Homelab Storage Question

I've been setting up a lab with some old equipment from work for running nested ESXi and preparing for the VCP.

Right now, I have a Xeon e5-2650 v3 and 16GB of RAM (to be expanded). I also have an older server with a M5015 flashed with LSI firmware and 4x 4TB WD Red HDDs that I can use directly in the frame or in a NAS.

I'm new to ESXi and was wondering, what should I setup for storage? (Host based, NAS, SSD, etc.)

Thanks

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Comments

CChilderhose

You could set them up in a NAS and use NFS if you like. Also if you need to mimic iSCSI then Starwind has a Virtual SAN setup that you can use also. I have this working on my embedded setup to prep for the VCAP-DCA on June 2nd.

kohr-ah

I am not the best guy to ask about virtualization as I am just learning it in my spare time because I like it.

I use the SSD in my NUC 4th Gen as my OS storage so that I can boot up quickly and then any further storage I NFS to a Synology.

Lexluethar

Use Free NAS or something equivalent. As long as you have the storage capacity on one of your Hosts simply do an NFS volume. There are definitely some differences between a VMDK and NFS volume, but for the sake of the VCP just knowing the differences is enough. Actually labing out IMO can be done with an NFS volume.

CSCOnoob

+1 on NFS and Synology. That's my setup as well.

jabney

I would use Synology. I've done FreeNas, OpenMediaVault, and Nexenta each has failed on me and caused me to rebuild my lab multiple times. If you want set it and forget it use Synology you won't be sorry.

jibbajabba

Synology Mini - 4xSSD - NFS - done

tbgree00

I bought a synology ds216j with two 2TB 7.2k drives and have had a fantastic time with that. freeNAS worked okay but having true external storage for my two boxes is great. The box was ~180, the drives ~55 each. Since you have 4 drives already I would spend on the 4 bay synology if it were me.

thenjduke

I have a Windows 2012 ISCSI Target NAS I use. I have three 1 TB drives in Raid 5 and performance is just as good as the NAS Appliance if not better. I have dual 1GB Network Card doing MPIO.

BorisBritva

As storage StarWind Virtual SAN should fit perfectly, it also offers great free stuff for non-profits and ac

GAB1900

I bough a used Dell Optiplex (980 maybe?), added 4-HDDs and installed FreeNAS. Cheap, low power, quiet and works great. I use it for other storage needs as well (Crashplan, Plex, general file sharing). I can create iSCSI targets and NFS. Also I used an TFTP share for my Cisco images.

jibbajabba

I am doing both - local and NFS storage

Current Lab – May 2016 – Open902.com

LinuxRacr

Thanks for this awesome thread. I use a Synology RS814 myself, and it has been rock-solid for almost 2 years.

OctalDump

It depends on what you want to learn. If it's just ESXi, then a virtual appliance or something like FreeNAS is a good option to just get something up quickly. If you want to learn some of the nuances you might hit in a production environment, then definitely want to cover all bases: host based, NFS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel. The last one can be expensive, since you need HBAs (anywhere from $25 to $2000), cables ($10-$250 each depending on type and length) and a storage device ($100 up). But it can be fairly straight forward to set up.

For learning most of the ESXi stuff, then hostbased plus some shared storage. There's not a huge difference between the way ESXi treats iSCSI and FC LUNs (well, at the low level, or if you do pass through there is, but high level not so much). The shared storage allows you to do all the fun stuff: vMotion, failover, DRS, etc. So some kind of shared storage is a must.