VSAs for vSphere homelab

The NihilistThe Nihilist Member Posts: 7 ■□□□□□□□□□
in Virtualization
Hi guys,

Any recommendations for virtual storage appliance for use in my nested vSphere lab? Not talking about throwing loads of I/O at it obviously and my VMs are typically small Linux based low resource footprint distros.

I don't have budget for a physical NAS but I can back a VSA with an SSD for storage. Ideally looking for something that offers iSCSI as well as NFS.

I've looked at Freenas / Nexenta etc - what have others used?
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Comments

  • swefredswefred Member Posts: 13 ■■■□□□□□□□
    I am using openfiler that I have given a lsi 9260 kontroller via VM direct path, and 12 GB ram and a SSD. I am using ZFS as file system.
    The reason for openfiler is just random chance sins it was the first os that booted with the controller-card after several tries with drivers and firmware.
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  • gc8dc95gc8dc95 Member Posts: 206 ■■□□□□□□□□
    I use Windows Server 2012R2 for one of my labs and FreeNAS for the other. Both work fine.

    I assume you are looking for an open source solution.
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  • ehndeehnde Member Posts: 1,103
    EMC VNX and Celerra Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) - Free Download
    Climb a mountain, tell no one.
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  • kj0kj0 Member Posts: 767
    StarWind Free iSCSI sitting in widows works well. Otherwise Freenas/Openfiler with iSCSI enabled and set up.

    You can always set half your space to be iSCSI and the other half as NFS
    2017 Goals: VCP6-DCV | VCIX
    Blog: https://readysetvirtual.wordpress.com
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  • shezy77shezy77 Member Posts: 160
    + 1 for StarWind as that is what I have configured in my Lab and works flawless (at least for me)

    Easy to setup too
    2013: ICND1 [Passed] ... ICND2 [Passed] ... VCA-DCV [Passed] ... 70-410 [Passed] ... 70-411 [Passed] ... VCA-Cloud [Passed] ... VCA-WM [Passed] ... 70-412 [Passed]

    2014: 74-409 [Passed] ... VCP5 [Passed]
    Current working on: VCAP5-DCA
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  • jibbajabbajibbajabba Member Posts: 4,317 ■■■■■■■■□□
    You need a DC anyway so could use the same Windows Box with the built-in ISCSI target and NFS server ... saves you an additional VM.
    My own knowledge base made public: http://open902.com :p
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  • The NihilistThe Nihilist Member Posts: 7 ■□□□□□□□□□
    Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll look into these offerrings.
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