FreeNAS 8.x and vSphere 5.x

[balubeto]

Hi I want to know if I can fully manage VMware vSphere 5.x (with ESXi 5.x) with a computer with FreeNAS 8.x 64-bit? If so, what are its hardware characteristics to work correctly with at least 5 virtual machines on, managed by a Server with 16 GB of RAM? Thanks Bye

 

[jgreco]

What are you asking?

FreeNAS cannot manage a vSphere installation. VMware's vSphere tools such as vSphere Client are required for that.

FreeNAS can act as storage for a vSphere installation. The number of virtual machines is irrelevant; a hundred thousand virtual machines that are doing nothing probably generates less traffic than one massive VM doing ten thousand IOPS. How you build a FreeNAS system depends on the workload you expect it to support.

 

[balubeto]

What are you asking?

FreeNAS cannot manage a vSphere installation. VMware's vSphere tools such as vSphere Client are required for that.

FreeNAS can act as storage for a vSphere installation. The number of virtual machines is irrelevant; a hundred thousand virtual machines that are doing nothing probably generates less traffic than one massive VM doing ten thousand IOPS. How you build a FreeNAS system depends on the workload you expect it to support.

I wanted to know if I could use a computer with FreeNAS to save and use virtual machines created by vSphere 5.x. If so, I would like to know what hardware characteristics should have this computer to be able to work with these VMs.

Thanks

Bye

 

[survive]

Hi balubeto,

So you want to know if you can use FreeNAS to host\provide storage for an ESXi box then?

Sure, you can do this using either NFS or iSCSI from the FreeNAS box to the ESXi box. It's tough to give you any sort of recommendation at this point because we have no idea how busy or big you need the storage to be, post back with more details about the use case and we will be able to give you some advice.

-Will

 

[balubeto]

So, what components should have this Freenas box/storage to use it without any problems with the VMs created with an ESXi 5.x box?
Thanks
Bye

 

[jgreco]

You've been told, twice, by different people in different ways, "How you build a FreeNAS system depends on the workload you expect it to support."

Your question is vague and free of any useful specifics.

On one hand, you might be able to throw together an Atom based system with 4GB RAM and a 5400RPM hard drive and have it be totally fine for your needs.

On the other hand, you might throw together a mighty 24-drive SSD storage server with dual Xeon E5-2690's, 10 gigabit ethernet, 384GB of RAM, and find that it is still insufficient for your workload.

YOUR QUESTION IS TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON YOUR WORKLOAD, and YOU WILL GET NO USEFUL ANSWERS JUST REPEATING YOUR UNINFORMATIVE QUESTION.

Understanding your workload is an important part of a successful vSphere deployment. You typically want to make sure you've got sufficient I/O capacity to support your VM's without causing excessive latency (which is why VMware's performance tabs emphasize read and write latency)... but you need to be concerned with many things to determine what level of IOPS you need.

 

[balubeto]

You've been told, twice, by different people in different ways, "How you build a FreeNAS system depends on the workload you expect it to support."

Your question is vague and free of any useful specifics.

On one hand, you might be able to throw together an Atom based system with 4GB RAM and a 5400RPM hard drive and have it be totally fine for your needs.

On the other hand, you might throw together a mighty 24-drive SSD storage server with dual Xeon E5-2690's, 10 gigabit ethernet, 384GB of RAM, and find that it is still insufficient for your workload.

YOUR QUESTION IS TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON YOUR WORKLOAD, and YOU WILL GET NO USEFUL ANSWERS JUST REPEATING YOUR UNINFORMATIVE QUESTION.

Understanding your workload is an important part of a successful vSphere deployment. You typically want to make sure you've got sufficient I/O capacity to support your VM's without causing excessive latency (which is why VMware's performance tabs emphasize read and write latency)... but you need to be concerned with many things to determine what level of IOPS you need.

So when I have to choose two drives (RAID 1 configuration), I must prefer those who have the IOPS reading and writing greater, and the value of lower latency. Is that correct?

For a workload of 5 fully active virtual machines that act as Servers, what is the minimum threshold of IOPS and latency?

The network cards of the NAS must have specific characteristics or not?

Thanks

Bye

 

[cyberjock]

/facepalm

 

[pirateghost]

So when I have to choose two drives (RAID 1 configuration), I must prefer those who have the IOPS reading and writing greater, and the value of lower latency. Is that correct?

For a workload of 5 fully active virtual machines that act as Servers, what is the minimum threshold of IOPS and latency?

The network cards of the NAS must have specific characteristics or not?

Thanks

Bye

You continue to word your question a different way every time you post...how about some REAL details about the setup.

Only YOU can understand what 'workload' your VMs are doing, since you know, none of us can see your setup.

