Need Advice on a New Setup

[Thecal]

Greetings FreeNAS community members!

I'd like to start off by saying that yes, I have read the stickies on visualization.

That said, what I'm trying to do is replace my current homeserver (HP MediaSmart EX 470 running the original version of Windows Home Server) and my home lab (two SuperMicro rackmount boxes) with a single whitebox capable of pulling both duties, mostly to lower power consumption, as I'm moving to an area where my electric bill is likely to be more expensive than it is now.

This new server will be running a few VMs:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 (acting as a PDC for the home network)
• various Linux VMs (dev boxes, production mirrors, etc.)
• I'd also like to put FreeNAS on there to serve storage for computer backups and assorted media.

Now, I understand that I can't store the VMs on the FreeNAS storage. That's fine. I wasn't planning on doing that anyway. I'll have a dedicated hard disk for the VMs.
I also plan on throwing at least 12GB of RAM at the FreeNAS VM. I'm thinking that's a fair amount for around a 3TB NAS, no?
What I'd like to be able to do is to have an as-yet-undetermined number of disks set aside just for the FreeNAS' RAIDZ.
I'm now looking for the best way to do this. Everything I've used vSphere on before has been a black box from either Dell (attached to a SAN via iSCSI or a directly-attacked disk array), IBM, or SuperMicro, so I don't have a lot of experience in picking out server parts aside from drives.
Any recommendations, pointers, and pitfalls would be appreciated.

 

[rm-r]

i have seen many people with lsi cards using pci pass through on exsi - that seems the method of choice, there are people here that visualise but the hardcore are so against it they generally keep quite on these posts....

 

[rm-r]

i have had a very steep learning curve over the last 2 months - things i will share....

see my signature for my setup - but i run freenas on the metal - its rock solid

see my signature for a hardware guide

follow the hardware guide - supermicro motherboard, intel nics are a MUST have, and intel cpu too - much better support in bsd

don't be cheap

 

[jgreco]

PCI Passthru also often works fine on the mainboard SATA controllers; since you should be using a RAID card for boot datastore on ESXi, it turns unused hardware into totally useful hardware.

Us hardcore guys actually are not against virtualization. We're against clueless newbies who just figured out how to install ESXi from coming to the forum complaining how their failed FreeNAS virtualization attempt destroyed their data and how FreeNAS is obviously crap.

Speaking for myself, I've been working a few decades without having my hand held. I accept the consequences of my actions. I am slow and methodical and a little paranoid. I do not just do things and say "cool! it works!" I usually need to understand it in detail. It's a detail-oriented business. That's saved me often.

I've taken what I can of those details and stickyed them for everyone.

The hardware sticky discusses server boards, but there's a lot of overlap with ESXi. The same X9SCL+ and E3-1230 and 32GB that makes a nice FreeNAS box also makes a nice ESXi box that can run a FreeNAS VM, but you need to add a controller for ESXi to boot from. The "how to not completely lose your data" sticky explains why you NEED to do it that way.

And you really need to take the things in those stickies to heart. I have no desire to engage those who cannot learn from freely offered expertise. Happy to expand upon them, if needed, or even hear out why I'm wrong about something.

 

[cyberjock]

What jgreco said. I'm running a VM, but only because of some one-on-one question answering by jgreco. I could easily setup another FreeNAS server properly(presuming your hardware is proper for the task). But I know I'm far from a virtualizing pro like jgreco. Using ESXi and using VMWare Workstation is totally different. I've been using VMWare workstation since the early days of 1.0, and even then I used the old connectix(or whatever it was called) and some of the others too!

 

[jgreco]

ah the old days, virtualizing dos with desqview...

 

[rm-r]

thanks guys - a far better explanation than mine

 

[DJ9]

ah the old days, virtualizing dos with desqview...

Ah, yes. Used to run a 2 line bbs with that setup. :)