Home lab shared storage questions

[TeeJayHoward]

My intention is to have two ESXi physical servers and shared storage between them, with vSphere's client running on my gaming computer. I intend to run about 20 VMs simultaneously between these two servers, and set up/learn about failover, clustering, etc... Whatever I can. If I run out of hardware with the two ESXi servers, I can probably throw the "leftover" VMs into HyperV on my gaming rig. It is my understanding that with this "four box" configuration, the majority of ESXi features can be tinkered with. I'm not made of money, and hope to reuse as much of my existing hardware as possible. I have the following box currently set up as a NFS/SMB file server:
E3-1230, X9SCM, 16GB ECC, booting off USB, 6x3TB raidz via Solaris 11

Which of the following scenarios makes the most sense?

1) Repurpose my existing NAS box as an ESXi server, build a second ESXi server, and purchase a 6+ bay NAS appliance for the datastore
2) Use my existing NAS box as a datastore, and purchase two ESXi servers
3) Repurpose my existing NAS box as an ESXi server, build a second ESXi server, and build a new NAS utilizing my existing disks
4) Do not use my existing NAS box for anything, build two ESXi servers, and purchase a 6+ bay NAS
5) Turn my gaming computer into the NAS, buy one ESXi server, and repurpose my existing NAS box as the second ESXi server, using a ten year old laptop to run the vSphere client.
6) Repurpose my existing NAS box as an ESXi server, build a second ESXi server, and purchase a 1-2 bay NAS and an SSD or two for the datastore

If a NAS appliance is recommended, which features are important? Is the gigabit network a limitation for guest OS responsiveness? Are SSDs a "must have" for the datastore where the guest "hard drives" live?

 

[Child of Wonder]

2 is the cheapest option. I'd just build up two ESXi whiteboxes, each with at least a quad core CPU and 32GB of RAM. Get an Intel quad port Gb NIC off ebay and a decent PSU to throw in the cheapest case you can find. Install ESXi on either a cheap hard drive or flash drive. Each host would probably cost about $450 if you went with AMD parts.

Gigabit network will not be a bottleneck. SSDs are not a must have. My lab containing up to 25 running VMs runs off 8x SATA drives in a Microsoft Storage Pool just fine.

What a switch between your hosts and the storage? I'd get a web managed switch that supports VLAN tagging, LACP, jumbo frames, and flow control.

 

[TeeJayHoward]

What a switch between your hosts and the storage? I'd get a web managed switch that supports VLAN tagging, LACP, jumbo frames, and flow control.

Damn, forgot to ask about that. I need 12 ports to replace my existing switch. Got any recommendations? If I'm putting quad cards in each host and the file server, I'll probably use every port in a 24-port switch.

Can you assign individual ports from a quad NIC to individual VMs? If not, how is the quad port NIC used? Teaming?

 

[Child of Wonder]

You assign ports to a virtual switch on your ESXi hosts and your VMs are randomly assigned to ports. Say you have a vswitch for your VMs and give it to physical ports, your VMs will be randomly assigned to a physical port when they boot or get migrated to another host.

I'd go with an HP v1810-24g. Shouldn't cost more than $200 (less used) and can do everything you need.