What KIND of servers are they? SQL, Exchange(Email of some sort), application servers(what are the details of type of applications, how many concurrent users, etc)?

What kind of car do I need to drive moderately fast? I will be carrying 2 passengers and luggage.

 

[gpsguy]

Some of these might work: OCT1-25SAT3-1T

 

[jgreco]

OCT1-25SAT3-1T

24 of those, a Fusion-io card for SLOG, dual Xeon E5-2690's on an X9DR7-TF+, and 768GB of memory, is that what you mean? ;-) ;-) ;-)

We done being silly now? Hehe...

 

[balubeto]

So when I have to choose two drives (RAID 1 configuration), I must prefer those who have the IOPS reading and writing greater, and the value of lower latency. Is that correct?

For a workload of 5 fully active virtual machines that act as Servers, what is the minimum threshold of IOPS and latency?

These VMs will have to serve at least a hundred users at the same time:
a couple of them will be dedicated to the Web and mail services, while the other will be used for developing, debugging and deploying of the applications.

The network cards of the NAS must have specific characteristics or not?
Thanks
Bye

 

[cyberjock]

WOW. This thread is getting more impressive every day.

 

[gpsguy]

balubeto,

Please re-read the entire thread. And, provide detailed answers to the questions asked by jgreco and pirateghost. If you can't answer these questions, then hire a consultant who can implement a solution for you.

Are you familiar with ESXi? Will you be buying a license for VMware and have access to their support?

Even though you only plan on 5 "fully active VM's (whatever that means)", with 100+ concurrent users, I'd look a package that includes licenses for 2 ESXi hosts, vCenter, supporting vMotion and HA/DRS. With sufficient resources in both ESXi hosts (connected to shared storage), should one fail, the other can usually pick up the load and keep on running, without the user's knowing there's a problem. Meanwhile, you can fix the ESXi host.

 

[jgreco]

And, provide detailed answers to the questions asked by jgreco and pirateghost.

Yeah, well, thanks for the support, but at this point the OP has kind of convinced me that it would be an exercise in frustration to help...

VMware can be completely amazing as to visualizing generalized I/O requirements, because it can provide so much information about both VM and per-host I/O loads for your actual workload. Read rate, write rate, latency, and on a per-disk basis. If you have vCenter, then you have historical information as well. You can sit and troll around in VMware stats for hours, finding out things you never knew... like I can look at our stats from the last year and see CPU percent hovering around 25-35% but memory util percent hovering around 80%. This makes perfect sense to me because our old Opteron boxes were less than half as fast but still had the same amount of memory, and were quite busy (avg ~80% for both CPU and memory).

But really, ESXi and NAS are not for beginners, and if you're completely unable to have a meaningful discussion of the project requirements, then the likelihood of being able to successfully deploy is mostly a function of whether or not you have managed to "guess big enough/guess too big". And all joking about massive 24-drive SSD based systems aside, it's really very difficult to get a handle on that even if you have good information, which is why there are used to be so many horror stories of virtualization initiatives "from hell" back when virtualization was a much newer thing.

 

[balubeto]

My ESXi host will be a computer with Core I7 2600, with 16GB of RAM and two gigabit network cards.
Thanks
Bye

 

[gpsguy]

I agree. That's why I added the "If you can't answer these questions, then hire a consultant who can implement a solution for you."

Yeah, well, thanks for the support, but at this point the OP has kind of convinced me that it would be an exercise in frustration to help...

I've been using VMware for about 7 years now. Started at home, then at work, with a 3 host cluster connected to a SAN, via iSCSI.

The joke about the fast/expensive SSD was a failed attempt at getting more information from the OP. I also thought about pointing the OP to the storage forum on VMTM, but why bother them with this nonsense.

 

[jgreco]

The joke about the fast/expensive SSD was a failed attempt at getting more information from the OP.

Well, of course, but I had a feeling this was going nowhere, largely based on the list of things that weren't being said. Fortunately the OP has finally provided all the necessary information: "Core I7 2600", "16GB of RAM", "5 fully active virtual machines that act as Servers", "at least a hundred users."

That's obviously not enough information to answer the OP's question, but when combined with what isn't being said, it is the necessary information for me to decide:

I'm not interested in this foolishness.

 

[pirateghost]

Well, of course, but I had a feeling this was going nowhere, largely based on the list of things that weren't being said. Fortunately the OP has finally provided all the necessary information: "Core I7 2600", "16GB of RAM", "5 fully active virtual machines that act as Servers", "at least a hundred users."

That's obviously not enough information to answer the OP's question, but when combined with what isn't being said, it is the necessary information for me to decide:

I'm not interested in this foolishness.

I dont always like a post but when I do, its like this one.

 

[cyberjock]

How about we all just stop posting in this thread and let it die. It's not like any value is being added with additional posts. :P