VSAs for vSphere homelab

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

swefred

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.

gc8dc95

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.

ehnde

EMC VNX and Celerra Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) - Free Download

kj0

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

shezy77

+ 1 for StarWind as that is what I have configured in my Lab and works flawless (at least for me)

Easy to setup too

jibbajabba

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.

The Nihilist

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll look into these offerrings.