My 24/7 homelab is currently running in a 3 node all flash VSAN: 3x Dell R630 2x Xeon E5 2650 v4 10 core 384gb ddr4 (16gb X 24) 1x 960gb intel DC nvme ssd 5x Samsung 2.5” SATA 1.92tb enterprise SSD
I just got two 2u supermicro x11 based systems with 12x 3.5” bays each that I’m planning to migrate all of my drives into from the VSAN and add a couple more. Each 2u contains 2x Xeon gold 5120 14 core, 384gb ddr4 (16gb x24)
Since I’m planning on using using strictly these 2 nodes to be my 24/7 cluster, I’ll need some shared storage. Some options may be: 2 node all flash VSAN (hosting the witness on one node, I know it’s not supported but it works) I do have a license for this Starwind VSAN (though I think I pass the community edition maximums) Host truenas scale on each with the raid controller passed through and replicate and host a shared ISCSI / nfs share (havnt done this yet and leaning towards it, anyone tried this yet?) Similar setup to scale, but windows storage spaces direct all flash Nutanix 2 node robo (might not have a license for it)
Anything else anyone can think of that might work well? Esxi is a hard requirement for the hypervisor.
Alternatively I do have an r730 with 24 2.5” bays, a single 12 core e5 2660 v4 12 core and 192gb ram that I could stick all the SSDs into and make a large dedicated truenas bare metal box, but I’d like to only power 2 servers 24/7 if possible as 768gb ram will do for my daily operations, I’ve got other clusters for spinning up and down depending on what I’m doing.
I’ve only got 10g Nic’s but I do have some space 40g ports on my switch, so 10g is the speed requirement, shouldn’t be hard at all, and even if I upgraded to 40g that should be a piece of cake as well.
TLDR best 2 node solution with shared storage running on ESXi? VSAN? Truenas on each ESXi host? S2D?
Use rapid tables, enter in your wattage and hours per day, if you put in your power cost it will even give you a monthly and yearly bill. Just google “power cost calculator”