Fileserver/VM host - which OS?

[alizee]

I'm in the midst of rebuilding my home server. It's mainly a media streamer/backup server, currently running Windows Home Server. But, like everybody else, I'm looking somewhere else for redundancy because drive extender is going away in Vail.

So, here's the conclusion I've come to:

-I'd like to run a Solaris based OS for ZFS. I gave FreeNAS some thought, but there are some benchmarks showing it's ZFS performance to be much slower than something like Nexenta, which is the OS I'm leaning towards.

-In addition, I will need to run some software which requires Windows, and I think I'll probably run Vail in a virtual machine.

What would be the best way to get these to work together? What would be the best host OS? What should I use for my virtualization software?

One thought would be to run NexentaStor CE as the host OS, but it's really barebones. Is this advisable?

Another would be to run whatever host OS, run NexentaStor in a VM and give it direct access to the hard drives.

The virtualization software I've been looking at are VirtualBox and VMware Player because they're free. If somebody has a better suggestion, even paid software up to about $100, I'd love to look at it.

The hardware list:
Athlon II x4 600e - 4 cores @ 2Ghz
MSI 785G motherboard, I forget the particular model
currently 8GB RAM, will probably add another 8 shortly
currently 4x2TB hard drives, but I might be adding some SSDs for the OS and L2ARC, maybe. Storage will also increase over time... like one might expect

Thanks for the help!!!

 

[JD50]

You could use CentOS as the host and run KVM as your virtualization software, both free and open source. As long as your cpu supports full virtualization you can run a Windows VM with KVM.

 

[alizee]

You could use CentOS as the host and run KVM as your virtualization software, both free and open source. As long as your cpu supports full virtualization you can run a Windows VM with KVM.

Thanks! I haven't used CentOS before, but I've used Fedora Core (4 and 5, that long ago...). What's cool about CentOS that I would want to use it as the host?

When you say if my CPU supports full virtualization, it does have AMD-V, is that what you mean? Also, same question as before, what's cool about KVM?

 

[Nothinman]

IMO ZFS isn't worth having to put up with Solaris, I personally would just go with Debian and Linux software RAID and VMware Server. Depending on what you want to do with the host I would go with ESXi might be an option as well.

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, I'd do VMWare ESXi if your hardware supports it.

From there, you can pretty much run any other operating system in a virtual machine that you want without having to worry about too many compatibility issues.

 

[toosober]

I run VMware ESXi, which is free, on my old Core I7 920. I installed ESXi onto a 4gb USB flash drive. I can say that going with a bare metal hyporvisor is the best way to go.
Check out this site for ESXi compatibility list here

I decided that I wanted a fast and stable environment, here is the list of my server components.

• Asus P6T Motherboard
• Intel Core I7 920
• 12 gigs Crucial DDR3 RAM
• 3Ware 9650 SE hardware RAID Controller
• 4 Western Digital RE3 500 drives striped in RAID 10
• 2x Intel CE gigabit NICs
• VMware ESXi 4.1 hyporvisor

I am running 2 Windows 2k3 servers as domain controllers w/ 512 MB RAM on each.
I am running 2 Ubuntu 10.04 web servers w/ 1 GIG RAM for my website and development web servers.
I am running 1 Windows 2008R2 server and Sharepoint Services for the file server w/ 2 GIG of RAM.
1 Windows 7 Pro w/ 2 GIG of RAM for RDP for work stuff.

I also installed Ubuntu Server on an old Core2 Duo with 3 1TB drives running soft-raid for iSCSI storage - backups - archives - static data. Traffic for iSCSI on a different subnet hence the two NICs in the ESXi server. Pretty much an inexpensive and bullet proof home network setup.

 

[VinylxScratches]

toosober, does that mobo work straight off the box?

 

[ultimatebob]

I use a PowerEdge T110 for my ESXi box. They're dirt cheap when you can get them on special, and run ESXi 4.0 Update 1 or higher with no problems.

 

[alizee]

Thanks for everybody's input.

Yeah, I'd do VMWare ESXi if your hardware supports it.

From there, you can pretty much run any other operating system in a virtual machine that you want without having to worry about too many compatibility issues.

I've been looking into ESXi, it looks very cool. What about compatibility with hardware that's not on the HCL? Is there a potential that it will work but might have some unforeseen issues? Same with Guest OS support, Nexenta is not on there, but it may work?

I use a PowerEdge T110 for my ESXi box. They're dirt cheap when you can get them on special, and run ESXi 4.0 Update 1 or higher with no problems.

I'm not really looking at buying much new hardware beyond NICs, storage and controller cards, but I'll keep that in mind.

 

[Emulex]

what about the vcenter boxen? you gotta keep the separated.

 

[sourceninja]

what about the vcenter boxen? you gotta keep the separated.

You only need vcenter if you are going to run more than one esx host. And if you wanted to you could run vcenter as a vm. (although I wouldn't)

 

[Khyron320]

I run zfs-fuse on fedora, yeah its a little slow but I don't care.

