Lately i've been noticing that my file server is starting to falter when it comes to my VM storage and was looking for some upgrades and was wanting some suggestions. Wanna keep it fairly cheap but if you can convince me to spend more because its truely gonna be worth it i'm all ears.
Anyways current hardware:
Intel C2D e6700 3.2ghz
Supermicro MBD-X7SBA http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182144
8gb ECC DDR2 800mhz ram
Norco 4020 with assorted HDD's(filled at this point)
2x supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 controllers
Currently the server runs solaris express 11 and i have 2 pools, one for our standard file storage, and the other on 4 seperate drives thats used for NFS for my VM's on another machine.
The HDD's fo the VM's at any given time if i look at the indicators are pretty solid such that the drives are more or less being accessed at any given time.
I was thinking of upgrading the motherboard to maybe 1155 with a CPU/mobo that can support VT-D so that i can run ESXi on it as well and virtualize OI also gonna need ram(prefer ECC, i'm great at corrupting things haha). also would like to add a SSD for cache(need ideas for this) and maybe a controller + sas expander for my main drives and another controller for the VM drives only. controllers need to support larger than 2TB drives as well.
EDIT: forgot to mention, one of the VM's runs a mysql server if that makes any difference at all because of the different I/O types it has
Anyways current hardware:
Intel C2D e6700 3.2ghz
Supermicro MBD-X7SBA http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182144
8gb ECC DDR2 800mhz ram
Norco 4020 with assorted HDD's(filled at this point)
2x supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 controllers
Currently the server runs solaris express 11 and i have 2 pools, one for our standard file storage, and the other on 4 seperate drives thats used for NFS for my VM's on another machine.
The HDD's fo the VM's at any given time if i look at the indicators are pretty solid such that the drives are more or less being accessed at any given time.
I was thinking of upgrading the motherboard to maybe 1155 with a CPU/mobo that can support VT-D so that i can run ESXi on it as well and virtualize OI also gonna need ram(prefer ECC, i'm great at corrupting things haha). also would like to add a SSD for cache(need ideas for this) and maybe a controller + sas expander for my main drives and another controller for the VM drives only. controllers need to support larger than 2TB drives as well.
EDIT: forgot to mention, one of the VM's runs a mysql server if that makes any difference at all because of the different I/O types it has