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Lab build help

G

Gabri.91

n00b
Joined
Feb 8, 2013
Messages
17
Hi guys,
I'm rebuilding my home lab and I need some help, especially on networking side.

Hardware:
- Storage: Intel i3-3240, Supermicro X9SCM, 16GB DDR3 ECC, 12-Bay 2U chassis
- Host1 & Host2: Intel E3-1230v2, Supermicro X9SCL, 32GB DDR3 ECC, 4-Bay 1U chassis

I leave out storage (HDD\SSD\Controllers) because I'm still undecided here.


Software (not installed yet because I'm waiting some hardware components):
- Storage: Microsoft Hyper-V free with Starwind VSAN free
- Hosts: VMware ESXi 5.5

With free Starwind VSAN, can I use iSCSI or only NFS?
Are performance equal between them?


Regarding network, what will be the best solution?
I cannot afford 10GbE, so basic idea was add one dual-port gigabit to each host and a quad-gigabit to storage:
OnBoard NICs will be used for LAN, while add-in NICs for shared storage.

I've read something about Infiniband, but I'm a bit scared about high CPU usage of IPoIB:
could it be slow with an i3 storage server and impact host performance?

Thanks!
 
free version of starwind exposes nfs only and iscsi is used for internal housekeeping

pretty much the same did vmware with now eol'ed vmware vsa

you can however ask starwind guys about private unlock for iscsi ha

they are quite friendly :)

Gabri.91 said:
Hi guys,
I'm rebuilding my home lab and I need some help, especially on networking side.

Hardware:
- Storage: Intel i3-3240, Supermicro X9SCM, 16GB DDR3 ECC, 12-Bay 2U chassis
- Host1 & Host2: Intel E3-1230v2, Supermicro X9SCL, 32GB DDR3 ECC, 4-Bay 1U chassis

I leave out storage (HDD\SSD\Controllers) because I'm still undecided here.


Software (not installed yet because I'm waiting some hardware components):
- Storage: Microsoft Hyper-V free with Starwind VSAN free
- Hosts: VMware ESXi 5.5

With free Starwind VSAN, can I use iSCSI or only NFS?
Are performance equal between them?


Regarding network, what will be the best solution?
I cannot afford 10GbE, so basic idea was add one dual-port gigabit to each host and a quad-gigabit to storage:
OnBoard NICs will be used for LAN, while add-in NICs for shared storage.

I've read something about Infiniband, but I'm a bit scared about high CPU usage of IPoIB:
could it be slow with an i3 storage server and impact host performance?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
 
Hello.

StarWind Virtual SAN Free allows you to use only SMB3 and NFS shares in your environment.

I would advise you to use it as “shared nothing” fault-tolerant NAS by “mirroring” internal storage between 2 of your servers. Resulting solution presents continuously available SMB 3.02 shares and failover NFS v4.1 mount points and targets in such use cases:

• Shared storage for Microsoft Hyper-V VMs and SQL Server DBs (CA SMB3)
• Shared storage for VMware vSphere & ESXi, Citrix XenServer and various Xen VMs (NFS)
• Failover file server (common data, VDI profiles, backups and so on) (SMB3 & NFS)

By doing this way you will achieve the fault-tolerant storage for your VMs or other needs.

Your configuration would look like this:

solution-n-node-hypervisor-cluster-upd.png


P.S: You should not notice any difference in performance between ISCSI and NFS protocols.
 
Last edited:
Hi Gabri, what’s up? Any news on your rebuilding process? The thing is that I’m currently having a pretty much the same task, so I was thinking maybe you can share your outcomes, which might help me as well ;)
 
If you have the available PCI-e x4 slots (and i would think you would based on those motherboards) you can try 4gbps fibrechannel for cheap.

In my plan, I will be putting a 2 port Qlogic QLE2462 in my storage box, and single port QLE2460s in 2 ESXI hosts.

The cards are less than $12 on eBay, supported natively by ESXI and Hyper-V and fiber patch cables are cheap. Just a thought. I haven't been able to build out my lab yet but like I said, this is my plan.
 
As you've got a seperate storage box avaliable any reason why you're planning on starwind over something like FreeNAS? Would be a better fit imo, give you the choice to use nfs/iscsi. Could go multipath 1gb with iSCSI (although that won't = 100MBps+ single transfers).
 
jacqkeen said:
If you have the available PCI-e x4 slots (and i would think you would based on those motherboards) you can try 4gbps fibrechannel for cheap.

In my plan, I will be putting a 2 port Qlogic QLE2462 in my storage box, and single port QLE2460s in 2 ESXI hosts.

The cards are less than $12 on eBay, supported natively by ESXI and Hyper-V and fiber patch cables are cheap. Just a thought. I haven't been able to build out my lab yet but like I said, this is my plan.
Click to expand...

Those... well those are cheap. I've been thinking about moving away from my all in one and put my storage in a seperate box but was worried about the speed between my SAN and my esxi server. 4gps would be fast enough and it's cheap enough.. Anyone have any experience with these things?
 
Konowl said:
Those... well those are cheap. I've been thinking about moving away from my all in one and put my storage in a seperate box but was worried about the speed between my SAN and my esxi server. 4gps would be fast enough and it's cheap enough.. Anyone have any experience with these things?
Click to expand...

Been happily running this setup (though I think with Emulex single-port cards in the ESXi hosts) at home for a couple years now. It was a nice step up from 1GB iSCSI connections, though I only really notice it when I have to vmotion... which isn't very often. In my home environment, most of my traffic is over the LAN anyways from one box to another. In theory the latency is lower than with iSCSI, but the most I/O intensive thing I have at home is a torrent/usenet VM which rarely has more than 4-5 downloads and 3-4 seeds going at a time.

Considering I dropped down to a single VM host at home now (the 2nd is basically a cold spare left off to save electricity), I've really been thinking about moving the "SAN" back into an "all-in-one" setup and going back to iSCSI. If I could find a cheap/quiet way to add 8-12 external drives to a Dell R710 I'd be set. Boot from a drive connected to the second internal SATA port (with the storage VM on it), split the 8 internal 2.5" bays between a larger/slower spinning disk array and a faster SSD array with 4 drives in each, and use the external drives connected by external SAS for mass storage. Just pass the storage controllers for the internal and external arrays to the storage VM.

OP.. why Windows Hyper-V? Have you looked at Linux/Solaris/etc. with ZFS? I've been running OpenIndiana for my storage server and have just started looking at other alternatives to provide not only datastores for ESXi but also files storage for my media/documents/etc. Still torn on which way to go but I think I'm leaning more towards the Linux route.
 
Really interesting solution with FC. Will be performance better that IPoIB and lower CPU load?

Regarding choice of Windows/Starwind, I'd like to run some service VM (vcenter for example) on storage server, so Hyper-V it's the only solution, maybe a AIO ESXi box, but I don't think that i3 will support controller pass-through, I need to update to a Xeon..

Currently it's all stopped because storage motherboard doesn't work and I'm waiting for replacement. I'll update thread when ready.
 
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