks in advance for sharing your own experience and knowledge,