OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb
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@Doyler3000 said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:
install ESXi 6.5 onto SD card
Have you looked at other Hypervisors for this task? Just out of curiosity seems like KVM would be a great fit since you're already a *nix shop.
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While ESXi is a good solution, are you taking advantage of the features it comes with at the paid levels. Or are you using the free version which is handicapped?
There are a lot of choices that offer a lot of flexibility to manage your infrastructure outside of ESXi.
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Are you already virtualized? I'm pretty sure the LVM snapshots would work for you with XFS but it would be something to test out to make sure. No reason not to spin up a new VM to test it with.
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@Doyler3000 said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:
I'd like and have been asked, to keep the snapshot functionality that ZFS offers.
You get this with any Virtualization platform... If you must have it at the file system level, then I believe that you can do this with LVM or BtFRS... Having little experience with either of those, I don't know which would be better.
Pretty much any distribution of Linux would be good for file serving. I believe the current favorites around here are either CentOS or Fedora.
As for the Data disk, you'll need to make sure that your VMware data store is set for VMFS-5 or better for support of disk images > 2 TB.
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We're running ESXi essentials here. One reason I'd favour sticking with VMWare is that it's what I know best. Another is I'm kind of a 1 man band here as a sysadmin but I do have a deputy who works a tester who I've trained up a little bit in ESXi in case I'm not around and something happens.
Yes we're on ESXi 6.5 so it'd be a VMFS 5 datastore. -
and yes it's snapshotting at the file level I'd need to replicate the daily zfs snapshots we've got now.
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With Essentials do you get the ability to backup your VM's without an agent? Or really any other benefit?
I thought it was Essentials Plus.
With Essentials, isn't that just to allow for more cores and memory?
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Yes I can use Veeam (I use the free version) with vcenter on essentials to backup VMs
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Yeah with essentials you're just paying for the hypervisor. Why? It's wasted money at that point as you get none of the benefits.
Hyper-V offers more than this and is free (granted its Microsoft's solution). XenServer and KVM way out offer this as well.
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Using Essentials is just wasted money. (sorry to be blunt). You need at least Essentials Plus for it to make sense to use VmWare.
The reason is that the software is gimped. Broken kneecaps in the middle of the street. Gimped.
If you're at a refresh interval for your servers and NAS you could get a solution from @scale which is highly available, with backup capabilities with all of the bells and whistles you could want.
Alternatively you could go with XenServer and 2 or 3 servers, get Xen Orchestra and have just about the same exact set of functionality.
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Also ESXi is in no way *nix, any longer.
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I get the centralised management, plus the agentless backup. And it's quite a bit cheaper than essentials plus as I remember. High availabilty is not a major concern for us.
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@Doyler3000 said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:
I get the centralised management, plus the agentless backup. And it's quite a bit cheaper than essentials plus as I remember. High availabilty is not a major concern for us.
How are you getting those features as Essentials doesn't include it? Using Veeam is an outside provider. It's good software, but its not within the Hypervisor.
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Standard availability is likely all you need, which I completely understand. Its the base that any business really does need.
But spending for software, that you're unable to use or scale up as needed is painful.
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@Doyler3000 said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:
I get the centralised management, plus the agentless backup. And it's quite a bit cheaper than essentials plus as I remember. High availabilty is not a major concern for us.
So why spend the money on a hypervisor when all major hypervisors are provided for free?
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Without wanting to draw out the virtualisation platform questions anymore let me just say that the £600 or something we paid for essentials is not outrageous given that it's the platform
- I'm most familar with and
- the people in the company who would have to step in if I wasn't around are most familiar with
I completely accept that Xenserver and it's bells and whistles come for free and I'll definitely take it into consideration when I'm implementing a solution.
Now onto the filesystem and OS for the VM
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@Doyler3000 said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:
Without wanting to draw out the virtualisation platform questions anymore let me just say that the £600 or something we paid for essentials is not outrageous given that it's the platform
- I'm most familar with and
- the people in the company who would have to step in if I wasn't around are most familiar with
I completely accept that Xenserver and it's bells and whistles come for free and I'll definitely take it into consideration when I'm implementing a solution.
Now onto the filesystem and OS for the VM
!XenServer with Xen Orchestra, use CentOS for the VM.
All linux, all day, and save that £600 for Beer-Friday!
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£600 will keep me in beer for quite a while. I don't drink like I used to
So with Centos as the VM, would you use LVM snapshotting? ZFS on linux and BTRFS are not quite production ready seems to be a common (possibly wrong) consensus. There would be complaints if we lost the file system snapshotting that ZFS allows.
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@Doyler3000 said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:
£600 will keep me in beer for quite a while. I don't drink like I used to
So with Centos as the VM, would you use LVM snapshotting? ZFS on linux and BTRFS are not quite production ready seems to be a common (possibly wrong) consensus. There would be complaints if we lost the file system snapshotting that ZFS allows.
LVM will do snapshots at the filesystem level yes.
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@Doyler3000 said in OS/Filesystem for file server ~ 8Tb:
£600 will keep me in beer for quite a while. I don't drink like I used to
So with Centos as the VM, would you use LVM snapshotting? ZFS on linux and BTRFS are not quite production ready seems to be a common (possibly wrong) consensus. There would be complaints if we lost the file system snapshotting that ZFS allows.
Use CentOS as the server, use Veeam for your backups. You get a bit more functionality with it, especially if you aren't familiar with the process to restore files using the backed in snapshot functionality.
