[kev2021]

it just never stops the expenses lol…

Kev

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[kev2021]

TV at my property had weak signal for part of xmas so meant on 1 particular day, i couldn’t watch tv as the picture would only come on for a minute or 2, then just go off….

Its happened before but only been when its excessively hot but this time not hot so I’m considering getting Freesat installed so if the normal aerial is no god, I can switch to freesat as my TV has inbuilt freesat tuner so that’s all ok, just need the actual disk and cable and whatever else installed :)

Kev

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[kev2021]

Thanks, yes going to wait till it comes as I’m going to get another 16GB ram for it but waiting to see what it comes with as i see it works with ECC and non-ECC ram apparently so want to be sure i order the same.  I have a feeling it may have a mini sas to SATA cable in it and the onboard is min sas port as they must know most people will raid it and use the boxes for vmware installs so would make sense but hence why I’m holding fire getting them.  The cables I see some, not overly cheap but hey ho… once you start these things, you kinda just gotta keep going…  at least once I’ve got it all, server should be good for 5 years at least :)

Prob will use 2 x SSD drives to setup OS on as will need to do that first, then I’m hoping I can simply remove the 2 x 2TB drives in raid 1 from gen 8 and connect up to gen 10 and it detects the drives and the mirror raid and just works as i don’t really want to copy all my VMs off again, re-setup the raid 1 and then move them all back.

Kev

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[kev2021]

Thanks, Do you know if the min sas to SATA cables come with the card, I not been able to find out what’s included so i have a feeling I will need to buy the cable(s) as unsure if the mcroserver comes with a min sas cable or not in it so will have to wait and see.

Company says dispatched but no tracking info yet and it been 3 or 4 days now so will wait and see.

Kev

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[kev2021]

Thanks, the drives are separate mirrors, i.e

Disk 1 & 2 = Mirrored OS drives containing vmware esxi only

Disk 3 & 4 = mirrored drives containing virtual machines

I’ve just been looking around and I see I have a Samsung 850 Evo SSD and a Samsung 860 EVO SSD, both 250GB in size.  Would it be ok to mirror these drives for running esxi?  I know the size is the same but usually they prefer identical drives but these are effectively 1 model out 850 vs 860… The 860 is in the box and says V-NAND SSD 860 EVO, unsure if the 850 is V-NAND SSD as that has recently come out of a old testing laptop that I probably used half a dozen times and then has been left so the drive should be fine as not much use :)

Thanks

Kev

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[kev2021]

think I’ll leave jumbo frames off, bound to be something that doesn’t work :)

Kev

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[kev2021]

The data is mine but need it to work reliably as some my VMs run databases etc and don’t want them to become corrupt etc due to running from nas or if something happens on my network and the microserver loses access to the VMs, even if its due to a update to vmware or nas box so I’m leaning more towards getting the raid card so as not to ruin the experience etc as the gen8 has been rock solid and works as intended.

Just unsure of the config to setup as mentioned above, all 4 drives i port on card wok ok considering will be 2 raid setups?

The performance issue on the card i think is only a issue if a drive fails, it takes a time to rebuild the array, but on plus side mine is a mirror of 2tb drives so I’m hoping wont take too long as i suspect some people are using  these as raid 5 with probably much larger drives hence reports taking 2 weeks etc to rebuild array.

Thanks

Kev

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[kev2021]

Waiting for it to arrive and then ilo enablement as had to get that somewhere else.  I’m still trying to work out the ISCSI as can’t find any info on if it wipes data when you set it up or not so looking at some options on that but I’m hoping to do it this month, should have the items within the next 2 weeks so will go from there.

Kev

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[kev2021]

Hi,

I’m not sure if synology is hardware or software raid tbh, you setup the raid via the GUI.  Yes, total storage space is around 14.3TB and I have approx. 4TB free at present so after moving the VMs over, I will have 3TB free.

