best way to present storage to nested guests on one SSD?

Here is what I have so far:

Got plenty of ram & cpu, no worries there. I have 161gb of space left for the following:

2, or even 3 ESXi "hosts"
2 - 4 guests on each host
another linked clone for a 2nd vcenter server to test out linked mode
vcenter appliance

If I can leave out any of the above and still fulfill the objectives, please let me know.

Questions:
Am I better off setting up a NAS for the ESXi hosts to use as a datastore on the remaining 161gb of space, or carving out vmdks for them to use?

The DC and vcenter server are linked clones. Can I build an ESXi host and make the 2nd host a linked clone?

I've got 3 1TB 7200 RPM sata drives. Right now they're just storing ISOs. Should I make use of them for some of the VMs, or stuff everything on to the 256GB ssd?

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Asif Dasl

I have:
- 1 ClearOS Router - 1GB of RAM
- 1 Domain Controller - 1GB of RAM (linked clone)
- 1 vCenter Server - 4GB of RAM (linked clone)
- 3 ESXi Hosts - 6GB of RAM each (separate installs)
Total space turned off is 40GB - turned on is ~65GB on the SSD so far.

I would setup a thin provisioned secondary hard drives on the DC and vCenter server and setup iSCSI and NFS. Instead of using a separate NAS VM - but it's up to you what you want to do.

There is no need to run 2-4 guests on each host - for labbing purposes 1 or 2 on the cluster is fine just to do vMotion.

I would store everything on the SSD, 256 GB is plenty for a lab - don't clone the ESXi hosts install them separately or use AutoDeploy if you are feeling adventurous.

jibbajabba

(Love ClearOS).

3 Hosts ? VSAN then

My virtual hosts usually have 3 drives

4GB on non-SSD
10GB on SSD
40GB on non-SSD

Install is in the 4GB one and the remaining two drives are used for VSAN.

Obviously all thin provisioned.

Asif Dasl

To force ESXi to see a datastore as a SSD (for VSAN for instance) check this site:

How to Trick ESXi 5 in seeing an SSD Datastore | virtuallyGhetto

jibbajabba

Thought he got an SSD anyway? But yea .. You can tag non-SSD drives as SSD (that's even vCAP knowledge how to

)

Asif Dasl

You are making me wonder Jibba! My datastores don't show SSD by default maybe because I have them in RAID-0? I had to change them manually...

jibbajabba

Oh it can still be that the SSD doesn't show as such. Maybe the manufacturer didn't use a SSD interface or it is just flash storage sold as SSD. Thankfully even nested my SSD drive shows up correctly. But that is why VMware has the option to tag drives SSD.

ehnde

Wow this is even better than I would have imagined! So the hosts don't need SSD?

I'm curious how you use the 10gb and 40gb datastores. Guests on the 10gb?

Thanks for the suggestions, this'll stretch out the space even better than I would have thought possible.

Itrimble

Asif Dasl wrote: »

I have:
- 1 ClearOS Router - 1GB of RAM
- 1 Domain Controller - 1GB of RAM (linked clone)
- 1 vCenter Server - 4GB of RAM (linked clone)
- 3 ESXi Hosts - 6GB of RAM each (separate installs)
Total space turned off is 40GB - turned on is ~65GB on the SSD so far.

I'm curious, what OS is your DC? And how do you get away with only using 1Gb of ram ?

Asif Dasl

The domain controller is Server 2012, it would be Server 2012 R2 but I ran in to a problem with the 5.5 U1 ESXi hosts joining an R2 domain - tried everything, couldn't do it, even though it's listed as compatible.

You only need a minimum of 512 MB for Server 2012 or Server 2008 so 1 GB of RAM is enough to keep things running smooth..

Asif Dasl

jibbajabba wrote: »

My virtual hosts usually have 3 drives

4GB on non-SSD
10GB on SSD
40GB on non-SSD

ehnde wrote: »

I'm curious how you use the 10gb and 40gb datastores. Guests on the 10gb?

Doh! Just found out I need to setup another hard disk for VSAN, I setup a 250GB HD with the OS, another 250GB for VSAN SSD but I found out they need to be empty to create the Disk Groups for VSAN - so I need another HD set as HDD for vSAN (1 SSD + 1 HDD + 3 hosts = VSAN)

My setup will be (all thin provisioned obviously):

250GB for OS
250GB for VSAN SSD
250GB for VSAN HDD

Calculating VSAN space taken up is complicated so I won't even go there! That and I don't know the in's and out's of it yet!

ehnde - If you are going for VCP 5.5 then you'll need to know about VSAN.

jibbajabba

Asif Dasl wrote: »

The domain controller is Server 2012, it would be Server 2012 R2 but I ran in to a problem with the 5.5 U1 ESXi hosts joining an R2 domain - tried everything, couldn't do it, even though it's listed as compatible.

Hit and miss for me as well. It seems that in some cased you need the full upn, but just Friday I joined hosts to 2012R2. Only difference was for me using just 'Administrator' as user, rather than domain\user or user@domain

BTW., if you got only three hosts and you need to shut the whole lot down make sure you use the web client to put the hosts into maintenance mode. The c# client obviously doesn't know anything about VSAN so you won't have the option to disable data availability so the whole thing will get a fit and poops itself

Itrimble

I've got a laptop I'd like to use, but I have a question about the partitioning.
It's got a 250GB SSD, and 750 SATA drive.

Is there a way for me to partition the SSD drive so that I can use a portion of it for ESXI and another part of it for for SSD caching? Could I use Gparted to partition the drive before I instal ESXi onto it, or will the Esxi installer, let me partition the drive as part of the install ?