Server 2003 x64, VMWare Server and a 1TB RAID5 NAS array

Kyle Heon — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:56:00 +0000

Early in 2008 I decided to build a new, super beefy system to consolidate my old desktop PC and a small development Fedora Core server. My intention was to go 64-bit from the start so that I could load the system up with 8GB of RAM.

Due to a strange memory issue I was not able to run Windows Server setup with all 8GB of RAM in place, it was weeks before I finally discovered the problem. This system currently has 2×2GB chips in and things work, but if I add in the additional two chips, Server 2003 doesn’t get past the “Starting Windows” screen. Weird.

For the past week or so I have been playing around VMWare Server just to get a feel for how things work. I’ve created virtual appliances running Windows XP Professional, Ubuntu Server, FreeNAS, OpenFiler and also OpenSolaris 2008.05.

From what I have seen so far, VMWare Server is simply one of the coolest technologies I’ve played with in a long time. I can’t believe how simple it is to create new appliances, install the OS into it and start it up.

One of my goals with VMWare Server here is to create a really streamlined WinXP Pro install that I can save a snapshot of but start up slices for my children to play in and install whatever they want. If things go south, I just delete the appliance and start over with the fresh WinXP Pro.

My final goal with this system was to setup a redundant storage solution for my growing library of MP3’s and all my RAW photos. For this I went with a motherboard that had RAID5 onboard and bought 3 500GB 7200RPM Western Digital drives, giving me about 1TB of RAID5 storage.

I want this storage array to be as simple to use as possible and will act as the storage device for all of the appliances running plus the aforementioned music and photos.

Thus the reason I have setup appliances with FreeNAS, OpenFiler and OpenSolaris. None of which has worked out quite like I hoped.

It looks like FreeNAS is really designed to run from a USB drive and as such I was not able to really get it working.
OpenFiler looks really promising but the interface is very difficult to navigate and while I have figured out how to get “shares” setup through the interface I can’t figure out how to access them from another system.
And finally, I looked at OpenSolaris specifically to leverage the incredibly awesome ZFS. The problem is, OpenSolaris is wicked slow, at least when run through VMWare. I’m hoping it’s because I’m doing something so I’ll keep exploring.
If all else fails, I guess I’ll format the array with Server 2003 and create shares as needed. I’d imagine that will mean I’ll need to use the FAT32 file system so that non-Windows nodes can access it.

All of this exploration has been a lot of fun. The issues I ran into getting things built and installed was painful but now I know more then I did before.

kyleheon.com: Server 2003 x64, VMWare Server and a 1TB RAID5 NAS array

Server 2003 x64, VMWare Server and a 1TB RAID5 NAS array