I also have 3 free bays in the synology nas but as mentioned earlier, if I want to increase the capacity, I would need to move to a RAID 6 which effectively means adding 1 drive will not give me any additional capacity so I’d have to add 2 drives.  Alternatively, I could add 2 drives and set them up as a new volume in a mirror and host my VMs on that volume but unsure at present which way to go.

At present, I’m thinking use existing volume (providing data isn’t wiped) as that’s the cheapest option as no additional cost is required.

For the Gen 10 plus, I went with the Intel Xeon E-2224 4 Core Processor | 16GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM Intel Xeon E-2224 4 Core Processor | 16GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM.  The Pentium isn’t on the hardware compatibility list for vmware.  I did look at getting another 16GB of ram but I believe it will be EEC memory and that is over £100 for 16GB so for now, as my Gen 8 has only 16GB of ram, I’m going to keep the memory as is and then later in the year, may look at getting an additional 16GB ram to take it to the max 32GB.  I suspect I’ll need that as I need to update my VMs from running win2012R2 to Win 2022 which may involve doing in-place upgrades from 2022R2 to 2016, then maybe to 2019 and then 2022 or maybe I can go from 2016 to 2022 but I believe I need to go to 2016 first.

Alternatively, I setup a new VM’s with 2022 and then migrate the FSMO roles over to the new server and the data and then decomm the existing server and for my other servers, just re-setup from scratch and setup the apps and move the data over, nt sure yet, just focusing on the initial server setup at the moment.

With VMWare, I can use the raid on the Microserver gen 10 plus so by moving the VMs over the synology nas, I’ll then just had 1 drive running the vmware esxi with no redundancy etc it will just be a single drive and that’s it.  The other drives would be independent drives so will have to see what could use them for.

I have read the Microserver, i can plug a USB drive in internally with esxi on and launch it BUT for me, I’m not overly keen on leaving a USB stick inside the machine which is on 24/7/365, most USB sticks get quiet hot when I’ve used them and i’m not sure its viable tbh.  I can see if being ok if you only use the server for a short while and then turn it off etc but having it on 24/7, I’m not sure is viable, better with a HDD/SSD I think.

I thought about putting a SSD in the Gen 10 for esxi but tbh I’m not sure I’d see much advantage as esxi is a relatively small OS and doesn’t take too long to boot up on HHDs, its the actual VMs that take a while to boot up (I have approx 4 i think that power on when the machine is powered on) and overall they take probably 5 mins all be reachable but as I don’t turn it off that frequently, its not a huge deal.

The Synology nas is good but I feel that have skimped a little on CPU, it is a INTEL Atom C3538 2.1ghz 4 core CPU, I’d sooner of seen a non atom CPU tbh as they not as good as regular CPUs. From looking at reviews at the time, I think a lot of people were expecting them to move away from Atom CPUs but they didn’t which was a bit of a let down.

Yes, switch is all 1GBps but I’m hoping have 4 x 1gbps in a trunk giving me 4gbps from switch to nas, will be enough to manage simultaneous connections etc as each device is 1gbps max meaning it has 3gbps extra to facility VMs running etc. I believe my HP switch 1810G i think it is has 2 fibre ports but I think they are 1Gb fibre ports not 10gbe.

Yes, synology has ability to a 10GBe card but I’d then have to change all the cabling running round the house to newer cables and also get 10gbe cards for my PC etc so more expense and its not really needed at the moment, as long as the VMs will run and perform ok from synology NAS and it doesn’t impact ability to open/save files, copy files, watching films from the nas then I’m hoping it will be ok but will have to see as never done it before.

Also will need to see what the CPU/memory usage is like on the synology nas when I have the gen 10 loading 4 VMs from the nas, I expect network traffic to increase and likely CPU but maybe not memory.  If memory does increase a lot then I can always get more ram for it at a later date.

