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I'm in the planning stages of a new build that will serve as a testing/development environment that will sit in my office on the floor. I've got about a $2k budget for the build & I plan on building everything from the case up. Ideally, I would like two separate boxes, one for vSphere Hypervisor & one for a ZFS NAS/iSCSI storage.
Initially I was looking at Supermicro for all of the parts including the case, but as I started putting together the parts list, I quickly went above my budget. I was probably being a little greedy in the config. So I started looking into other options in the "desktop" category of hardware & it became quickly obvious I could get more for my money there if I were willing to give up some of the "server" niceties that come with server grade hardware, such as hot swap drive bays, additional cooling, etc. Uptime will not be critical since I will be the only one using them. I want to make sure they're adequately cooled, but I do not plan on utilizing them constantly & my office stays pretty cool anyway.
Hypervisor
For a case, I'm liking Fractal Design just because of the extra drive bays, quietness, & nice cable management. I'm aware I'll need a decent PSU & some cables (such as longer SATA cables). Any comments on the case?
For the processor, initially I was leaning towards a Nehalem Xeon quad proc, but that got expensive quickly. Now I'm thinking a Core i7 2.8GHz w/ Hyperthreading & VT capabilities would be better? Thoughts on that?
For a motherboard, I'm kind of impartial. I just want to make sure it supports all VMware goodies like VT-d. Having an IPMI KVM interface would be awesome too. I'm contemplating giving up IPMI for a good Wake-on-Lan option. Recommendations?
RAM - I'd like 16GB. I'm torn between the nicer ECC stuff & basic value RAM. Remember it's not production, so I'm thinking ECC is overkill. Not sure if I need to look for any VMware specific features in RAM?
Ideally I'm thinking two small 30GB SSD's RAID1 for the vSphere install. I would not want to buy a separate RAID controller so either the motherboard would have to do the RAID or maybe vSphere can do it? If that's not possible, I'll probably just have a single drive.
Missing anything here?
ZFS NAS/SAN
I plan on using the developer version of NexentaStor that allows for 18TB space.
Again I'll probably use a Fractal case since one of them has 8 drive bays. I'd probably just order two of everything with respect to the case.
CPU - again quad Core i7? ZFS likes powerful CPUs
Motherboard - cheapest one I can get that's on the HCL. I'd like to actually use the SATA controller on the board for attaching the storage, but part of me knows better & wants to get an LSI SATA expansion card but I'm thinking it'll break my budget. Again IPMI will be nice but Wake-on-Lan might be good enough. I just want to be able to start/restart it remotely from home if needed.
RAM - How much is ideal for ~8TB storage? I plan on testing/using all ZFS capabilities including deduplication, compression, snapshots, etc. Will 8GB be enough?
Storage - This is where I'm balking big time. I want to have SSD ZIL & L2ARC cache drives, but I'm not sure that's going to fit my budget. Primary storage devices will probably be 8x1TB WD Black (or Green) drives. Should I consider ordering 3x30GB SSDs & use one for vSphere OS (in other machine), one for ZIL, & one for L2ARC? Or is SSD in this type of setup overkill?
I'll probably hook both of these up to a UPS. The building I'm in has backup power, but it is not uninterrupted so I just need a UPS big enough to survive the bounce.
Any thoughts/comments/links are appreciated.
Initially I was looking at Supermicro for all of the parts including the case, but as I started putting together the parts list, I quickly went above my budget. I was probably being a little greedy in the config. So I started looking into other options in the "desktop" category of hardware & it became quickly obvious I could get more for my money there if I were willing to give up some of the "server" niceties that come with server grade hardware, such as hot swap drive bays, additional cooling, etc. Uptime will not be critical since I will be the only one using them. I want to make sure they're adequately cooled, but I do not plan on utilizing them constantly & my office stays pretty cool anyway.
Hypervisor
For a case, I'm liking Fractal Design just because of the extra drive bays, quietness, & nice cable management. I'm aware I'll need a decent PSU & some cables (such as longer SATA cables). Any comments on the case?
For the processor, initially I was leaning towards a Nehalem Xeon quad proc, but that got expensive quickly. Now I'm thinking a Core i7 2.8GHz w/ Hyperthreading & VT capabilities would be better? Thoughts on that?
For a motherboard, I'm kind of impartial. I just want to make sure it supports all VMware goodies like VT-d. Having an IPMI KVM interface would be awesome too. I'm contemplating giving up IPMI for a good Wake-on-Lan option. Recommendations?
RAM - I'd like 16GB. I'm torn between the nicer ECC stuff & basic value RAM. Remember it's not production, so I'm thinking ECC is overkill. Not sure if I need to look for any VMware specific features in RAM?
Ideally I'm thinking two small 30GB SSD's RAID1 for the vSphere install. I would not want to buy a separate RAID controller so either the motherboard would have to do the RAID or maybe vSphere can do it? If that's not possible, I'll probably just have a single drive.
Missing anything here?
ZFS NAS/SAN
I plan on using the developer version of NexentaStor that allows for 18TB space.
Again I'll probably use a Fractal case since one of them has 8 drive bays. I'd probably just order two of everything with respect to the case.
CPU - again quad Core i7? ZFS likes powerful CPUs
Motherboard - cheapest one I can get that's on the HCL. I'd like to actually use the SATA controller on the board for attaching the storage, but part of me knows better & wants to get an LSI SATA expansion card but I'm thinking it'll break my budget. Again IPMI will be nice but Wake-on-Lan might be good enough. I just want to be able to start/restart it remotely from home if needed.
RAM - How much is ideal for ~8TB storage? I plan on testing/using all ZFS capabilities including deduplication, compression, snapshots, etc. Will 8GB be enough?
Storage - This is where I'm balking big time. I want to have SSD ZIL & L2ARC cache drives, but I'm not sure that's going to fit my budget. Primary storage devices will probably be 8x1TB WD Black (or Green) drives. Should I consider ordering 3x30GB SSDs & use one for vSphere OS (in other machine), one for ZIL, & one for L2ARC? Or is SSD in this type of setup overkill?
I'll probably hook both of these up to a UPS. The building I'm in has backup power, but it is not uninterrupted so I just need a UPS big enough to survive the bounce.
Any thoughts/comments/links are appreciated.