Question about NAS/Server arrangement

[CrunchyChewie]

I am going to be setting up a small Server/NAS network at home and had some questions about the configuration.

For the server, it is going to run 3-4+ VM's: Ubuntu 10.04 server(web), Server 2003, Server 2008 etc... It will be a Xeon 5620, 12GB RAM, 2x150GB 10k in RAID1.

For the NAS, I think I have settled on using OpenSolaris with ZFS. I want to use the storage for media streaming, client backups, an rsync backup with my other office, and iSCSI targets for the VM's.

It will use this mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182145

This proc: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116264

This controller card with JBOD capable firmware: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816117157

4-6 RE3 1TB WD drives.

My question is: Is it better to keep the NAS as a separate appliance, or should I just lump all this into one box and run OpenSolaris as another VM? Any other potential issues with my setup?

 

[Hydaral]

You are aware that the OpenSolaris project is effectively dead now that Oracle owns Sun?

If you run the VM host software directly on the NAS (and a Solaris kernel distro on top) you will lose any benefit from ZFS's direct interaction with the drives.

 

[CrunchyChewie]

I understand that OpenSolaris is dead, however it still seems to be the most stable, highest performing implementation of ZFS I have seen.

It outperforms NexentaStor, and both ZFS-Fuse and OpenIndiana have incomplete implementations of ZFS. The docs on both of the latter expressively state they should NOT be used in production. Even the FreeNAS implementation of ZFS seems problematic, and who knows what is to come with v8...

That being said, I have decided on a separate box for my NAS, and will probably use OpenSolaris. Thanks for the input though!

 

[Jesse B]

ZFS is supported on FreeBSD, and this would probably be the better choice now that Solaris is deprecated. I'd go this option personally.

A friend of mine is developing a web front-end for BSD using ZFS. It's still under development, worth checking out though:

www.submesa.com

 

[00Roush]

Based on all of the information I have seen and some of my own testing if you are wanting high performance you should not put your NAS/file server in a VM. As you mentioned OpenSolaris has the best ZFS performance.

What are your performance goals for the NAS?

00Roush

 

[SoftDux-Rudi]

I recently started looking at using ZFS purely for it's performance. But id OpenSolaris is dead (I didn't know this since I've never used it) then what other options are available for stable & high perfomance ZFS servers, similar to Nexenta? Nexenta, IMO is far too expensive to be competitive with other projects.

 

[Jesse B]

I recently started looking at using ZFS purely for it's performance. But id OpenSolaris is dead (I didn't know this since I've never used it) then what other options are available for stable & high perfomance ZFS servers, similar to Nexenta? Nexenta, IMO is far too expensive to be competitive with other projects.

BSD supports ZFS, although it's not caught up with Solaris yet I believe. I know of people using OpenSolaris with good results. A friend on another forum is also working on a webGUI for FreeBSD using ZFS. It's still in development, but definitely worth checking out.

www.zfsguru.com

 

[Hydaral]

I recently started looking at using ZFS purely for it's performance. But id OpenSolaris is dead (I didn't know this since I've never used it) then what other options are available for stable & high perfomance ZFS servers, similar to Nexenta? Nexenta, IMO is far too expensive to be competitive with other projects.

How much data do you need to store? Nexenta is free up to 18TB USED space.

 

[SoftDux-Rudi]

How much data do you need to store? Nexenta is free up to 18TB USED space.

18TB isn't much, at all. And I don't like the fact that they choose to limit you on the amount of space you use. Why????

 

[Hydaral]

18TB isn't much, at all.

It's plenty for me, I still haven't breached 500GB

And I don't like the fact that they choose to limit you on the amount of space you use. Why????

I guess they figure it's the line between home and business users.

 

[00Roush]

If you have used Nexenta Stor you will understand why they decide to charge people after a certain amount of used storage. The web interface really works pretty well and looks very easy to manage large amounts of data. If you just use the command line version I believe you can store any amount of data.

00Roush