I'm preparing to make the transition to ZFS very soon and I'm still mulling over how I would like to approach this. Ideally I would like to host my ZFS server within ESXi using PCI-passthrough of my H310/9211 HBA.
I just rebuilt my server with a xeon 1246 V3 and a supermicro X10SLL-F. Currently loaded wiht 16GB of crucial ECC.
On board SATA ports are currently unused
Have H310 card flashed to 9211-8i IT mode hooked up to 4x 3TB Red Drives to be my main ZFS volume. Remaining capacity for 4 more drives to add another ZFS volume later if I so choose. (I know I neeed to make my firmware version match the driver version in FreeNAS if I go that route)
Intel PRO/1000 VT Quad port NIC -- Not recognized by windows. But Freenas and ESXi pick it up alright. I have a Pro/1000 PT quad port as a backup.
9260-8I Raid card with BBU -- Was going to use this to setup a hardware RAID array for the VM's reside in ESXI
System is built and loaded with ESXI 6.0. Made 2 full passes of Memtest86+ without error.
As I said, I would like to make my ZFS server a VM. As far as other VM's, the system won't be loaded very hard. So I think I may have enough resources. The system will spent more hours idle than under load from user demand.
Here's my plan:
I know the general advice is to not run your ZFS server under VM. But, I think my system meets safe requirements for doing so. If not, I've got backups ready Nothing about this system is horribly mission critical. I have the important stuff backed up. The loss of service for a few days won't be a big deal if something breaks. I've already had it in a broken state for weeks now while I've been working on pulling this off.
I've looked into FreeNAS...I really really really hate their web interface...it's like someone took a good UI and ran it through a wood chipper. And their forums culture is pretty abrasive. But they have a crap load of support so.....
I really liked the looks of nas4free. The UI looks like my thing. But the lack of replication support just seems like a dead end. That, and I'm told the nas4free runs from the HDD instead of embedded which is a downer.
And then there's ZoL...for which I'm not sure there is a well finished a solution as FreeNAS on that side of things. I have a lot of tinkering to do to see if I think I can confidently and competently manage a Linux ZFS server.
Anyone have some advice for this ZFS noob?
I just rebuilt my server with a xeon 1246 V3 and a supermicro X10SLL-F. Currently loaded wiht 16GB of crucial ECC.
On board SATA ports are currently unused
Have H310 card flashed to 9211-8i IT mode hooked up to 4x 3TB Red Drives to be my main ZFS volume. Remaining capacity for 4 more drives to add another ZFS volume later if I so choose. (I know I neeed to make my firmware version match the driver version in FreeNAS if I go that route)
Intel PRO/1000 VT Quad port NIC -- Not recognized by windows. But Freenas and ESXi pick it up alright. I have a Pro/1000 PT quad port as a backup.
9260-8I Raid card with BBU -- Was going to use this to setup a hardware RAID array for the VM's reside in ESXI
System is built and loaded with ESXI 6.0. Made 2 full passes of Memtest86+ without error.
As I said, I would like to make my ZFS server a VM. As far as other VM's, the system won't be loaded very hard. So I think I may have enough resources. The system will spent more hours idle than under load from user demand.
Here's my plan:
Code:
1x ZFS server ([COLOR="Red"]FreeNAS maybe...somewhat leaning torawds ZoL[/COLOR])
-Assign 2 of 4 CPU cores
- 8 to 12GB of my 16GB available RAM
- H310 / 9211 in PC passthrough to run drives....
- 4x3TB drives in RAIDZ2 (nearest equivalent to RAID 10)
-Highest resource priority
1x Server 2012 DC/DNS/DHCP
-Single core.
-1024 to 1536MB RAM
1x PFSENSE 2.2.x
-Single Core
-1GB RAM
1x Server 2012 spare box for testing goofing around with SQL and what not.
-Two cores
-2GB RAM
I know the general advice is to not run your ZFS server under VM. But, I think my system meets safe requirements for doing so. If not, I've got backups ready Nothing about this system is horribly mission critical. I have the important stuff backed up. The loss of service for a few days won't be a big deal if something breaks. I've already had it in a broken state for weeks now while I've been working on pulling this off.
I've looked into FreeNAS...I really really really hate their web interface...it's like someone took a good UI and ran it through a wood chipper. And their forums culture is pretty abrasive. But they have a crap load of support so.....
I really liked the looks of nas4free. The UI looks like my thing. But the lack of replication support just seems like a dead end. That, and I'm told the nas4free runs from the HDD instead of embedded which is a downer.
And then there's ZoL...for which I'm not sure there is a well finished a solution as FreeNAS on that side of things. I have a lot of tinkering to do to see if I think I can confidently and competently manage a Linux ZFS server.
Anyone have some advice for this ZFS noob?