I am looking for some recommendations on a configuration, I am looking to run FreeNAS 9.3 with an all flash array. I currently have 24 Intel SSD drives on a Dell R720 chassis with dual processors and 128 GB of memory. I am debating running ZIL and arch cache on a set of dedicated PCIe SSD cards. I would like to know if anyone has run a configuration like this and if the cache is actually needed. This will be for iSCSI extents on an all 10gb environment attached to 4x (for now) ESXi 6.0 hosts. I am planning on running dual 10gb for redundancy on two dedicated subnets. I will not be running LAG, I plan on using multipathing as my fail over mechanism.
To answer the possible upfront questions, the front drive cages are attached to an LSI card rather then the on board raid controller. The mez card is an intel based combo card, 2x ports 1gb and 2x ports 10gb. The OS will be running on a set of read drives in an raid 1 array. The SSD's will be purely dedicated to storage and will be configured in a "raid 10" configuration.
To answer the possible upfront questions, the front drive cages are attached to an LSI card rather then the on board raid controller. The mez card is an intel based combo card, 2x ports 1gb and 2x ports 10gb. The OS will be running on a set of read drives in an raid 1 array. The SSD's will be purely dedicated to storage and will be configured in a "raid 10" configuration.
