Hello,
I'm diving into both the storage and virtual worlds head first with very little experience. I'm trying to build a lab environment that will fit my current and future needs. Please correct any assumptions that I may make. Any help would be appreciated! :D
From my limited research, here's what my plan requires:
ESXi5 server
- Boot ESXi from USB flash drive
- 16GB of RAM
- An 8 virtual core processor
- No hard drive
- Debian Squeeze VM (web server, mail server, MySQL for XBMC and web, etc)
- Win7/Win Server VM (domain, torrent, RDP access, etc)
- Ubuntu/CentOS VM (testing, breaking)
- Another VM for future proof
FreeNAS server - latest nightly build
- Boot FreeNAS from 2GB USB flash drive
- 16 or 32GB of ECC RAM
- Dual core processor
Extra:
- UPS w/ pure sine wave for both servers
- Have a separate backup of important files
I'd like to be able to do the following at the same time:
- Torrent using Win7 VM to/from NAS
- Run my other linux VMs (webserver, MySQL, etc) off of NAS datastore
- Copy a finished torrent to my NFS shared drive on my NAS
- Stream from my NAS to multiple XBMC servers to watch a show without buffering
Questions:
Do I need to separate my datastore and torrents?
I was originally hoping that I could do the previous without worrying about performance by creating a single zpool with 2 vdevs each with 5x 2TB disks in RAIDZ. However I may need to separate my datastore and torrents to something like this:
ESXi Datastore - 2x 500GB RAID1
torrent seed - 1x 500GB
Media NFS - zpool with 2 vdevs each with 5x 2TB disks in RAIDZ
Does anyone have any experience with the performance needs of a datastore or torrenting?
I'd like to be able to rack both my servers. Any suggestions on cases for the FreeNAS server?
Is it better to find a case that supports many drives or buy a RAID card that's not used for hardware RAID?
Should I think about dual Gig nics?
How important is it that my vdevs match? Could I have vdev1 be 5x 2TB RAIDZ and vdev2 be 3x 3TB RAIDZ in my zpool?
Do I need to worry about ZIL or L2ARC's if I max out my motherboards RAM?
I've seen multiple threads discussing FreeNAS as an ESXi VM. Would that be a more manageable approach for me?
Thanks!!
I'm diving into both the storage and virtual worlds head first with very little experience. I'm trying to build a lab environment that will fit my current and future needs. Please correct any assumptions that I may make. Any help would be appreciated! :D
From my limited research, here's what my plan requires:
ESXi5 server
- Boot ESXi from USB flash drive
- 16GB of RAM
- An 8 virtual core processor
- No hard drive
- Debian Squeeze VM (web server, mail server, MySQL for XBMC and web, etc)
- Win7/Win Server VM (domain, torrent, RDP access, etc)
- Ubuntu/CentOS VM (testing, breaking)
- Another VM for future proof
FreeNAS server - latest nightly build
- Boot FreeNAS from 2GB USB flash drive
- 16 or 32GB of ECC RAM
- Dual core processor
Extra:
- UPS w/ pure sine wave for both servers
- Have a separate backup of important files
I'd like to be able to do the following at the same time:
- Torrent using Win7 VM to/from NAS
- Run my other linux VMs (webserver, MySQL, etc) off of NAS datastore
- Copy a finished torrent to my NFS shared drive on my NAS
- Stream from my NAS to multiple XBMC servers to watch a show without buffering
Questions:
Do I need to separate my datastore and torrents?
I was originally hoping that I could do the previous without worrying about performance by creating a single zpool with 2 vdevs each with 5x 2TB disks in RAIDZ. However I may need to separate my datastore and torrents to something like this:
ESXi Datastore - 2x 500GB RAID1
torrent seed - 1x 500GB
Media NFS - zpool with 2 vdevs each with 5x 2TB disks in RAIDZ
Does anyone have any experience with the performance needs of a datastore or torrenting?
I'd like to be able to rack both my servers. Any suggestions on cases for the FreeNAS server?
Is it better to find a case that supports many drives or buy a RAID card that's not used for hardware RAID?
Should I think about dual Gig nics?
How important is it that my vdevs match? Could I have vdev1 be 5x 2TB RAIDZ and vdev2 be 3x 3TB RAIDZ in my zpool?
Do I need to worry about ZIL or L2ARC's if I max out my motherboards RAM?
I've seen multiple threads discussing FreeNAS as an ESXi VM. Would that be a more manageable approach for me?
Thanks!!