Pre-ESXi: Hardware & Install Sanity Check

[unTER]

I've been working on an unRAID build for some time now. I have unRAID running and preclears run on my drives, but I have no shares yet and no data on the drives. Life got busy, and I haven't touched it for a while. Before I go any further, I've decided I want to run ESXi now rather than deciding to do it later when it's more difficult. My first priority is to run unRAID and all necessary plugins if I kept it simple, but I prefer settings this thing up for expanded VM functionality as time goes on.

 

Please help me check my thoughts for sanity here.

 

Hardware

• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz
  
• Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O
  
• RAM: 24GB (2x4GB, 2x8GB)
  
• PSU: 450W
  
• HBA: LSI SAS 9211-8i 6Gb/s SAS/SATA Host Bus Adapter [not flashed to IT mode yet] (w/ Forward breakout cables)
  
• UPS: CyberPower Intelligent LCD Series CP600LCD 600VA 340W
  
• USB Boot: Planning on getting either the StarTech.com 2 Port USB Motherboard Header Adapter or StarTech USB A to USB Motherboard 4-Pin Header F/F 2.0 Cable
  

 

Storage

• Flash Drives: 2 x SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB USB
  
• Parity Drive: WD Red 3TB
  
• Data Drives: 3 x WD Red 3TB, 1 x WD Black 1TB
  
• Cache Drive: WD Black 500GB
  
• Datastore: ?

 

Questions

[*]I don't yet have a Datastore drive or drives. I only plan to start out with running unRAID and then probably a Ubunutu or Windows VM. Can I just use my 1TB drive from above for my one Datastore drive? Should I go get an SSD? Do I need more than one drive?

[*]Regarding that 1TB drive from above, if I don't use it as datastore, I was thinking I'd keep it in my unRAID array but mostly using that disk for ISOs, backups, etc. In that case, maybe it'd be better off outside of the unRAID array. Thoughts on this?

[*]Do I need to use two flash drives, are there other ways, are two flash drives the best way?

[*]What else am I missing or don't understand on the hardware side of this?

[*]I plan on following the ATLAS installation instructions. What else should I focus on? I've got the following resources bookmarked, but I'm a bit overwhelmed. What post-ATLAS resources do you recommend?

• Johnm's ATLAS installation instructions
  
• BetaQuasi's ESXi 5.x pre-built VMDKs for unRAID
  
• Zeron's VMWare tools for unRAID
  
• apcupsd - ESXi/unRAID configuration - Is it hard to get your power backup to play nicely with ESXi?
  
• Other: UnRAID on VMWare ESXi with Raw Device Mapping
  
• Other: Virtual ESXi, why do it?
  

 

Finally, what plugins do you recommend I still run on unRAID or what should I leave for one of the VMs (e.g., Plex Media Server)?

[unTER]

I'm thinking of snagging a Crucial M500 120GB or 240GB for my Datastore drive. I'm thinking I'll just do one for now with backups. If it crashes, I can be down for a few days while a new one ships... again, as long as I have my backups.

 

I just had a crazy thought. I could still purchase the SSD but instead use it as my cache drive and repurpose my 500GB WD Black from my cache drive into my Datastore. I don't necessarily need blazing speeds for my VMs although they would be appreciated. I wonder which use of the SSD I would see more performance boost.