Help for storage system for virtual machines

[MatuScien]

Hello guys!

I will assemble a PC with Windows 8 on a 128GB SSD. I will install VMware Workstation to work with virtual machines.

To save the virtual machines I buy two 1T hard drives in RAID 0, and I do not mind losing your data because it's for a test lab.

To back up (sometimes) will use Synology Network Attached Storage.

Do you think good idea?

Greetings!

 

[MatuScien]

I hope your help.

 

[dandragonrage]

Sure... sounds fine to me. You can read some NAS reviews on www.smallnetbuilder.com to help you figure out which to buy. Or you could go for a custom ZFS storage setup like many of us here do, but that would be more work so you may not want to do that.

 

[farscapesg1]

how many VMs are you planning on running under Workstation? For the price of 2 1TB drives you could probably pick up a 256GB SSD (crucial M4s on sale now under the hotdeal section). The random access benefits of the SSD would put the RAID0 drives to shame, which is what you really want for running multiple VMs.

Personally, I've got about 25 VMs running at home on ESXi and I could fit them all on 256GB. That is multiple Windows VMs (XP, Win7, Win8, Server 2012, Server 2008) as well as some others.

 

[dandragonrage]

Yeah, if a lot of VMs (and/or particularly high I/O requirements), those RAIDed HDs may not be enough. If just running up to a few VMs without high I/O demands they should be ok.

 

[MatuScien]

I have a couple of years ago the Synology DS211j NAS with two 1TB drives.

I'm Spanish and here is more expensive hardware. The cheapest SSD where I will buy is this: Crucial M4 SSD 256GB SATA3 SSD Hard Drive for 179 € uros

With 256GB have enough?

I'm so sysadmin work with Windows Server 2008, WinXP, WinVista, Win7 and Win8. I will also work with WIM deployment

I am very interested in ESXi but for now I am I have a bit of a mess and not buy components so that I'll stay with VMware Workstation. Farscapesg1 What do you think?

 

[Hagrid]

I have a couple of years ago the Synology DS211j NAS with two 1TB drives.

I'm Spanish and here is more expensive hardware. The cheapest SSD where I will buy is this: Crucial M4 SSD 256GB SATA3 SSD Hard Drive for 179 € uros

With 256GB have enough?

I'm so sysadmin work with Windows Server 2008, WinXP, WinVista, Win7 and Win8. I will also work with WIM deployment

I am very interested in ESXi but for now I am I have a bit of a mess and not buy components so that I'll stay with VMware Workstation. Farscapesg1 What do you think?

The 256gb will have plenty of space for VM's, and as mentioned will beat the raid 0 HD's.

 

[patrickdk]

256gig should probably work, but could be tight.

win7/8 need 20-30gigs of space to install. win2008 needs 10-15gigs, vista not sure, xp only needs like 5gigs.

So base os installs will probably use half your ssd.

 

[farscapesg1]

256gig should probably work, but could be tight.

win7/8 need 20-30gigs of space to install. win2008 needs 10-15gigs, vista not sure, xp only needs like 5gigs.

So base os installs will probably use half your ssd.

This about sums it up ^^^^

Personally I set all Win7/Win8 to 30 GB, server 2008 to 20 GB, and XP to 10GB. Depending on what you are wanting to run/test, you could get (2) 2008, (3) Win7, and several XP VMs on there without any problem. Server 2012 I would probably shoot for 30 GB and Vista around 20 GB.

As long as you keep it around 200GB out of a 256GB SSD, you should be fine. Just figure how many VMs you actually want to run and do the math.

Pretty sure workstation supports thin-provisioning also, so if you give a VM 30 GB but only use 15 GB, it will only eat up 15GB of disk space...

 

[MatuScien]

I have already decided. I'll take the SSD 256 for storing virtual machines.

Many thanks everybody!!