i7 6700K used for pfsense router/NAS using ESXi

[paddy-stone]

Hey all, would just like some input regarding using my spare 6700k in a system that's running ESXi with pfsense/freenas and at least a windows and a few linux OS as VMs. I am getting a quad intel gigabit NIC, so ports won't be a problem. Can anyone advise potential problems from having that config? ESXi will be run from a USB drive, with the VMs on an SSD and the NAS storage on 2-4 3.5 HDDs... I will be (hopefully) importing the volumes from my current freenas setup. I will maybe underclock and undervolt the CPU to save some power, but considering this will be potentially taking the place of at least 2 machines, I think it's all good? I will only be using a cryorig c7 as the cooler for now and see how it gets on with noise/performance.

This will be a fairly big project for me as I haven't dabled in pfsense before, and I also want to configure it as a VPN server to access the NAS VM from outside the LAN. no time constraints as I already have a NAS + backup NAS and PC etc to use while this is being built and configured. One thing I have consdiered is RAM being too low, will only be using 8GB for now as money is a bit tight right now, big purchases lately. I have considered selling the i7 and buying a g4560, but thought I might be better off keeping the i7 for the 8 threads it has, what do you think?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Should work fine. For just a file server and a router that cpu is overkilll. The big thing esxi wants is ram. 8gb is low for this use. Id look into getting at least 16 and 32 is nice.

[paddy-stone]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Should work fine. For just a file server and a router that cpu is overkilll. The big thing esxi wants is ram. 8gb is low for this use. Id look into getting at least 16 and 32 is nice.

Yeah, thought RAM amount might be the problem. Do you think the i7 is still overkill for using other VMs too though? I also may use it as a HTPC with either linux or windows, and probably at least one more VM too. I have my main PC, and I use VMS there too, some of the VMs on the new box may be duplicates/redundancy on the offchance that my main PC is unusable for what ever reasons. Even if I sold the i7, with the market how it is I think I'd be lucky to get £220 for it even though it's still under warranty for 28 or so months... plus if my plans change I may end up swapping out the i7 in the future and using the i7 for a mobile workstation or something, so it's more of a fill-in for however long at the moment. Thanks for replying, appreciate any insight people may give me in regards to this project

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah, thought RAM amount might be the problem. Do you think the i7 is still overkill for using other VMs too though? I also may use it as a HTPC with either linux or windows, and probably at least one more VM too. I have my main PC, and I use VMS there too, some of the VMs on the new box may be duplicates/redundancy on the offchance that my main PC is unusable for what ever reasons. Even if I sold the i7, with the market how it is I think I'd be lucky to get £220 for it even though it's still under warranty for 28 or so months... plus if my plans change I may end up swapping out the i7 in the future and using the i7 for a mobile workstation or something, so it's more of a fill-in for however long at the moment. Thanks for replying, appreciate any insight people may give me in regards to this project

 

For a htpc this setup won't work well at all. Esxi has no gui and there is no easy way to make one other than vt-d and gpu passthourgh. If you want a htpc, id just install linux instead and use kvm(does the same thing as esxi) then you can have a full desktop on the host and other linux goodies like software raid.

 

a g3258 should be fine cpu wise as your normally limited by the ram in a home virtulazition server and none of those vms need that much cpu power.

[paddy-stone]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

For a htpc this setup won't work well at all. Esxi has no gui and there is no easy way to make one other than vt-d and gpu passthourgh. If you want a htpc, id just install linux instead and use kvm(does the same thing as esxi) then you can have a full desktop on the host and other linux goodies like software raid.

 

a g3258 should be fine cpu wise as your normally limited by the ram in a home virtulazition server and none of those vms need that much cpu power.

Sorry, maybe I was unclear, the main things I want this to do are:-

1. Pfsense router
2. NAS - most likely freenas as that's what I use now.
3. Windows and linux VMs, these would only be powered on when needed though.
4. HTPC - but would use one of the linux or windows VMs for this though.

