Storage for Virtualization

[HankC]

I have several question regarding the FreeNAS for virtualization use. I will be using it for VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer. I would be inclining to use NFS since it is file based repository.
What is consideration for the CPU? higher clock or more cores?
I know more RAM is better.
What about the ZIL? S3700 200gb or ZeusRAM 8gb over 10gbe ethernet?

Does any use NFS for Xenserver before? What is the user account to access the NFS shares on FreeNAS?

 

[pirateghost]

NFS user account is whatever you configure it to be

 

[marbus90]

For 10Gbe I'd go for the Intel P3700 as SLOG.

How many VM hosts will you be using?

 

[HankC]

for now, it will be around 6 hosts

 

[MtK]

The question was how many VMs not how many hosts...

 

[zambanini]

zeus ram has more latency then newer nvme ssds. higher clock speed is smarter, when you select your hw. do only raid 10 or a three way mirror. test and understand zfs. then you will have fun, speed and the word with r.

 

[HankC]

Does FreeNas has proper driver for the NVMe drive ready to go or do I need to use the vendor one?

 

[cyberjock]

FreeNAS supports the NVMe specification. If you are needing to use a "vendor" one, that makes me think that your hardware is using some proprietary setup and will not be compatible with NVMe, and therefore not FreeNAS. FreeNAS also isn't designed for you to add drivers, so you have more work to do than you realize to add it.

 

[Ericloewe]

The question probably comes from the fact that that Windows' NVMe driver is rather conservative, limiting performance - OEMs have their own drivers, which trade some security for speed.

 

[HankC]

FreeNAS supports the NVMe specification. If you are needing to use a "vendor" one, that makes me think that your hardware is using some proprietary setup and will not be compatible with NVMe, and therefore not FreeNAS. FreeNAS also isn't designed for you to add drivers, so you have more work to do than you realize to add it.

I mean like Intel P3700 NVMe. Does FreeNAS fully support that?

 

[zambanini]

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2015-January/081652.html


somebody posted the link already in this forum (or was it the bugtracker...). there are some speed issues.

 

[DaveFL]

Can one of these NVME drives be passed through from ESXI to FreeNAS successfully in the same sense that one can pass through their LSI controller?

 

[Ericloewe]

Can one of these NVME drives be passed through from ESXI to FreeNAS successfully in the same sense that one can pass through their LSI controller?

Theoretically, yes. Not something I've seen done or mentioned, though.

 

[cyberjock]

Can one of these NVME drives be passed through from ESXI to FreeNAS successfully in the same sense that one can pass through their LSI controller?

NVMe controllers still require drivers and have chipsets that power the NVMe controller. Assuming the hardware supports VT-d passthrough, and assuming the driver for the NVMe card support VT-d, then yes.

I'm not aware of anyone trying to do it, so you are totally on your own to find out how stable or unstable it may be. :P