Eds89
Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2017
- Messages
- 122
Hi,
Hoping some of you guys might be able to validate my intended deployment of a virtual FreeNAS box/Plex server for home use.
My intention is to have a one box does all kind of approach, with ESXi running on bare metal, hosting several VMs;
As far as I can tell, this should all work, but hopefully others can validate that.
Thanks very much
Eds
Hoping some of you guys might be able to validate my intended deployment of a virtual FreeNAS box/Plex server for home use.
My intention is to have a one box does all kind of approach, with ESXi running on bare metal, hosting several VMs;
- FreeNAS for ESXi/SMB storage
- pFsense router
- Domain Controller
- Plex server
- Download server
- 6 core Xeon E5-2618L V2
- SuperMicro X9SRL-F
- 64GB/128GB ECC RAM
- LSI 9207-8i HBA
- Intel 24 port SAS expander
- 4 Port Intel Gigabit NIC
- 4x WD RED 2TB
- 4x WD RED 4TB
- 6x Hitachi 2TB
- 2x 120GB SSD (1x ESXi datastore, 1x SLOG drive)
- GTX 760 GPU
- Some no name 24 bay 4U chassis with no built in expander on back planes (SFF-8087 connectors on each of the 6 backplanes)
- Run ESXi 6.5 off a small USB key on bare metal.
- I would put the FreeNAS VM onto the SSD with a VMFS datastore on it, connected via Intel chipset SATA port (can do mirroring at a later date).
- I would then pass through the LSI HBA to FreeNAS, for access to the large spinners, and the onboard LSI controller for access to the other SSD (for use as a SLOG drive. Again can mirror at a later date).
- The 9207 would have one SFF 8087 connection direct to a backplane, with the other going to the Intel expander, which in turn connects to the remaining backplanes.
- The FreeNAS box would then have several mirrored vdevs (so essentially in a RAID 10 style), and would act as an NFS datastore for ESXi. The hypervisor would connect to FreeNAS via virtual switch, so no need for external network to slow things down. SMB between the Plex VM and FreeNAS would also occur in a virtual switch.
- I would then create my Windows VMs on this datastore, the Plex server having the GTX 760 passed through to allow hardware transcoding.
- ESXi would team 3 of the 4 ports on the NIC to allow multiple clients to hit FreeNas and Plex etc. with no bottlenecks. The fourth port would then be assigned to pfSense for WAN access.
- Startup sequence would be set, so that on physical boot, FreeNAS would start first, with a several minute delay before auto starting the other VMs (pfSense first, then DC, to ensure gateway connectivity is good when the DC starts)
As far as I can tell, this should all work, but hopefully others can validate that.
Thanks very much
Eds
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