Hypopheralcus
Cadet
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2013
- Messages
- 7
Hey there!
I'm building a new server with TrueNAS on ESXi (amongst other VMs)
(VMs mainly for home appliance - like a home SQL Server for Kodi, some VMs for personal cloud and surveillance/home equipment as well as experimenting VMs)
I just wanted to make sure, that after hours of research and reading in this forum, I'm on the right track about the actual hardware/drive-configuration
So I'm going to run a XEON Silver on a X11SPA-T Supermicro Board
The SSD-Pool (which are NVME-SSDs directly in the M.2-Slots of the Mainboard) will also be presented to the TrueNAS by passthrough
On the SSD-Pool, I'll create a zvol which is then presented back to ESXi via iSCSI
On that iSCSI Drive, all other VMs will be stored
Any errors so far?
If yes - please tell me, if no - there would be some minor questions:
1. Do I have to use the whole SSD-Pool as a zvol for iSCSI or can I only use a (bigger) part of it and reserve a smaller part as a "normal" ZFS partition (e.g. for some jails or so)
2. Do I need (or is it any good) to create a dedicated zvol for each VM (e.g. for backup/snapshot purpose) or just the whole Space and let ESXi split it between the VMs?
3. Should I go with 2x2 SSDs (mirrored) in the 4 NVME-Slots or would it be better to go for 3 SSDs in RAIDz1 plus another smaller (optane-)SSD in the 4th NVME-Slot for a ZIL/slog (as I understood, iSCSI benefits from a zil/slog?)
I've also read that a SLOG should be mirrored - so should I even just go for 1 mirrored SSD for the VMs and 1 mirrored Optane for SLOG. And if I ever need more space for the VMs I just get a m.2-PCIe-Extender-Card?
Thanks for your help!
I'm building a new server with TrueNAS on ESXi (amongst other VMs)
(VMs mainly for home appliance - like a home SQL Server for Kodi, some VMs for personal cloud and surveillance/home equipment as well as experimenting VMs)
I just wanted to make sure, that after hours of research and reading in this forum, I'm on the right track about the actual hardware/drive-configuration
So I'm going to run a XEON Silver on a X11SPA-T Supermicro Board
- The ESXI-host itself will be stored on a USB flash drive directly on the usb port of the mainboard
- TrueNAS will be booted first by ESXi and will be stored on TWO mirrored and dedicated 32GB SATADOM Drives (so I avoid the chicken-and-egg-problem)
- TrueNAS then mounts 2 Pools:
- a HDD-Pool for Media Storage and Backup
- a SSD-NVME-Pool on which other VMs can be stored
The SSD-Pool (which are NVME-SSDs directly in the M.2-Slots of the Mainboard) will also be presented to the TrueNAS by passthrough
On the SSD-Pool, I'll create a zvol which is then presented back to ESXi via iSCSI
On that iSCSI Drive, all other VMs will be stored
Any errors so far?
If yes - please tell me, if no - there would be some minor questions:
1. Do I have to use the whole SSD-Pool as a zvol for iSCSI or can I only use a (bigger) part of it and reserve a smaller part as a "normal" ZFS partition (e.g. for some jails or so)
2. Do I need (or is it any good) to create a dedicated zvol for each VM (e.g. for backup/snapshot purpose) or just the whole Space and let ESXi split it between the VMs?
3. Should I go with 2x2 SSDs (mirrored) in the 4 NVME-Slots or would it be better to go for 3 SSDs in RAIDz1 plus another smaller (optane-)SSD in the 4th NVME-Slot for a ZIL/slog (as I understood, iSCSI benefits from a zil/slog?)
I've also read that a SLOG should be mirrored - so should I even just go for 1 mirrored SSD for the VMs and 1 mirrored Optane for SLOG. And if I ever need more space for the VMs I just get a m.2-PCIe-Extender-Card?
Thanks for your help!