Fast, redundant storage options for VMs?

I've come to the experts for advice

I am planning on building out some additional storage for running VMs off of, snapshots, Windows backups, and general home office file server duties.

I've been looking at the QNAP TS-459 PRO II (don't want to build my own server for this purpose...)

However, I have a few questions:

1. The eSATA ports on a NAS device like the TS-459: am I able to connect my PC directly to it (or is that not what the eSATA interface is for on these units)?
2. If I do, is the LAN interface still available to other users?
3. Will the eSATA be faster than the dual Gigabit LAN interface (given Gigabit capable hardware)?
4. Are there other/better options for my purposes?

My goals are (in order of priority):

1. Speed - would like to load/store VMs from this array
2. Redundancy - don't want to lose work
3. Size - for backups and VM images
4. Low cost - figure a budget around $2000 or lower including disks.

A NAS is a device that is a toned down computer with hard drives. You cannot connect a computer to another computer via eSATA or direct USB to USB (for usb you need a cable with a middleman device). You will need to use an ethernet cable.

1) No. The eSATA interface is used for connecting external hard drives and the such to the NAS.
2) Well even if you connected external drives to the NAS, the access through the LAN port is still there.
3) Not necessarily depending on which gigabit NICs and switches you have. Assuming good to high-end hardware, at that point the performance difference between eSATA and linked gigabit interfaces would be very small.
4) Dunno. I don't keep up on prebuilt NASes these days.

eSATA will help you with your goal of not losing work : plug an eSATA drive to it and backup, regularly. Internal redundancy is not enough.

Redundancy - don't want to lose work

Click to expand...

RAID is not a backup. Like Aesma said, be able to backup data to another device.

It depends on what your definition of the word "fast" is

VM storage these days is typically measured in IOPS, latency, and throughput. Which one do you need?

A lot of home built storage arrays need bulk storage. That can be done with 3 or 4 5900 RPM SATA drives and get decent performance out of a decent NAS device. I'm running 3 in old Dell I had laying around (AMD 5000+ CPU/3 GB RAM) and I get 80 MBps of bulk SMB file copies if I use a good network card (125 MBps is the theoretical limit for Gigabit Ethernet). Great for a file server, but I've only got 3 spindles in a RAID 5 configuration, my IOPS are going to be low, and trying to run more than 1 or 2 active operating systems (desktop VMs, active databases) is going to be tough on it.

If you're running desktop VMs, SSD is a better way to go for the boot drives. SSDs provide IOPS far beyond what an SSD can. Your average SATA drive gets you about 80 IOPS I think. A recent 128 GB SSD I bought for about $200 advertises 60,000 IOPS. Way more responsive, and latency is super low.

And as many have said, RAID isn't backup. Lately, I've been using inexpensive laptop USB drives as my backup units. They're pretty inexpensive (prices are up a bit, but not as much as the desktop drives) and they make pretty good backup devices.

I'm aware that RAID isn't backup

I want to use the NAS RAID array as a target for backup (i.e. Windows backup functionality).

I've had a few too many close calls with SSDs in the last few months to really trust them for my VMs. Installed four in the last year and two bricked within the year (both Sandforce based) -- just crossing my fingers on the third and fourth.

I mean I love the speed, but cringe at the possibility of having to recover an environment if the SSD bricks. So I'd like to keep using it for boot and source code and periodically ghost the entire drive to the NAS in case it bricks so I won't miss a beat.