Server setup

[xbkuba]

Hey everyone,

 

I got my hands on HP DL380 G7 (2x Xeon X5650, 16gb RAM, HP Smart Array P410 512MB FBWC RAID Controller) and I was wondering if I should use virtualization (vmWare) or choose freenas/unraid and use jails or containers or whatever are they called for running the things I want.

 

I would like to run:

-Server for file storage and sharing

-VPN server

-Some modded minecraft server

-maybe a PiHole

-Plex

 

I was first thinking about using unraid but then I read on the internet that the P410 doenst work well with ZFS + I though that the CPU power would be wasted on just unraid thats why I am leaning towards virtualization.

So I am thinking about virtualized windows server that would act as file sharing server and plex, ubuntu running minecraft, some linux distro for pihole and VPN.

 

The question I have is how should I set up the disks? I have 3*3TB HDDs and 512GB SSD.

If I understand it correctly I will need to use the P410 in RAID0 (which is tottaly unsafe?) or RAID1 which would leave me with 4.5TB of actuall storage I can use for my VMs right?

If I go with RAID 1 is there a point in having the SSD in?

 

And one last questing - Is it possible to connect the HDDs without making RAID out of them? So vmWare would work with the drives instead of the RAID?

 

PS: I am sort of new to servers so if I said something stupid, sorry about that.

PPS: I know its a lot of text so thanks to anyone who actually reads this.

 

[Windows7ge]

I see there's quite a bit to go over here.

 

44 minutes ago, xbkuba said:

I was first thinking about using unraid but then I read on the internet that the P410 doenst work well with ZFS + I though that the CPU power would be wasted on just unraid thats why I am leaning towards virtualization.

If you want to use software RAID (ZFS being a good choice) do not use a hardware RAID controller (the P410). ZFS likes direct access to the drives. Ideally you'd buy an HBA but a RAID card flashed to IT mode or leaving the P410 in JBOD mode should also suffice.

 

Also UnRAID supports virtualization. Personally I'd look over free software options first though as UnRAID isn't free.

 

44 minutes ago, xbkuba said:

If I understand it correctly I will need to use the P410 in RAID0 (which is tottaly unsafe?) or RAID1 which would leave me with 4.5TB of actuall storage I can use for my VMs right?

If I go with RAID 1 is there a point in having the SSD in?

With RAID0 that would be discouraged as it means 0 fault tolerance. Now how you think RAID1 works is incorrect. 3x 3TB disks in RAID1 would equal 3 usable TBs and 3 complete copies of your data. Getting 4.5TB out of your 3 drives doesn't exist in this context. What you can do (at the cost of performance) is go with RAID5 which would offer you some fault tolerance and give you 6TB of usable storage.

 

Personally I'd buy one more 3TB drive and use RAID10. This would be ideal for VMs as the way the data gets handled results in much higher IOPS.

 

44 minutes ago, xbkuba said:

If I go with RAID 1 is there a point in having the SSD in?

What you can do is use this as a Cache or a Log (or both if you know how). This would help the VMs act a little more snappy as they'd read or write quick data to/from the SSD instead of directly from the slower HDD pool.

 

44 minutes ago, xbkuba said:

And one last questing - Is it possible to connect the HDDs without making RAID out of them? So vmWare would work with the drives instead of the RAID?

I think you're asking if it's possible to connect a drive to a VM as if it were directly connected to a standalone system itself. The answer is yes. It's called pass-through. This lets you run the device directly off the VM as if it wasn't virtualized at all. You just have to know how to pass it though to the VM.

[xbkuba]

14 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Ideally you'd buy an HBA but a RAID card flashed to IT mode or leaving the P410 in JBOD mode should also suffice.

I read on the forums that the P410 cannot be put into JBOD/IT mode so the only thing left would be to put each drive into its own RAID 0 which would leave me with 3x3TB drives right?

 

 

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, xbkuba said:

I read on the forums that the P410 cannot be put into JBOD/IT mode so the only thing left would be to put each drive into its own RAID 0 which would leave me with 3x3TB drives right?

 

 

That would not work. You can only create one RAID per RAID card. Even if you could that still wouldn't allow direct access to the drives. HBAs aren't expensive you could buy them used or get something like a Dell PERC H310 and flash it to IT mode yourself.

[Jarsky]

26 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

That would not work. You can only create one RAID per RAID card. Even if you could that still wouldn't allow direct access to the drives. HBAs aren't expensive you could buy them used or get something like a Dell PERC H310 and flash it to IT mode yourself.

You can create as many logical volumes as you have unconfigured good drives available. 

But i've never done the single disk RAID0 on the Intel controller, and I know that it removes unsupported formats in the RAID configuration utility. 

 

I have heard of people doing this years ago as a work around to get disks presenting, but yeah wouldnt really recommend it since it's an unsupported configuration running zfs on top of RAID.