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XPEnology on ESXi or bare-metal


jacklayne

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Hi at all,

 

I should change my nas/server, switch from Debian to XPEnology, probably, and i can choose to use my "old" Intel Atom D510 ( Dual Core 1.6 Ghz ) for bare-metal installation or install XPE as virtual machine on ESXi with the hardisk connected as RDM.

Pro and cons????

 

Thanks :smile:

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It all depends on what you want out of your hardware, or knowing what you want, and using capable hardware.

 

example; My NAS is more of a mini-server for me. I use performance, but low power Intel CPUs. (Type T w/ 45W), and supporting hardware that is all compatible with VTd (direct IO), to pass through LSI controller for XPEnology raid array... this way DSM has direct access to hard drives, and they are only for DSM. My NAS is file storage, and Plex server that is capable of transcoding any media without breaking a sweat.. and handles all my media (NZBget, Sonarr, couchpotato, ect). It's also VPN access to my LAN from my mobile phone :smile:

 

Then I have other VM's on the same machine; Windows 8.1 for Windows Media Center (to watch cable TV via cablecard and Xbox 360... you don't need to activate it to use it for WMC extender/server). I also have a linux VM for just playing around with linux, capable of compiling android source, ect, ect.

 

Storage looks like this:

 

128GB SSD for my VM's.

All physical hard drives for DSM array.

DSM iSCSI LUNs to give additional storage to my other VMs (like WMC's live TV buffer, and DVR'd shows).

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I don't like any MB with only 2 slots for RAM, although it will be fine for Xpenology. i3 is still a lot of CPU for just NAS. if you buy ECC, then i3 is a good choice. otherwise cheaper Pentiums are still more than enough. I don't know if you plan on usingthe wifi with xpenology or not, or if that wireless nic is supported, maybe check it out. H97 is also fairly overkill for what xpenology needs. 2 NICS are not the benefit you might think, unless your switch supports dynamic LACP AND you will have multiple folks hitting the NAS at the same moment with sequential reads / writes.

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I don't like any MB with only 2 slots for RAM, although it will be fine for Xpenology. i3 is still a lot of CPU for just NAS. if you buy ECC, then i3 is a good choice. otherwise cheaper Pentiums are still more than enough. I don't know if you plan on usingthe wifi with xpenology or not, or if that wireless nic is supported, maybe check it out. H97 is also fairly overkill for what xpenology needs. 2 NICS are not the benefit you might think, unless your switch supports dynamic LACP AND you will have multiple folks hitting the NAS at the same moment with sequential reads / writes.

 

The hardware is for ESXi and not only the NAS. The question is if to use NAS as bare-metal or ESXi, and in ESXi case "what hardware to buy".

2Nics is good for ESXi, 1 nic for nas and 1 nic for other virtual machines.

If i use "bare-metal" i think that my "atom dual core D510" is still good, or celeron/pentium/amd a1 are perfect.

 

i3's don't support VTd, so if you're going the esxi route, you won't be able to pass hardware to any VM's. If you want VTd, you'll have to go w/ i5+.

 

But only alternative to RDM solution is Raid controller with VT-D? this for Smart and etc...

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i3's don't support VTd, so if you're going the esxi route, you won't be able to pass hardware to any VM's. If you want VTd, you'll have to go w/ i5+.

 

But only alternative to RDM solution is Raid controller with VT-D? this for Smart and etc...

 

You only need an HBA card (I recommend LSI 9201-8i - OEM only, can be found on ebay for ~$75, works great with ESXI). But if you want drive temps in DSM you need to passthrough a controller (VTd), or bare metal. DSM doesn't use smartctrl (smartmontools) to read drive temps, it uses synodisk (their own utility), and synodisk doesn't like RDM drives - it won't report the temps (at least when I used RDM in the past). smarctrl will read the temps of RDM drives, but that's not of much help if DSM uses synodisk.

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