Baremetal OMV or OMV as a VM in ESXi?

Hi guys, I am currently using OMV and ESXi with old hardware currently (Core 2 era, just got myself a Phenom II X4 machine) and I must say that I am learning quite a fair bit while resolving my IT needs bit by bit.

Now that I noticed that these old hardware are taking up quite a bit of space and also electricity, I am looking into consolidating them into say, one or two machines. I am thinking of having a NAS, about 2 Linux VMs running (e.g. web projects; something like a production server?) and maybe Owncloud or Baikal for my personal usage. (It will be excellent if I can even run a Windows VM, but that seems more like a long term project...)

So, for starters, should I go with a baremetal OMV setup or have that as a VM instead? I am noticing equally good results on either side, just that if I were to go baremetal OMV, setting up VMs there seems intuitive (and I don't think the machine using it can handle them since it has only 1GB of DDR2 RAM); if I were to go ESXi, setting everything up as VMs is easy, but the machine using it eats up twice as much as the baremetal OMV machine.

Thanks!

Zitat von ryecoaaron

ESXi works well but you defintely need more than 1gb of ram.

Thanks for the fast response! Ah sorry, forgot to mention that the ESXi machine is using Q6600, having 7GB of DDR2 RAM now.

One of my decisions is on whether to have this machine be my OMV machine too (i.e. OMV as VM) or not.

Also, another decision is whether I should go convert the Phenom II machine into the new ESXi machine since it can use up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM and then have it be my OMV machine too, or just go grab a 2nd hand Ivy Lake or even Haswell machine for this purpose.

PS: Both the Q6600 and Phenom II machines use about 110W-120W on average though

Zitat von ryecoaaron

7gb will work well for an OMV VM and Windows.

If I need a few more VMs with OMV and Windows (or even Hackintosh?), I understand that 7GB RAM will be barely enough and I will need VT-d for the Windows VM to work properly (since I need to passthrough a GPU to it), right?

Also, I wonder how to do these in the most energy efficient way...

Zitat von ryecoaaron

If you want to use the machine as a workstation, you need to passthrough the gpu. Otherwise, you don't need to.

Depends on what you are doing with the VMs. 7 GB is enough for multiple VMs. 1 GB for OMV and 2 GB for Windows.

I intend for the Windows/Hackintosh VM as a workstation (or even gaming) VM, hence the need for passthrough in this case.

Under what circumstance should I allocate more than 1GB of RAM to OMV?

Zitat von ryecoaaron

If OMV is doing more than just being a fileserver, it might need more than 1 gb.

I see, examples are like SnapRaid, Plex e.t.c.?

Also, in other words, in my use case, should I be aiming to build a ESXi server that can have an OMV VM but yet also low power? Which CPU and hardware can I start looking at?

Zitat von ryecoaaron

Yep, plex and snapraid are happier with more memory.

I would get haswell or newer cpu. More, slower cores are better than less, faster cores as well. My server has six VMs running all the time and more testing VMs some of the time. It does well with 16gb of ram. My VMs are stored on SSDs for better speed as well.

Nice, looks like I should aim for something like that (instead of just a baremetal OMV setup, which is good but I think I am ready for something more interesting).

How's the power consumption of your server (and these CPUs) like?

Zitat von ryecoaaron

My server typically pulls about 220 watts. I know this sounds high but I have 3 raid cards, 20 3.5" hard drives, and 6 SSDs in it

That's a lot, I am not sure if my family will be ok with me pulling that much LOL... Then again, my 3 machines and my main setup are pulling about 350W for much less HDDs and SSDs, so I guess we are even

What are the other specs of your server? (I am asking as I need to have a rough sense of what's going on e.t.c.)

Zitat von ryecoaaron

Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F
CPU: Xeon E3-1285L V3
RAM: 16GB - 2 x GB Crucial ECC
Case: Lian Li PC-D8000
Fans: 8 x 120mm Cooler Master Fans
PSU: Corsair 950 W
Hard drives: 9 x Samsung F4 2TB, 8 x Seagate Barracuda 1TB, 3 x WD Red 4TB
SSDs: 4 x Samsung 256mb, 2 x Samsung 128mb
HBAs: LSI 9260 and LSI 9211-8i

I think that is everything.

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Wow, thanks, that's a late-game build that I can aim for

Meanwhile, I am thinking of just using the Phenom II X4 machine as my ESXi machine due to it having a better casing for the HDDs but undervolt and even underclock it. Good idea? (This move will have other issues too, which I think can be better asked in other threads)

Zitat von ryecoaaron

The Phenoms are not good for saving energy but it should work until you can get something else.

That's what I am thinking given that it is the only machine that can have 16GB of RAM; the rest are Q6600 with a maximum of 8GB of RAM. I am also sourcing out alternatives and even possible buyers for the Phenom II CPU (not the whole machine I guess)

I am more concerned about any effects of undervolting and underclocking for the OMV VM and maybe even ESXi itself.

Zitat von ryecoaaron

As long as the undervolted CPU is stable, OMV and ESXi won't care about it. I have run OMV on an overclocked CPU before.

I see, so I will have to run stability tests too (maybe using the benchmark tool in Parted Magic?)... Hmm.