Hi.
I'm currently running a rather unstable and overly complex storage setup. I have FreeNAS 9 virtualized in ESXi 6.5. I use hardware passthrough of the onboard SATA controller (Intel Wellsburg) over to the FreeNAS VM. I have 6x HDDs in RAIDZ2 for media storage (movies mostly), and 2 SSDs mirrored for VM storage. I created a storage network with the SSDs and pass that through back to the ESXi host which is then configured as a datastore for VMs.
The configuration seemed ideal at first, but it's been very problematic and I get constant errors which I suspect is because I didn't use "approved" hardware, or something funky with passing through the Wellsburg controller. I don't really like FreeNAS and I'm looking to totally reconfigure my system from the ground up. Considering Proxmox at the moment.
Problem is, I'm just a hobbyist. Understand quite a bit about all of this stuff, but I haven't had enough exposure to the various filesystems out there to really know what's best for my needs. Stick with ZFS? XFS? Hardware RAID? Btrfs? Something else?
Goals:
I currently only have about 6TB used, my plan is to copy everything off the existing NAS to a new 8TB disk, wipe the system and rebuild, then copy everything back over. So I don't need any kind of streamlined migration plan. I understand the risks involved doing this.
What would you folks recommend with my goals in mind, current hardware, etc. If Proxmox isn't ideal for me, I'm open to that as well.. but I like what I see, and it seems to do everything I need it to do.
Any advice appreciated. Thanks
I'm currently running a rather unstable and overly complex storage setup. I have FreeNAS 9 virtualized in ESXi 6.5. I use hardware passthrough of the onboard SATA controller (Intel Wellsburg) over to the FreeNAS VM. I have 6x HDDs in RAIDZ2 for media storage (movies mostly), and 2 SSDs mirrored for VM storage. I created a storage network with the SSDs and pass that through back to the ESXi host which is then configured as a datastore for VMs.
The configuration seemed ideal at first, but it's been very problematic and I get constant errors which I suspect is because I didn't use "approved" hardware, or something funky with passing through the Wellsburg controller. I don't really like FreeNAS and I'm looking to totally reconfigure my system from the ground up. Considering Proxmox at the moment.
Problem is, I'm just a hobbyist. Understand quite a bit about all of this stuff, but I haven't had enough exposure to the various filesystems out there to really know what's best for my needs. Stick with ZFS? XFS? Hardware RAID? Btrfs? Something else?
Goals:
- NAS (for large media files and small home backups)
- VMs
- Docker (just to learn, for now)
- Plex server
- Redundancy
- Prefer mirroring over parity
- ASRock Rack EPC612D4U
- Xeon E5-2630L v3
- 32GB DDR4 ECC
- ESXi installed to one USB stick on motherboard
- FreeNAS installed to two USB sticks (mirrored) on rear USB.
- 6x 4TB HGST NAS HDD, RAIDZ2
- 2x 512GB SSD mirrored
- All 8 sata ports are occupied
I currently only have about 6TB used, my plan is to copy everything off the existing NAS to a new 8TB disk, wipe the system and rebuild, then copy everything back over. So I don't need any kind of streamlined migration plan. I understand the risks involved doing this.
What would you folks recommend with my goals in mind, current hardware, etc. If Proxmox isn't ideal for me, I'm open to that as well.. but I like what I see, and it seems to do everything I need it to do.
Any advice appreciated. Thanks