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ZFS: Nexentastor best practises for ESXi 5
Hi,
I just configured my HP Microserver 16GB NL 40 with Nexenta. There are 6 SSD's inside: 2 for OS (mirrored, 60 GB), 4 SSD's 120GB (Kingston, enterprise version), 3 SATA 250 GB 5400 RPM.
Before setting this up, I actually only was looking for a fast storage NAS in my lab. I ended up spending some weeks but actually I don't want to spend any more now. I want to focus again on Microsoft products which run on my vm's.
Therefore this question.
I saw loads of articles for best practises: using NFS3 instead of 4 for ESXI?, make cache/log with mirrored drives?, backup the storage using snapshots?, use ISCSI over NFS?
Now, as mentioned, I don't want to spend much more time on configuring, checking best performance, just have a best practice "jump start".
So please advise (configured ZRAID on 4 SSD's of 120GB, NFS; 3 SATA's in ZRAID too).
Note: I'll probably replace the SATA's with 3 or more barracuda 2TB 64 MB cache, green disks for having more storage.
J.
I just configured my HP Microserver 16GB NL 40 with Nexenta. There are 6 SSD's inside: 2 for OS (mirrored, 60 GB), 4 SSD's 120GB (Kingston, enterprise version), 3 SATA 250 GB 5400 RPM.
Before setting this up, I actually only was looking for a fast storage NAS in my lab. I ended up spending some weeks but actually I don't want to spend any more now. I want to focus again on Microsoft products which run on my vm's.
Therefore this question.
I saw loads of articles for best practises: using NFS3 instead of 4 for ESXI?, make cache/log with mirrored drives?, backup the storage using snapshots?, use ISCSI over NFS?
Now, as mentioned, I don't want to spend much more time on configuring, checking best performance, just have a best practice "jump start".
So please advise (configured ZRAID on 4 SSD's of 120GB, NFS; 3 SATA's in ZRAID too).
Note: I'll probably replace the SATA's with 3 or more barracuda 2TB 64 MB cache, green disks for having more storage.
J.
VMware
Last Comment
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
you may find better performance using iSCSI LUNs, if your NFS performance is not as expected.
you will need to test performance in the VMs.
Benchmark software listed as before.
your current config looks okay. experiment with adding a ZIL log SSD to your SATA three, for increased performance, also SSD for cache
you will need to test performance in the VMs.
Benchmark software listed as before.
your current config looks okay. experiment with adding a ZIL log SSD to your SATA three, for increased performance, also SSD for cache
ASKER
@dlethe: who said I was running a vm? It is on bare metal!
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William Peck
Title had "ESXi" in it, so what do you expect me to think ;)
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Thanks for the input dlethe!
I do want to make it easy, general.
However, I do have the ssd s installed and don t like to start all over installing Nexenta afain on other disk (might do that some day but for now I want to play with my new born nas :-)).
I don t want more then 1 disk for redundancy (it s a lab after all, if 1disk down, I could shutdown whole nas and go to shop for other disk) UNLESS performance proves drastically.
That would mean raidz, not raidz2 I guess.
So you wouldn t make a raidz of ssd s then and use a mirror for zil and 1 disk for cache. Then I have 1 spare ssd 120 gb. Could use that in my laptop.
Note: microserver has already 16 gb ram which is max it can hold.
I do want to make it easy, general.
However, I do have the ssd s installed and don t like to start all over installing Nexenta afain on other disk (might do that some day but for now I want to play with my new born nas :-)).
I don t want more then 1 disk for redundancy (it s a lab after all, if 1disk down, I could shutdown whole nas and go to shop for other disk) UNLESS performance proves drastically.
That would mean raidz, not raidz2 I guess.
So you wouldn t make a raidz of ssd s then and use a mirror for zil and 1 disk for cache. Then I have 1 spare ssd 120 gb. Could use that in my laptop.
Note: microserver has already 16 gb ram which is max it can hold.
also note, that a single low power, low performing, AMD Neo N40L 1,5GHz dual core processor, is the bottleneck! also onboard nic does not support jumbo frames
my new Nexus phone performs faster than a ProLiant Microserver!
before you waste anymore time benchmark and test existing NAS versus Microserver, you may find your existing NAS has a faster processor.
my new Nexus phone performs faster than a ProLiant Microserver!
before you waste anymore time benchmark and test existing NAS versus Microserver, you may find your existing NAS has a faster processor.
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ASKER
Hanccocka, you always mentioned it s the fastest nas you ll find around? That s why I started with it in the first place ...
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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What is your I/O model? Be specific, ratio of reads vs writes vs sequential vs random I/O? Will you use deduplication or compression? Are these small data files?
If you are going all SSD, then just stripe 2 mirrors together. No need for ZIL or cache if you are all SSD, you need them if you go RAIDZ1 and those cheap slow SATA disks.
If you are going all SSD, then just stripe 2 mirrors together. No need for ZIL or cache if you are all SSD, you need them if you go RAIDZ1 and those cheap slow SATA disks.
I would not recommend deduplication or compression on that Microserver.
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William Peck
You can do both, it just depends on the I/O load. At some point CPU utilization may suffer, but if I/O utilization hits a ceiling first, then CPU load wont be a significant bottleneck.
ASKER
Thanks for this extended input guys, appreciate it!
ASKER
fyi (some vm's running since last night, config not changed -only vm's running on ssd zraid-):![nexenta-stats]()
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ASKER
Note: would installing napp-it be added value (if so, why would that be)? Thx
ASKER
I'll make a new ticket asap but nappit doesn't install ... just shows this:
admin@Nexenta:~$ wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappit | perl
--14:33:49-- http://www.napp-it.org/nappit
=> `-'
Resolving www.napp-it.org... 80.67.28.3, 2a00:1158:0:300:9a63::1
Connecting to www.napp-it.org|80.67.28.3|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 23,126 (23K) [text/plain]
100%[=====================
14:33:49 (235.53 KB/s) - `-' saved [23126/23126]
Logging on with root gives "wrong command".
admin@Nexenta:~$ wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappit | perl
--14:33:49-- http://www.napp-it.org/nappit
=> `-'
Resolving www.napp-it.org... 80.67.28.3, 2a00:1158:0:300:9a63::1
Connecting to www.napp-it.org|80.67.28.3|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 23,126 (23K) [text/plain]
100%[=====================
14:33:49 (235.53 KB/s) - `-' saved [23126/23126]
Logging on with root gives "wrong command".
Note: would installing napp-it be added value (if so, why would that be)? Thx
it will give you some additional management fuinctionaility, not available from the current interface.
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James Murphy
As for using 'cuda green drives those disks are low duty cycle, and not designed for 24x7x365. If you DO use them, don't even think of doing anything other than RAIDZ2.