Yo folks,

 

Last year I tried Unraid for a while but wasn't too happy about it's write speeds and looked for someting else! For a year now I have been running Raidz in ZFS with Open Indiana distro and the Napp-it gui (http://www.napp-it.org/ and http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1573272); It's really fast but my pools are getting full and unlike Unraid you can not add a new HDD just to extend your data pool. In ZFS you need to add a new vdev which consists of several disks and in raidz you loose space due to parity! Buying several new disks don't come cheap!

So I was thinking to combine both worlds and go back to Unraid as a VM in ESXi and use ZFS for cache which Johnm is using allthough I don't understand everything!

 

My hardware

 

Norco RPC 4224

Supermicro X9SCM-F

Intel Xeon E-1230

16GB ram

3x IBM M1015 flashed HBA's

 

Currently almost all my drives are used in 2 pools in ZFS and still have a Hitachi sata-600 7200rpm 3TB drive laying around I could use for parity in Unraid + a WD 3TB EZRX for data

The idea is to move all data from the pools to Unraid (I will need to buy some more drives) and only use ZFS for a cache and free up 2 SSD's used as ZIL in my 2 ZFS pools.

Also I have an 8-bay QNAP NAS which I'm selling but which only runs on one HDD atm which is overkill. It does run my SABnzb and squeezebox + dnla server so I will need to move that. I'm currently building my 1st XBMC HTPC and I would move SABnzb to that as it's low power! My guess is my Norco 4224 with a Seasonic x760 will consume more power. So in addition to zfs and unraid I'll be needing to run a Win7 client too on the server! Also I have been reading that putting 8 sata-600 HDD's on 2 ports of a M1015 card is way overkill as classic HDD's never reach the max bandwith so would a SAS expander card be a good investment and what type do I buy?

If I have more questions I will post them later but feel free to comment on my hardware and give advice on the build!

 

Gr33tz

This would be the expander you want:  http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/servers/raid/raid-controller-res2sv240.html

 

Sounds like a fun project!  Check out FlexRAID, too.

 

Brandon

I'll be following this thread closely. I just, literally, started building my ESXI machine, but mi goal in the mid term is to use ZFS not only for the cache, but for storing the VM.

 

I was actually thinking of FreeNAS, but for no particular reason, I have zero, like in nada, experience with ZFS.

Perhaps this might help.

 

i have 2 SSD's for local datastores. these have several high performance VM's and my domain controller. (a single mechanical would work fine also)

 

then I have a ZFS guest on one of the SSD's. This could be OI, FreeNAS, ect. this server then has a ZFS raid array that is shared via NFS. on this share are my virtual drives for the rest of my ESXi guests.

You could also use iSCSI targets instead of NFS.

 

my first VM to autostart is my ZFS server.

 

My next few VM's that boot are also on SSD's and start up right away (AD controller ect.)

 

the next few VMs are either hosted on the ZFS server, or have virtual drives that reside on it..

these are on a huge time delay for auto start. maybe 2-5 minutes for the first one.  this gives the ZFS server time to actually get up on the network and start the shares.

once the  ZFS server is up. you'll see the grayed out guests start showing up as available to start that is about when my auto start is set to kick off.

 

 

the performance is much better then a JBOD datastores and i have fault tolerance. (450MB/s ish)

I have several guests and my unraid cache drive on the ZFS..

I would suggest using the virtual gigabit nics since this method will move data across the esxi box faster then gigabit

John,

 

How are you providing the cache drive to unraid from a zfs share?  did you make a virtual drive using esxi and attach it to the unraid vm?

John,

 

How are you providing the cache drive to unraid from a zfs share?  did you make a virtual drive using esxi and attach it to the unraid vm?

 

yes

I created an NFS share on the ZFS and selected it as the datastore

 

Perhaps this might help.

 

i have 2 SSD's for local datastores. these have several high performance VM's and my domain controller. (a single mechanical would work fine also)

 

then I have a ZFS guest on one of the SSD's. This could be OI, FreeNAS, ect. this server then has a ZFS raid array that is shared via NFS. on this share are my virtual drives for the rest of my ESXi guests.

You could also use iSCSI targets instead of NFS.

 

my first VM to autostart is my ZFS server.

 

My next few VM's that boot are also on SSD's and start up right away (AD controller ect.)

 

the next few VMs are either hosted on the ZFS server, or have virtual drives that reside on it..

these are on a huge time delay for auto start. maybe 2-5 minutes for the first one.  this gives the ZFS server time to actually get up on the network and start the shares.

once the  ZFS server is up. you'll see the grayed out guests start showing up as available to start that is about when my auto start is set to kick off.

 

 

the performance is much better then a JBOD datastores and i have fault tolerance. (450MB/s ish)

I have several guests and my unraid cache drive on the ZFS..

I would suggest using the virtual gigabit nics since this method will move data across the esxi box faster then gigabit

 

Sounds Chinese to a nOOb like me!!!

You made a gr8 tutorial on ESXi..care to add one for the above too?

 

Basically I wanna use Unraid but with the speed of ZFS (Open Indiana + Napp-it). The one thing I'm missing on ZFS is expandibility (drive-per-drive) and in Unraid if you run out of space you just buy a new HDD! Also want to use ZFS as cache for Unraid and is it maybe posible to stripe and mirror a pool in ZFS and use it as parity for Unraid?

i have 2 SSD's for local datastores. these have several high performance VM's and my domain controller. (a single mechanical would work fine also)

 

then I have a ZFS guest on one of the SSD's. This could be OI, FreeNAS, ect. this server then has a ZFS raid array that is shared via NFS. on this share are my virtual drives for the rest of my ESXi guests.

You could also use iSCSI targets instead of NFS.

 

my first VM to autostart is my ZFS server.

 

How exactly is your ZFS configured?  You're booting your guest off the one SSD (is this configured as an ESXI datastore?), then the other SSD is part of another ZFS array?  What other drives are part of the ZFS array?

 

Sorry if this is a stupid question, just trying to better understand the physical layout of your disks.

i have 2 SSD's for local datastores. these have several high performance VM's and my domain controller. (a single mechanical would work fine also)

 

then I have a ZFS guest on one of the SSD's. This could be OI, FreeNAS, ect. this server then has a ZFS raid array that is shared via NFS. on this share are my virtual drives for the rest of my ESXi guests.

You could also use iSCSI targets instead of NFS.

 

my first VM to autostart is my ZFS server.

 

How exactly is your ZFS configured?  You're booting your guest off the one SSD (is this configured as an ESXI datastore?), then the other SSD is part of another ZFS array?  What other drives are part of the ZFS array?

 

Sorry if this is a stupid question, just trying to better understand the physical layout of your disks.

Planetscott, did you find your answer to this question?