Size and function

[Balthazar B]

I know a lot more about storage than about virtualization, so appealing to the general wisdom on this board.

Suppose I have a very performant ZFS NAS that can present an iSCSI target to a virtualized ESXi environment. What's the smallest ESXi host I can build that will provide all the base functions needed for reliability and integrity? In terms of reliability I wouldn't go so far as redundant PSUs...I'm thinking more in terms of components, e.g., a mainboard that isn't a PoS. In this kind of architecture where there is separation between functions, is VT-d still necessary/desirable on the ESXi host? One challenge I see to small do-it-all hosts (storage and virtual) is that there are no Mini-ITX boards that support both VT-d and ECC RAM, so I'm wondering whether two purpose-built hosts makes more sense.

What I envision is a very small Mini-ITX box for ESXi optimized for its function, and capable of hosting perhaps 4 VMs in a small but functional home environment. The VMs in turn would host a combination of Windows and Linux environments with media services, Asterisk PBX, etc., and with the capability to experiment in virtual sandboxes.

Thoughts?

 

[bmh.01]

If you are happy to loose ECC i'm running an Intel DQ67EP board very sucessfully, supports VT-d the vpro features (ipkvm being the best) are very useful for remote management. And supporting up to an i7-2600 should provide enough processing capability for a home environment.

Where you hit problems (ish) is only 2 ram slots which limits you to 16gb and only a single PCI-e 16x slot so really you have to fork out for a 4 port adapter in a ideal world.

That said the comprimises aren't the end of the world for a home setup and I am sucessfully running this packaged in a lian li q07 case giving an nice compact setup.

 

[dasaint]

Just curious what version of ESXi are you planning on 5.0? also what version of ZFS Flavor are you going to use, nexenta, solaris, etc.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

Intel S1200KP support ECC, and I suspect would have no issue with VT-d so long as the CPU does (though I doubt you need it). No vPro/IPMI though, unfortunately.

I do think you'd probably be better off with a micro-ATX mainboard instead of mini-ITX, if only for the additional RAM slots. The SuperMicros are nice.

 

[Balthazar B]

Just curious what version of ESXi are you planning on 5.0? also what version of ZFS Flavor are you going to use, nexenta, solaris, etc.

• ESXi 5
• I'm going start out trying ZFS on Linux (probably Debian 6) first, try FreeBSD/FreeNAS if that doesn't work, and finally fall back on Nexenta or OI as a last resort.

I'd prefer to use BTRFS and may mess with it a bit before I go ZFS, but it doesn't seem quite ready for prime time yet, even on a home system. Maybe a few months from now I'll revisit it...

 

[Balthazar B]

Intel S1200KP support ECC, and I suspect would have no issue with VT-d so long as the CPU does (though I doubt you need it). No vPro/IPMI though, unfortunately.

I do think you'd probably be better off with a micro-ATX mainboard instead of mini-ITX, if only for the additional RAM slots. The SuperMicros are nice.

No VT-d on the S1200KP from all that I see, but I think it'll work fine as a NAS board with a processor that supports ECC. I'm leaning towards a SuperMicro mATX board when I build a second box for an ESXi host, since Intel's is comparatively weak, although it costs a bit less. I think I'll wait until the next-gen Xeon E3 CPUs are released before building that second box, partly in hope that an even better motherboard (e.g., one that supports USB3 and/or eSATA) appears on the market. 8GB UDIMMs should be a bit less expensive by then, too.