ESXi 5 datastore - NAS or local RAID

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Corladon

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Nov 3, 2005
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I'm looking to setup a home ESXi box for some light work / testing (AD, Exchange 2010, etc) and home use (iTunes, Plex, CIFS shares for pictures and MP3s, DLNA, etc). I'm looking for a large capacity datastore, something like 4 x 2 TB RAID5 = 6 TB or so. I also want it to be quiet as it will probably be in a "living area" as opposed to in a corner somewhere.

Seems like if I want local RAID storage I need a RAID controller with cache and a battery backup so it can run in write back caching to get decent performance. Or I could get a 4 bay NAS and do iSCSI or NFS for a datastore.

I've come up with the following config which is the same cpu, RAM, etc wise except for storage. There's only a $135 difference between the configs so it's not a big deal either way.

I think I'd be better off performance wise with the LSI local RAID option than an iSCSI setup without having to invest in a decent switch config and for most of what I want to do I could setup a guest in vmware to replicate what I could do with a NAS application.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Base config - Total: $1463.88
  • Case..............SilverStone Temjin TJ08B-E Mini Tower..............$99.99...1...$99.99
  • CPU...............Intel Core i7-4770 Haswell 3.4GHz Quad-Core CPU...$309.99...1...$309.99
  • Cooler............CORSAIR Hydro Series H60 Water Cooler..............$59.99...1...$59.99
  • HDs...............Seagate NAS 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive..$129.99...4...$519.96
  • Motherboard.......ASRock Z87M PRO4 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard.....$114.99...1...$114.99
  • NICs..............Intel PRO/1000 GT - OEM............................$31.99...2...$63.98
  • Power Supply......Antec VP-450 450W Power Supply.....................$39.99...1...$39.99
  • RAM...............G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 1600......$254.99...1...$254.99


Local RAID option-
RAID battery - LSI Battery Backup Unit for 9260..................................$159.99
RAID controller - LSI MegaRAID SATA/SAS 9260-4i 6Gb/s RAID Kit.....$359.99

or

NAS option-
NAS - QNAP TS-469L......................................................................$649.99
 
Benefit of a NAS is that if you add more hosts they can all use it. Big fan of my Synology NAS boxes I use in my lab.
 
As of today, the only things hitting the storage would be the vmware host, 3-4 PCs and a PS3. They all could connect to the NAS directly or a Windows CIFS share with the storage on a vmware guest stored on the LSI RAID set.

At the end of the day it seems like a wash. Unless I'm missing something I should get at least as good performance with the LSI RAID controller and not have to invest in a switch infrastructure to support iSCSI or NFS for the vmware host.
 
Sure. Today. Think of what else you can do later with a NAS. I use my Synology boxes for all sorts of things..media, lab, backup target, file server, etc. Very handy. Any simple 1Gb switch will do what you need for something like that.
 
NetJunkie said:
Sure. Today. Think of what else you can do later with a NAS. I use my Synology boxes for all sorts of things..media, lab, backup target, file server, etc. Very handy. Any simple 1Gb switch will do what you need for something like that.
Click to expand...

Agreed, guess that's why I'm on the fence with which way to go.

I was looking at a Synology 412+ for $670 as an alternative to the Qnap.

I currently have a cheap Netgear 8 port gig switch i'd use. I could have the vmware host use one NIC for guest traffic and the second for iSCSI.
 
Corladon said:
As of today, the only things hitting the storage would be the vmware host, 3-4 PCs and a PS3. They all could connect to the NAS directly or a Windows CIFS share with the storage on a vmware guest stored on the LSI RAID set.

At the end of the day it seems like a wash. Unless I'm missing something I should get at least as good performance with the LSI RAID controller and not have to invest in a switch infrastructure to support iSCSI or NFS for the vmware host.
Click to expand...

Being as you stated this project is for learning, why not take filesharing duty off the ESXi box as well and permanently put it in the NAS. If you are sharing your media/data/etc through a VM, then you are 100% dependent on that ESXi box to be running all the time. Utilizing the NAS, you can easily remove that barrier and the hardware can become a learning playground as well. Now even your ESXi box can be wiped/changed/etc without any danger to the data. Also, I've heard of some 3rd party Plex server installs directly onto some NAS boxes as well. Might be another option and save some CPU cycles for your VMs.