I also think in the new esxi that have altered it now so I may not need 1 of my VMs anymore wo will mean only 3 VMs running on start up :)  Will be interesting to see what speed is like loading the VMs and using the VMs.

Kev

 

 

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[kev2021]

Hiya,

My Synology nas is a DS1819+ which I upgraded the memory on to 16GB ram (it can have a max of 32GB) and I believe I have 1 x 16GB stick in it (Would need to open case / find receipt to prove it).  It is running 5 x 4TB WD Red drives setup in a RAID 5.  It also have 4 network ports bonded together and on the switch side (HP 24 port switch) I have the 4 ports that connect to the nas setup as a trunk so should be giving me approx 4gbps between switch and nas so effectively should mitigate any slowness I hope as all clients are 1gbps so hoping will be ok.  If I move all my VMs to it, I’ll take up approx 1TB of free space.  My plan was to setup a iSCSI target/lun on the Synology box on existing volume (keep all existing data on the volume), then in vmware, add in the Synology iscsi target and then move all VMS to the Synology and then effectively mount the VMs from Synology into vmware and then vmware can then load then up and run them across the network.  Effectively the NAS stores the VM’s and the server would simply run them from the synology nas, basically creating a central storage location.

Never tried this before so its totally new to me and maybe this isn’t very practical…

Kev

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[kev2021]

Yes, I recall them a few years back being well rated but you paid a “premium” price for it…

Kev

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[kev2021]

How about PowerToys

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/powertoys/

Kev

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[kev2021]

Hi all,

So coming back ground to this and I’ve bought a HP Microserver Gen 10 plus along with a ILO enablement (so can access from my PC remotely via webpage), I saw its compatible on the vmware compatibility list for esxi version 7 so all looking good… I saw it had raid and completely forgot it was software raid (till after I clicked the buy button and started checking more) so its now on its way to me and I’m now loathed to spend approx. £200 on a raid card, of which reviews imply it is slow due to no cache.  I suspect its ok for day to day stuff but IF the raid failed, there are reports of it taking weeks to rebuild due to the slow writes etc so I’m not overly keen albeit I only have 2 x 2TB drives i mirror so not raid 5 etc.  An extra £200 on top of the price of the server is making this expensive so my options are either try ISCSI from synology nas OR I simply setup esxi on drive 1, setup VMs on drives 2 and 3 (no raid/protection) and hope the drives don’t fail and maybe once a month I shut down all my VMs and copy them onto my NAS as a backup – bit time consuming as they will likely take days to copy over.  I was a long process copying all my VMs off the other drives before putting back on the replacement drives in the gen 8.  I can only hope the NIC driver is better on the gen 10 :)

AS the thought of manually backup VMs isn’t something I want to be doing or worrying about loosing data, in order to make the server useable running esxi, I’m coming back to the idea of using my Synology nas as iscsi target and storing my VMs on that and then effectively esxi just loads the VMs from the nas box.

I had a quick look and looks very easy to setup the iSCSI target, however 2 issues:-

1. Which type of iSCSI is best for use on my RAID 5 Synology
2. When I create the ISCSI target, does it then wipe the volume or not as I only have 1 Volume on my NAS and it has all my data on it etc so I can’t afford to wipe it all out.

The guides say click through these steps and done but doesn’t say if it wipes the data or not on the existing volume.

So still trying to find out :)

Anyone know what type is best to use for iSCSI and also does it wipe existing volume when you set it up?

Thanks

Kev

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[kev2021]

oh dear, not looking promising…. Lets hope BT come up with a suitable offer come May then..

Kev

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[kev2021]

I thought the idea of these was it went out say every other day when the grass hadn’t really grown so effectively the mall grass cuttings would just go back on the lawn and you wouldn’t really see them as they would be small, unlike if you left the grass for a week or 2 say, meaning no need to collect.

Some normal lawn mowers have a setting on which allows the grass to be collected or put back on the lawn i believe.

Kev

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