Windows Server / Proxmox / FreeNAS as host of all-in-one server?

[dmaes]

1 minute ago, RezidentSeagull said:

Yeah, I think you're ultimately right. It'll be tougher to use than either Windows Server or Freenas, but it'll be a great learning experience, plus it has a lot of features that I'm interested in getting into (mostly LXC containers since I want to better understand them)

Never used LXC containers, but isn't that just the guest using the host kernel? (and the features it brings with that)

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, RezidentSeagull said:

meant a web interface for managing storage and file sharing. Sorry for the confusion

if you go down the turnkey route you can a web gui for a the samba shares, and you don't really need to touch the zfs stuff very often.

[RezidentSeagull]

1 minute ago, 101dmrs said:

Never used LXC containers, but isn't that just the guest using the host kernel? (and the features it brings with that)

I think at a high-level that's it. I think it's intended more as a way to isolate applications, similar to a legit VM, without running all of the overhead of a hypervisor between the host and the container.

 

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

if you go down the turnkey route you can a web gui for a the samba shares, and you don't really need to touch the zfs stuff very often.

Good point. It may be more noob-ish, but a container with a web-interface would take some of the trouble away from me actually getting an SMB share up and running

[dmaes]

2 minutes ago, RezidentSeagull said:

I think at a high-level that's it. I think it's intended more as a way to isolate applications, similar to a legit VM, without running all of the overhead of a hypervisor between the host and the container.

Yeah, I think so

[DataOneNetworks]

On our VM hosts, we do not (and never will) run network resources (SMB shares, DHCP/DNS servers, etc.) due to the fact that if something goes wrong and starts consuming system resources, it doesn't affect the VMs on the host. I'd run a VM for the services that you intend to run on the host.

 

With your Windows Datacenter licensing, whether or not you need to use KMS activation depends on what type of key you have. If you have a retail, OEM or multiple activation key, then you don't need a Key Management Server. If you have a KMS key, then you do need a KMS host.

 

I haven't had much experience with ProxMox so I can't comment on it much, however with the new versions of VMware ESXi, it has a nice WebGUI for management so it may be worth giving that a go.

[dalekphalm]

15 hours ago, RezidentSeagull said:

So I'm planning out the eventual deployment of an all-in-one home server that will (ideally) handle both virtualization and ZFS-based file-storage in one box. The options I have considered so far are Windows Server 2016 (HyperV & FreeNAS VM for file storage), Proxmox VE (KVM, LXC containers and native ZFS w/ additional Samba sharing), or FreeNAS 11 (native ZFS and excellent file sharing w/ bhyve hypervisor as of FN 11).

 

I have a license for Server 2016 already, and the other two options are free and open-source, so the cost barrier isn't a big deal.

 

To me, Freenas has the best storage management interface, but (currently) the worst virtualization management interface (GUI is weak, command-line is likely better but more of a hassle); Proxmox has great native virtualization and container support but requires some complicated work to setup SMB sharing; and Windows Server 2016 is (AFAIK) more resource intensive as a host, but will allow me to run many Server 2016 VMs, and I'm much more familiar with HyperV.

 

Additionally, I mostly plan on running Linux VMs/containers, seeing as they are open-source and I find them fun to learn!

 

If anybody has some experience or perspective here, I would greatly appreciate your input!

I recently did a similar build and eventually went with ESXi 6.5 as my hypervisor (There's a free version), virtualized FreeNAS 9.10, used PCI Passthrough to pass my LSI HBA directly to FreeNAS, and created an 18TB RAIDZ1 pool, and also created a jail for a Transmission Server.

 

I also virtualized Server 2016 for a separate Plex server (I prefer running Plex on Windows - I've had issues running it on FreeNAS).

 

The setup is pretty easy to manage w/ the ESXi and FreeNAS web GUI's.

 

You can then also VM a Linux server if you wish, depending on your needs and what the base hardware is like.