Here we are again post 6 for the #ProjectTomorrow HomeLab series, In this post I want to talk about how I am using the spinning rust and my shared storage along with a small part of SSD storage within the home lab.
I mentioned in the 2nd post of the series about the copious amounts of Direct Attached Storage I had in each server and also the lack of RAID controllers. If performance becomes to unbearable then I will go out and buy some controllers for the servers I had but so far they are giving me what I need.
No RAID Controllers
Yes again NO RAID CONTROLLERS, not ideal but it is what it is. And actually how I use the DAS it really doesn’t require the protection levels of RAID although sometimes it may benefit from the performance benefits of RAID.
Virtual Storage Arrays
Given my role and the software company I work for, having access to Virtual Storage Arrays is important for demo purposes as well as training, All of the storage vendors that Veeam integrates with today have their own version of a Virtual Array.
Where required I have these in pairs if the integration allows for us to replicate via these storage arrays in such as NetApp and Nimble arrays. And where Backup from Storage Snapshots is available I just have that one single array. Each of these will reside on my physical cluster nodes, and depending on storage requirements they will span several locally attached VMFS datastores.
I have been trying to spread these Arrays over all physical hosts and disks, sometimes the resource requirements just don’t make any sense.
Backup Targets
I also have several Backup Targets, the obvious Windows servers with some direct attached storage, but then also EMC Data Domain and HPE StoreOnce along with some other edge cases of NetApp AltaVault, the reason for these and for obvious reasons is not really actually to show a performant backup solution but to be able to document these tasks and integration within Veeam.
VTL
I also have several Virtual Tape Libraries, again these are not going to perform very well at all but it again allows for me to show the Veeam interface and integration with tape devices.
Futures
I would really like to land a handful of SSD drives and maybe time will allow this but I think realistically the next iteration is going to involve all new hardware and in which case the whole lab hardware is going likely change.
I also have the NETGEAR 712, something I have not mentioned I have used this several times to actually migrate another VSA to this shared storage to provide better performance to that storage.
All of these virtual storage arrays are then presented through to the nested environments, by design this allows for me to run the required storage for the associated demo.
Next up i am going to dive into what I do around automation within the home lab and how i can keep these bulky servers running on the house electric grid.