Virtual box on the otherhand is pretty slow on my e8400 c2d.

What a about xen? Isn't that bear metal. How does it compare?

 

[BoT]

ms hyper-v server is free
http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx

just to throw it in.
ESX would be my choice

 

[ultimatebob]

ms hyper-v server is free
http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx

just to throw it in.
ESX would be my choice

It requires a Windows Vista or Windows 7 box for remote administration, though... not to mention that it's a pain in the ass to set up.

 

[alizee]

I just installed ESXi on a VM, looks pretty cool. I think I'll install it on some spare hardware today and play around with it.

What does HyperV have going for it that would make me want to choose it over ESXi?

 

[sourceninja]

I just installed ESXi on a VM, looks pretty cool. I think I'll install it on some spare hardware today and play around with it.

What does HyperV have going for it that would make me want to choose it over ESXi?

Being made by microsoft is a huge plus for some people. Personally, I manage a cluster of 7 esxi hosts and wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[alizee]

Being made by microsoft is a huge plus for some people. Personally, I manage a cluster of 7 esxi hosts and wouldn't have it any other way.

I guess I should ask the converse as well, what would make me choose ESXi over HyperV?

 

[BoT]

Hyper-V is not that difficult to set up. the install is actually pretty straight forward and easy.
you do not need a windows box for remote management but a machine that can do RDP if you need a GUI. other then that, everything can be done from the CL in Hyper-V.

Hyper-V has pretty good memory management and now allows the memory to be shared amongst VM's. ESX has been doing that for a while.
ESXi also has a all-in-all smaller OS footprint on your system.

 

[Nothinman]

I guess I should ask the converse as well, what would make me choose ESXi over HyperV?

Less patching and rebooting, more mature system and management tools, etc. VMware is the industry leader for a reason, the only reason I could see for choosing Hyper-V would be to run some other Windows software on the host as well and that's a really bad idea anyway.

 

[alizee]

I didn't have too much time to play around with ESXi yesterday, but, is this something that I can do with ESXi?

1) Allocate specific NICs to specific VMs? I'd potentially like to run a router/firewall on one vm (smoothwall, moowall, etc.) without putting the other VMs out on the open internet.

2) I assume this one is possible, but I haven't checked it out: Allocate physical hard drives to a VM.

What would be the best way to set up NexentaStor on it? Set up the VM with it's boot volume on the same volume as ESXi and then allocate the rest of my physical hard drives to it?

Part of the reason I'd like ZFS is the idle-time error correction, so I'd like to store the Windows VM on the ZFS volume. I assume that means I would need to have the Windows VM startup volume located on a network share, even though it's located on the same physical computer. Is that possible?

Thanks.

 

[sourceninja]

I didn't have too much time to play around with ESXi yesterday, but, is this something that I can do with ESXi?

1) Allocate specific NICs to specific VMs? I'd potentially like to run a router/firewall on one vm (smoothwall, moowall, etc.) without putting the other VMs out on the open internet.

2) I assume this one is possible, but I haven't checked it out: Allocate physical hard drives to a VM.

What would be the best way to set up NexentaStor on it? Set up the VM with it's boot volume on the same volume as ESXi and then allocate the rest of my physical hard drives to it?

Part of the reason I'd like ZFS is the idle-time error correction, so I'd like to store the Windows VM on the ZFS volume. I assume that means I would need to have the Windows VM startup volume located on a network share, even though it's located on the same physical computer. Is that possible?

Thanks.

1) Yes
2) Yes

I would setup esxi, then setup a VM with nexentaStor and allocate it all the disk space for use in ZFS. Finally attach esxi to see the nexentaStor shared volumes (probably via iscsi) for vm storage.

Kinda a screwy way to do it, but I've seen it done using the lefthand virtual san appliance.

 

[Nothinman]

1) Yes
2) Yes

I would setup esxi, then setup a VM with nexentaStor and allocate it all the disk space for use in ZFS. Finally attach esxi to see the nexentaStor shared volumes (probably via iscsi) for vm storage.

Kinda a screwy way to do it, but I've seen it done using the lefthand virtual san appliance.

ZFS is already slow and that seems like it'll make it significantly slower.

 

[sourceninja]

ZFS is already slow and that seems like it'll make it significantly slower.

I wouldn't personally choose to run it like that, but he asked how you could do it.


At home I don't use esx, and at work we have it hooked in to a fiber channel san.

 

[alizee]

ZFS is already slow and that seems like it'll make it significantly slower.

Is ZFS that slow? I hadn't really read that much about a lack of performance. Is it slower than software RAID? I wouldn't expect much more than a percent or three... I know earlier you suggested running software RAID, but the downside of that is the lack of expandability in the future; a major selling point of ZFS is the ability to add vdevs or pools whenever. is there something else I could use which would be similar? Greyhole was one solution that I had seen, but it seems incomplete at the moment. For right now, I want expandability and potentially faster performance than the current rev of WHS storage, in addition redundancy.