For the past few years I have been running a single Dell PowerEdge R630 with a pair of Intel Xeon (E5-2630L v3 @ 1.80GHz) processors. There is no onboard storage apart from a single USB Drive from which I have been booting ESXi 6.7.0. A single Datastore has been provided across from a Synology DS 1819+ Nas using a direct connection across using 10GBE adapters from the Nas to the Server.
The server is used as a lab for work where I need to run different combinations of software. Typically I have around 5 different virtual environments only 2 are on at the same time.
Expected max. work load at would expected to be around 96 GB RAM and 32 vCPU however most of the time the virtual machines are idling and actual consumption is low-ish.
The server, nas are in a pretty hefty 19“ rack mount along with a 24 port switch in my basement. I am thing of moving to an apartment and hence thinking to downscale away from this setup. Moving everything to Azure still looks a little prohibitively expensive.
I am thinking of going down the route of getting 3 Intel NUC (11th generation) and have recently been reading about the available ESXi driver for the 2.5GB ports as well as the capability to also driver a QNAP USB 3.2 - 5GB adapter.
The NUCs would be used with my existing NAS which would be hooked up a 10GBE switch such as the Mikrotik CRS112-8P-4S-IN Switch which could then accommodate the NUC 2.5 GBE connections.
I have no idea how this would work out the real world so really looking at some advice, hints or any stories etc.
Could I be getting any decent level of storage performance across the 2.5 GB ports?
