Datastore options - SSD Local or on NAS

C

Chandler

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 7, 2013
Messages
136
I have four Plextor PX-256M3s.

I want to use them as data storage for my ESXi box - it was the SSD or SAS option, and I got a decent deal on four of these - so compared to spending double the money for 300gb sas drives each, I opted for these for now. When I need more more I/O demand and writes then I will switch to SAS so I am not constantly tossing SSDs into the trash.

My question is this:

Am I better to have four individual datastores plugged right into the motherboard, or should I port them over to FreeNAS and use iSCSI striping two mirrored zfs pools (Raid 10) for a total of 476GB usable (max) - or put them in a standard RaidZ - will I sacrifice read/ write performance if I use a raidz?

I am going to install FreeNAS no matter what and create an NFS mount for back ups and data drives for my VMs and such - Right now I plan to use the following

3x2TB WD Black drives
3x 500GB Mixed (WD Geen :\ - 1x Seagate and 1x Toshiba)
I will not need a ton of performance out of the sata drives right now anyway.

FreeNAS will be nested - I can give it a good bit of ram so I am not worried about that aspect.

Thanks!
 
Probably depends on the contents of the VM's. Is it just for testing and dev type stuff, and can you sufficiently space the various vm's on individual drives? If so, I'd leave them a separate local datastores. If you need the combined space or a bit of fault tolerance, then put them in the array.
 
I will be using a server in there as a back up server that will receive GBs of data every night but it will write to the sata drives. My main concern just now I believe is space my backup server install is a total of 40Gbs, domain controller is 20~ and vCenter apliance that I am currently testing out is a big chunk to, it seems to have made an extra vmdk file/ drive. I am not sure if it is safe to delete. But I just filled up the majority of one SSD right there with the essentials.
 
Performance-wise, SSD's will always be best locally attached (unless using 10Gbe, or FC). They are still great for VM's over iSCSI, but you lose out on some throughput (typically not a big deal). Regardless, I'd keep them local and do four separate datastores as long as you are backing up the VM's.
 
For my future setup, I'm going with SSD for the VM operating system drives, then FreeNAS for the data drives.
 
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