[OmniOS-discuss] Shopping for an all-in-one server

[Ian Collins]

Jim Klimov wrote:
> Thus the box we'd build should be good with storage (including responsive read-write NFS) and VM hosting. I am not sure whether OI, OmniOS or ESX(i?) with HBA passthrough onto an illumos-based storage/infrastructure services VM would be a better fit. Also, I was away from shopping for new server gear for a while and its compatibility with illumos in particular, so I'd kindly ask for suggestions for a server like that ;)

SmartOS would be a good fit if you are combining storage with KVM. USB 
booting also saves a couple of drive slots!

> The company's preference is to deal with HP, so while it is not an impenetrable barrier, buying whatever is available under that brand is much simpler for the department. Cost seems a much lesser constraint ;)

HP's bundled RAID controllers can be a problem, make sure you can get 
something with IT firmware, or at least JBOD support.

> I am less certain about HBAs (IT mode, without HW-RAID crap), and the practically recommended redundancy (raidzN? raid10? how many extra disks in modern size ranges are recommended - 3?)

That all depends on the number of drives and the workload.

> Also i am not sure about modern considerations of multiple PCI buses - especially with regard to separation of ssd's onto a separate HBA (or several?) to avoid bottlenecks in performance and/or failures.

SSDs can be SATA and the hard drives SAS.

> Finally, are departmental all-in-one combines following the Thumper ideology of data quickly accessible to applications living on the same host without uncertainties and delays of remote networking still at all 'fashionable'? ;)

They are with Joyent!

> Buying a single purchase initially may be easier to justify than multiple boxes with separate roles, but there are other considerations too. In particular, their corporate network is crappy and slow, so splitting into storage+server nodes would need either direct cabling for data, or new switching gear which i don't know yet if it would be a problem; localhost data transfers are likely to be a lot faster. I am also not convinced about higher reliability of split-head solutions, though for high loads i am eager to believe that separating the tasks can lead to higher performance. I am uncertain if this setup and its tasks would qualify for that; but it might be expanded later on, including role-separation, if a practical need is found after all.

You can easily get all you are after in a 4U all in one.  Keep the 
system simple if you can.

> PS: how do you go about backing up such a thing? Would some N54L's suffice to receive zfs-send's of select datasets? :)

Another, low spec Illumos box with plenty of storage.  Performance won't 
be an issue, so you can use wider raidzN vdevs to boots capacity.

-- 
Ian.