thecoffeeguy

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  1. Thx for the feedback. I was going to pull down unraid and give it a go. Looks very promising and have heard very good things about it. Ty
  2. I guess it comes down to, is 'unraid' a better solution to host VM's that are connected to a ESXi cluster? Just based upon some preliminary research i've done, FreeNAS might not be the best solution for my setup. A few blogs I have read said unraid might/could be better. Just dipping my toe in the water a bit.
  3. Howdy folks. I will get right down to it. I have been exploring the option of moving to UNRAID recently due to some weird issues I have been seeing with FreeNAS being used as central storage for my ESXi cluster. I have seen some 'blips' if you will with my VMs performance of late and started to research. My setup: (Home Lab used for development) (2) ESXi clusters -- Managed by a Virtual vCenter hosted on a local SSD on one of the nodes (1) FreeNAS box setup with single pool for storage to cluster, to host VM's. Second pool used for backups. FreeNAS Specs: Dual core Intel CPU (Older CPU...upgradeable) 16gb RAM that I can upgrade to 32gb RAM (2) 2TB Red Drives mirrored for VM's Dual NIC that I have considered setup for 'bonding' for better bandwidth. In doing my research, I came across several posts about how UNRAID is better solution if you plan to run your VM's off your NAS, which is what I want to do. I have just started to learn more about UNRAID. I am happy to purchase a license as long as it fits my needs. I can start with that and provide more info it is helpful. Much appreciated for the help! TCG
  4. Hey everyone. As I read more about unRAID, I quite like it. I have ordered some parts, but still need a case, PSU and drives. I am struggling to find a good case for a good price to fit my needs. I would prefer some sort of mid-ATX case with 6-8 3.5" drives, which allows for growth. The ability to pull drives from the front of the case and replace (hot-swap), would be nice, but its not critical. I have looked at the Fractal 304 case, which is nice and has 6 internal drives. My concern is, what if i tap out and need more drives. I am limited to 6. But just looking for additional items. Does anyone know of or could recommend a decent case that they like/recommend? Lastly, PSU. I have long been a Seasonic fan. I am looking at this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151072 That should be enough to run 4-8 drives? I also found this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151117 But have heard some concerning things about the GP line from Seasonic. Apparently, they went "cheap" on some areas. Thanks guys. TCG
  5. hey there. thanks for the reply. Thats good info. Maybe I overstressed the importance of backups. Probably more importantly, a reliable storage piece. Meaning, reliable hardware top to bottom. I am ok with spending more money for better hardware to ensure stability. That helps out. I definitely like the ability to add different size drives to a setup. Being able to store data to recover from is important. ZFS sounds very interesting, but very resource intensive. Maybe I am reading it wrong, but if I have 4 drives in a setup for unRAID. If so my VM's are stored on disk1 and disk1 dies, how does unRAID allow me to recover from that? It sounds like i need to read up some more, but im just a tad confused here. Appreciate the feedback. Cheers,
  6. I know this is my sound like a loaded threat title, but I am really at a crossing roads here and need to make a decision pretty quickly. Let me provide a little history here. I had a home lab disaster recently. In short, I had two internal drives in my laptop, both SSD's. My second SSD drive which held a lot of my VM's, up and died after two months of using it (still trying to figure out what happened and im still shocked.) On top of that, when I went to restore my VM's from my backup dive (external drive), that was dead. It was the ultimate double face palm moment. Fast forward to today. That said, I am need to architect a better solution for storage and backup. It will be critical for my home lab. What will it be used for: Items I am thinking about using it for: -backups. backup backup backup. Reliable backups of my virtual machines. -Building on backups, I currently run everything from my laptop, but that is going to migrate to a ESXi box I just created. Shuttle box. The caveat here is I am trying to decide if I should just run the VM's on the ESXi box on the local drives, or should I mount them via NFS from the NAS device. Decisions I am looking at and trying to kick around. As I started to look for solutions, items like Drobo and Synology were way to pricey. I figured I would build my own. I first started looking at FreeNAS. Did a lot of research and then bought a few pieces for my NAS (mobo, cpu, memory.) Bought supermicro board, Intel CPU, 8gigs of ECC memory. All for about $280. Still need case and drives and eventually, more RAM. Those pieces should be delivered this week. Now, as I was researching this, a friend told me to look at unRAID. I started to read up here learning more about unRAID and now I am looking what route I should go. Differences so far that I have picked up (bare with me, this is rushed.) FreeNAS - heavily uses ZFS (and im still learning ins and outs of ZFS). Loves memory. unRAID - free for 3 drives, more drives has a cost. Now I know there are differences between the two as far as storage, building out volumes, adding storage etc. that I want to learn more about. That is pretty much a overview of what I am looking for. My ultimate goal is to have a very ROCK SOLID STABLE NAS. I put emphasis on that, because I cant have losing VM's like I just did recently. Performance is good, but not super critical. If i decide to mount some NFS points to the ESXi box, as long as it is pretty good and stable, I should be set. I appreciate the feedback on this. Just wanted to hear some suggestions based on my needs that I laid out above. Pros and Cons, things to consider etc. much appreciated. Thx TheCoffeeGuy