Review of my homelab

[Dergonic]

Hi everyone

 

I'm about to renew my homelab environnement with new hardware I got, but I'm struggling on which solution I should go. 

 

I currently have 2 devices in my homelab :

- One proxmox server (Dell working station - Intel xeon E5649 6C/12T - 24Gb ram - 2 HDD slots only) . This server is working good but is a little bit small (mainly in Ram) for my VMS (Domotic system, Docker containers, camera system and lab machines)

- One homemade TrueNas (Celeron Gold 4C/4T - 32Gb ram - 2*120Gb ssd - 8*2Tb HDD).This server is not in good shape and is close to break. SSDs are noname and old and Some HDDs is already reporting SMART errors - I don't rely on the NAS anymore.

 

I recently had my hand on a refurbished Dell R710 (2* Xeon E5645 6C/12T - 128Gb ram) and I plan to purchase some disks for it.

I was planning to put both the NAS and the Virtualiser to the R710, but I'm not sure which solution I should go as base operating system.

 

Plan 1 : Running ESXi

This solution is my preferred plan as I'm more familiar with ESXi than Proxmox. 

I would then have to migrate my Proxmox VMs to the ESXi and create a new virtual machine for a new TrueNAS

 

Plan 2 : Proxmox

This plan is to keep the current VMs and just move them.

I would anyhow have to create the TrueNAS VM

 

Plan 3 : TrueNas

As TrueNAS is able to run VMs, I have to consider this situation but i read it is not always a good plan as TrueNAS is not ment to be a virtualiser. 

But this would be at the cost of loosing the features of a true virtualiser (VM migration, backups, Management, ... )

 

Does anyone have an opinion on those plans or even another plan I did not considered ?

 

Regards

Dergonic

[Jarsky]

Bhyve used on FreeNAS is not nearly as compatible as KVM or ESXi. As a homelab, it wouldn't be my go to as you might have compatibility issues which completely defeats the purpose of a homelab. Id stick with either ESXi or KVM (Proxmox). 

 

The cool thing about Proxmox is PVE just runs on Linux, and you can do native ZFS raids directly in Proxmox for your storage which is a really cool feature. 

 

If you were to go ESXi, id consider maybe keeping your TrueNAS Core on baremetal, you can do a Intel 4 port nic between the storage and ESXi host to connect them. Setup some iSCSi targets in TrueNAS and then you can use the iSCSi Software Adapter in ESXi to attach your LUN's for the Datastores. 

 

I do a similar setup but virtualised. I have a single Ryzen 3950x system running UnRAID (KVM).

I then have a TrueNAS Core iSCSi Target, 2 virtualised vSphere 7.0 ESXi hosts and a VCSA. It allows me to migrate Computer/Storage between the 2 ESXi hosts while I do their baselines etc....

[Dergonic]

Thanks Jarsky

 

At least you confirmed my suspicions about running FreeNAS as base OS. I won't go that way. 

 

Sadly, keeping my current FreeNAS as baremetal is not a plan as I can't rely on it. Maybe it would be next plan to renew this one.