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Questions about READYNAS 4200v2 and ESXI (optimal RAID format and iSCSI vs NFS)
I'm setting up a 4200v2 for use in a home lab setup as a datastore for ESXi v7U2 (free version). It has 12 Seagate Constellation ST4000NM0053 ES 4TB SATA 7.2K 6Gbps drives, an Intel Xeon X3450 processor, and 24GB of RAM. It is running OS v6.10.5.
I added a Supermicro AOC-STG-i2T Dual 10G Ethernet Network Adapter (which OS 6.10.5 recognized just fine). I plan on going direct to my HP Proliant DL380's dual 10gb ports with the two 10gb ports on the 4200v2 with an MTU of 9000.
What I can't seem to decide, since there seems to be much conflicting data and posts, is which RAID setup to use and whether to use iSCSI or NFS?
After a factory default and new setup, the device picked X-RAID 6 as the array format. Should I stay with X-RAID, or move to a FLEX-RAID 10 array with 6 disks in each set? Basically, I need to have the performance of the VMs in READ/WRITE operations to be as fast as possible. I've seen posts on here say that iSCSI works great, and others that show poor performance and go with NFS. It will be holding various VMs (MS Server 2019, MS Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11, SUSE 12, update 5 Enterprise).
The drives are still empty, so I can do any re-formatting as necessary.
What has been your experience? Thanks for reading and offering any advice!
MC1967 wrote:
whether to use iSCSI or NFS?
Maybe set up one of each, and then benchmark them.
MC1967 wrote:
which RAID setup to use and whether to use iSCSI or NFS?
After a factory default and new setup, the device picked X-RAID 6 as the array format. Should I stay with X-RAID, or move to a FLEX-RAID 10 array with 6 disks in each set?
You should get faster writes with RAID-10 (though of course you will also get significantly lower capacity).
Another option is to include a RAID-10 SSD array.
MC1967 wrote:
I added a Supermicro AOC-STG-i2T Dual 10G Ethernet Network Adapter (which OS 6.10.5 recognized just fine). I plan on going direct to my HP Proliant DL380's dual 10gb ports with the two 10gb ports on the 4200v2 with an MTU of 9000.
Set up the ReadyNAS to use "round robin". That should give you the fastest speeds in the NAS->Proliant direction. If you can find the same mode on the Proliant, then use that.
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MC1967 wrote:
whether to use iSCSI or NFS?
Maybe set up one of each, and then benchmark them.
MC1967 wrote:
which RAID setup to use and whether to use iSCSI or NFS?
After a factory default and new setup, the device picked X-RAID 6 as the array format. Should I stay with X-RAID, or move to a FLEX-RAID 10 array with 6 disks in each set?
You should get faster writes with RAID-10 (though of course you will also get significantly lower capacity).
Another option is to include a RAID-10 SSD array.
MC1967 wrote:
I added a Supermicro AOC-STG-i2T Dual 10G Ethernet Network Adapter (which OS 6.10.5 recognized just fine). I plan on going direct to my HP Proliant DL380's dual 10gb ports with the two 10gb ports on the 4200v2 with an MTU of 9000.
Set up the ReadyNAS to use "round robin". That should give you the fastest speeds in the NAS->Proliant direction. If you can find the same mode on the Proliant, then use that.
I'm working on testing the speed now. SSDs are not an option, as I had already purchased drives for it.
Thanks for the response.
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