Performance wise, for sequential copies, the internal RAID will smoke iSCSI. However, your random throughput most likely won't be any better than the 125MB/s limit of gigabit networking via iSCSI, so that's a wash. The big question in your case is the flexibility.

As for NAS selection, QNAP and Synology are typically the frontrunners and they both are pretty active with firmware updates.
 
I have:

DS1010+ - Lab for now (Will be media at some point)
DS1511 - Media
DS212+ - Whatever. Extra space.
DS3611xs - Lab and performance testing
 
I use iSCSI with our vmware cluster at work and it works well but we have a solid switch infrastructure and bigger NAS systems. I guess I'm just trying to get some confidence that a 4 bay soho NAS like the DS412+ or TS469L connected to an inexpensive netgear 8 port gig switch will work well with ESXi 5.1 with my light load.

Domain Controller with DNS and DHCP
Exchange 2010 test / lab
Plex server (though i could run this on the NAS not sure which can transcode better)
Citrix xendesktop VDI

The DC will be running all the time though not doing much. Exchange and the VDI will be up on a needed basis just to play around with when not at work. Plex on a as needed basis.

The Synology DS412+ looks like a great small NAS system, just wanted to get some confirmation that it will work well in an iSCSI / ESXi environment.
 
I have a DS-1010+, DS-1512+ and a DS-1812+ running way more than you and I have a difficult time making them stutter. I have done it once where I decided to implement a 160GB software mirror in a VM (for testing purposes) and loading an OS on a server VM at the same time across only 3 spindles. IOPs was the issue there not the NAS.
 
Really you can't beat the complete feature set and it's so much easier to manage. I do like that Synology really took the lead on smb level NAS providing some VAAI support.

I have an Iomega PX4-300d for NAS and Infrastructure VM duties, does fairly well but I needed something more robust for my Private Cloud build so I built a decent Nexenta VM and passthrough 6GB SAS controller w/6 2TB Seagates and an SSD for ZIL and L2ARC, runs extremely well...and I really never have storage issues.

I want to get my hands on a local caching solution so I wouldn't really even need the Nexenta appliance. That's the way to go, really. Frig spindles and/or bunch of SSD when I can put an SSD in my host and accelerate IOP's....
 
Corladon said:
I use iSCSI with our vmware cluster at work and it works well but we have a solid switch infrastructure and bigger NAS systems. I guess I'm just trying to get some confidence that a 4 bay soho NAS like the DS412+ or TS469L connected to an inexpensive netgear 8 port gig switch will work well with ESXi 5.1 with my light load.

Domain Controller with DNS and DHCP
Exchange 2010 test / lab
Plex server (though i could run this on the NAS not sure which can transcode better)
Citrix xendesktop VDI

The DC will be running all the time though not doing much. Exchange and the VDI will be up on a needed basis just to play around with when not at work. Plex on a as needed basis.

The Synology DS412+ looks like a great small NAS system, just wanted to get some confirmation that it will work well in an iSCSI / ESXi environment.
Click to expand...

I run way more than that on my boxes. You'll be fine. I'd let a VM handle Plex transcoding. The CPU in the NAS boxes aren't as fast and I don't like to put app load on my storage box. I let my VMs do that work.
 
NetJunkie said:
I run way more than that on my boxes. You'll be fine. I'd let a VM handle Plex transcoding. The CPU in the NAS boxes aren't as fast and I don't like to put app load on my storage box. I let my VMs do that work.
Click to expand...

That is a great idea I never thought of for the Plex server. Thanks, Jason!
 
I have Plex running on a VM, all media stored on my NAS (ZFS box which also does the datastores). No issues with Plex, runs great.
 
Ordered the PC parts and a Synology 412+, should be here next week. I'll update once I get things up and running.
 
While having external storage is awesome, you can get much more performance from local storage for a lot cheaper.

When I built my server a couple of years ago, I went with the MegaRAID 9260-8i and 8 Western Digital RE4 hard drives. Unfortunately the drives at the time are only SATA II. Below is a benchmark I ran.



It almost hit 1 GB/s in read performance and up to 800 MB/s write. You would need a 10 GB NAS and switch to get performance like that. ;)
 
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