Virtual NAS inside EXSi server or a seperate Storage Server?

[pcHobbyist]

Hello,
I am new to the virtual computing world.  I plan to replace various computers, each with their own data, with a central server(s) setup.  I would like to do a single EXSi server with various virtual servers running inside- those include:

-NAS

-XBMC (application server)

-Windows (terminal server)

-Linux (various dist.) (terminal server)

For all computers in the house outside of the main (most power hungry) computer being simple thin clients.

I am worried however about the reliability and ease of use surrounding running a virtual NAS.  I am unsure how stable the setup will be, since i plan to connect to an outside array for storage.  I would rather not have a single array for the entire ESXi server.

I am trying to contain everything in one server to keep electric costs down and not have my server room (closet) putting out more heat than the AC can combat (exageration, i admit).

I am new to the the virtual world, so be gentle.

Thank you,

Terry

[vmroyale]

Hello and welcome to the communities.

Note: Discussion successfully moved from vSphere Storage Appliance to VMware ESXi 5

Just to be sure - Are you trying to use an external array for your ESXi host's datastores, and then use the NAS as a VM for your guests?

The biggest concern will likely be performance, but the requirements can be measured and tested. Other than that, the startup procedure just needs to be accounted for.

[pcHobbyist]

Thanks for the response and the metaphorical welcome basket .

Yes the storage is for the the EXSI's hosts datastores, but in addition they will be accessed from outside the network.

If i were to include the storage for the raid server inside the ESXi machine, wouldn't that make it more difficult to expand on that storage later on?  I plan to run either raid 5 or 10 with 4 hdd's to start.  I am unsure if i should go with: Sata or SAS and in which size (2.5" or 3.5").  I have been reading, and it seems the SAS are a bit faster and more reliable (assuming both are industrial grade).  I hesitate due to the increased cost of running a SAS system.  If i go with a SAS setup i will be forced to run a SAS controller instead of being able to start with the native raid controllers on the motherboard until i upgrade the system later on.  I am trying to decide if the extra costs is worth it for the end result.

Thank you for moving the post into the proper location.

Thank you again

[vmroyale]

It would depend on the type of storage server used and how you laid out the disks, etc, but it is pretty easy to expand disks in ESXi later on. It does add complexity and would add overhead for those accessing from outside the network.

Whichever approach you go with, make sure that the controllers (at a minimum) are on the VMware HCL. You will need a "real" RAID card too, as the software RAID on onboard controllers won't work. Using components on the HCL is key right now to getting this to work. The rest is really just operational/administrative type stuff and you will have options.

[Graham009]

When I setup my esxi server for the second time I chose to use a separate machine as the NAS which provided the datastore for the diskless esxi server. The connection is via NFS over a 1GB link. the vm's only do light duty work, internal web, dns, testing, etc. The first time, I used a machine with internal disks and I used one of them as the datastore. I felt that the data was not as easily recoverable in the event of a failure because you need to rebuild the esxi server then reload the vm's before you could get to the data, Of course each vm should be backed up, but in practice you always loose something.

With a baremetal NAS it was easer to grab another machine and insert the disks, reboot and recover. Backup of the NAS is simpler as well. Esxi is designed to be used with separate storage when used in a production environment so that server can be swapped and vm's can be copied from one machine to another.

In the home environment either way would work, so it would depend on availabily of hardware.

Graham

[pcHobbyist]

Hello Graham,

Thank you for responding.

I think i will follow your experience.  Since having them seperate means i can biuld it up any way i want and they wont be tied into a virtual machine.

What program/setup did you use for your baremetal setup?

Thank you

[Graham009]

pcHobbyist,

I used FREENAS 8 on a AMD Athlon 64 based PC with 2G RAM. and two WD20EARX drives run as mirrors in FREENAS. FREENAS is installed on a USB thumbdrive.

I chose FREENAS because it was able to handle the 4K sectors alignment required on these drives. OpenFiler was not able to at the time. If you are using large drives just check that the NAS OS is capable of handling them. Both these NAS OS's can provide NFS, CIFS (Samba) and iSCSI connections.

You can use either NFS or iSCSI to provide the esxi datastore. I chose NFS because it simpler to setup and provided alternate access to the files.

In general the NAS is a simple system running on some relatively old hardware.

For the esxi system I built a new server based on an Intel S1200BTL serverboard, 16GB RAM and a XEON E-1240 quad core. One of the NICs on this board is not recognised by esxi as it is not compatible. Esxi will run on a lot whitebox hardware, you just need to check the HCL and on forums to see it has been successful. I had esxi 4 running on the NAS hardware before I converted it.

Good luck

Graham