They would all potentially have to be run at the same time though, so wouldn't I need to assign cores/threads to those VMs? or would they share resources including virtual cores? but not RAM?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, I have only ever ran VMs from within a host OS before and assigned CPUs/RAM to each client up to the maximum I have for running VMs, so for example if I had 8 logical cores, I have assigned maybe 4/2/2/2/2/2 - but only thought I could run 4+2+2 or 2+2+2+2 etc, just an example. Or would they all run but share the cores? I'm confused now, I might have been doing this wrong for years

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, paddy-stone said:

Sorry, maybe I was unclear, the main things I want this to do are:-

1. Pfsense router
2. NAS - most likely freenas as that's what I use now.
3. Windows and linux VMs, these would only be powered on when needed though.
4. HTPC - but would use one of the linux or windows VMs for this though.

They would all potentially have to be run at the same time though, so wouldn't I need to assign cores/threads to those VMs? or would they share resources including virtual cores? but not RAM?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, I have only ever ran VMs from within a host OS before and assigned CPUs/RAM to each client up to the maximum I have for running VMs, so for example if I had 8 logical cores, I have assigned maybe 4/2/2/2/2/2 - but only thought I could run 4+2+2 or 2+2+2+2 etc, just an example. Or would they all run but share the cores? I'm confused now, I might have been doing this wrong for years

 

They will share all cores, vms run like any other process on the host.

 

For ram, you can normally save a good amount if you use balloning so the VMS only use how much they need.

 

You can over allocate cores so you can have 4 vm's and they can all have 4 virtual cores on a quad core just fine. There is no limit to virutal cores other than the max cpu time.

 

For the NAS id use something other than freenas. IS there a reason why you need esxi? If you don't id go proxmox and do it on the host as it has zfs support. Freenas doesn't like to run in a vm and something like linux wiht samba will work just as well or the turnkey distros for a web insterface.

 

The thing with a htpc is that you can't get video output easily from esxi. 

 

[paddy-stone]

40 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

They will share all cores, vms run like any other process on the host.

 

For ram, you can normally save a good amount if you use balloning so the VMS only use how much they need.

 

You can over allocate cores so you can have 4 vm's and they can all have 4 virtual cores on a quad core just fine. There is no limit to virutal cores other than the max cpu time.

 

For the NAS id use something other than freenas. IS there a reason why you need esxi? If you don't id go proxmox and do it on the host as it has zfs support. Freenas doesn't like to run in a vm and something like linux wiht samba will work just as well or the turnkey distros for a web insterface.

 

The thing with a htpc is that you can't get video output easily from esxi. 

 

Ahh I see, thanks for explaining all that... I have considered running proxmox, I already have the ISO for that along eith ESXi. I don't have a specific need for ESXi, just through most threads I have read up on, most people have suggested it as the type 1 hypervisor... could be the age of the threads I've read though and not specific to this use case either. I will definitely check out more about proxmox, as long as I can run pfsense and a NAS build, doesn't have to be freenas, just that I'm used to that is all, but as I have my main NAS going anyway, I can afford to experiment with other NAS builds if you think that would be better? I like a GUI for usage of it, I can use CLI but as my memory is failing me some days, it's a little easier to use GUI than to sit there trying to remember commands etc, LOL

I really appreciate you helping me here.. I have indeed been using VMs incorrectly, or not up to their full potential. I have just been making sure I didn't exceed the amount of logical cores  

I have my work cut out learning some more about this stuff obviously, I didn't get into VMs until a few years ago, maybe 5 at most and even then it was as I said and didn't over-allocate logical cores as I thought it might crash one of the other VMs or something.

OK well I have some learning and experimenting to do with what I actually can get done. So will try proxmox and learn what I am doing there and see if I can get pfsense running in a VM to start with, and then add the NAS build into another VM and see how I get on with that.

Thanks again for the advice... appreciate it

 

[Nikolithebear]

4 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

For a htpc this setup won't work well at all. Esxi has no gui and there is no easy way to make one other than vt-d and gpu passthourgh. If you want a htpc, id just install linux instead and use kvm(does the same thing as esxi) then you can have a full desktop on the host and other linux goodies like software raid.

 

a g3258 should be fine cpu wise as your normally limited by the ram in a home virtulazition server and none of those vms need that much cpu power.

There is actually a really nice web gui  

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 hours ago, Nikolithebear said:

There is actually a really nice web gui  

but no gui for making a htpc on it.