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What to do about storage?

T

tehjolly81

n00b
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Messages
3
Hi all,

I'm new here and not an expert in servers or virtualization (I am a network guy), so please be gentle :)

I'm looking to build an ESXi box for hosting approximately 15 linux VM's at home. My wife is a grad student in CS and she is building a distributed web crawler app for her dissertation and needs a dev environment for testing. One of the VM's will need to run apache and tomcat for the front end, and I think the rest just need to run her "agents" which I don't think will require an enormous amount of resources.

Here is my current build plan:
AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 3.1GHz 8 core CPU
GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ Mobo
32GB RAM
Case
PSU

My question is, what to do about storage? I think a single disc is going to be too slow, so I need to either do RAID in the box, or a NAS/ISCSI solution. The motherboard has RAID features built in, but from some of the discussions on the boards I've read, it makes me think this won't work for me?

If I need a hardware RAID card, am I looking at the same cost as going with a Synology or QNAP NAS solution? Or am I missing other options? I don't know if I can afford an SSD given the amount of storage I need across all of the VM's (at least 20gb each), but I don't want to rule out that possibility either.

Your opinions would be appreciated.

Thank you.
 
Last edited:
Robstar said:
How about a 256G or 512G crucial m4?

That should be plenty...
Click to expand...

Yeah a single 512GB M4 would be perfect. Cheap (comparatively), lots of space, fast, and linux VM's should need no more than 10GB each.
 
A small two disk NAS would be just as expensive as a 512GB SSD. I would go with a Crucial M4 512GB and call it a day. The price of admission for a NAS + the cost of disks would be more than what you'd spend on that drive and it wouldn't be nearly as fast.

Edit: holy refresh posts Batman haha
 
Why an 8 core CPU? For this, it sounds like way overkill. Cut that down to something more reasonable for the project, and put that money towards the SSD as well. Why do you estimate 20GB for each VM?
 
Eulogy said:
Why an 8 core CPU? For this, it sounds like way overkill. Cut that down to something more reasonable for the project, and put that money towards the SSD as well. Why do you estimate 20GB for each VM?
Click to expand...

He did say 15 VM's

I'd go with an i7 over that Bulldozer though.
 
Eulogy said:
He also said most would be light use Linux VMs. If he has no expansion plans, a quad core will do him just fine.
Click to expand...

Yea, and depending on what he's doing the disks are usually the first bottle neck with a modern CPU and 32GB of RAM.
 
Thanks all for the feedback. Sounds like I should be considering the SSD after all. :)

The 20GB per VM mark was just a guess. I figured 5-10GB for the OS and I wanted to have some room to breathe.

I realize the CPU may be overkill as well, but I wanted some room to grow there too. Plus, its really not a very expensive purchase ($200 for mobo + cpu @ Microcenter)

Follow up question - Would I install ESXi on the SSD, or on a USB flash drive?
 
tehjolly81 said:
Follow up question - Would I install ESXi on the SSD, or on a USB flash drive?
Click to expand...
Either/or. A lot of people install them to USB and a fair amount of people put it on local storage and even PXE boot it. It takes a little under 1GB of space IIRC.
 
Just curious with SSD and ESX do you still have to worry about trim like you do with Windows OS?
 
1. You need a real raid card not some cheapo software/driver raid.
2. SSD's are sometimes cheap and recognized as software raid. You will see half your available space and you will get corruption problems.
3. Install on a USB esxi is mostly read only.
4. ESXi is SSD aware. Usually most people use SLC and not MLC for the reason I mentioned above.
5. I believe PXE boot requires a certain license of ESXi.
6 Don't over complicate things. Stick with Direct Attached storage. Unless you have multiple Hosts and you are playing with the fancy features like Vmotion/DRS/Storage motion.
7. I would save money and not get a SSD go buy your self a Qnap 459 or at least a 259. Play with the storage technologies like iSCSI and or NFS. Get a smart switch if you do so you can LACP.
 
Wrench00 said:
1. You need a real raid card not some cheapo software/driver raid.
2. SSD's are sometimes cheap and recognized as software raid. You will see half your available space and you will get corruption problems.
3. Install on a USB esxi is mostly read only.
4. ESXi is SSD aware. Usually most people use SLC and not MLC for the reason I mentioned above.
5. I believe PXE boot requires a certain license of ESXi.
6 Don't over complicate things. Stick with Direct Attached storage. Unless you have multiple Hosts and you are playing with the fancy features like Vmotion/DRS/Storage motion.
7. I would save money and not get a SSD go buy your self a Qnap 459 or at least a 259. Play with the storage technologies like iSCSI and or NFS. Get a smart switch if you do so you can LACP.
Click to expand...

Don't 6 and 7 contradict each other? And there's no way he's saving any money buying a NAS with drives and getting an LACP capable switch over the price of a Crucial M4 512GB. The OP didn't know if they could afford an SSD to start with, and that's way less costly than suggestion 7.
 
Point 7. I should have titled as you want to spend money,
You will learn more from a qnap and lacp switch then you will get out of a SSD.
 
More of a question or food for thought in regards to SSD in the OP's use case scenario:

Would it not be better to spread the 15 VMs across 4 x 128GB SSDs vs. a single 512GB SSD - prices being similar and all?

I know the single 512GB M4 has better write speed over the 128GB ...but I am thinking disk contention. (bonus - not single point of failure)

Of course this would all tie back to IOPS required by the OPs scenario - still unknown.


ps ..as mentioned .. boot ESXi from USB and use 100% of your SSD(s) for storage.
 
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