Posts made by dave247

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dashrender said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Maybe I should see if I can install Hyper-V on an SD card.. I have an iDRAC with the card slot

No, don't do that. MS used to semi-support that long ago. Now they do not at all.

k then.. I guess I'll just leave the single SSD in and finish installing it to that. I started the install process to one Intel SSD then paused to come post my questions here.

FYI, this is a complete waste of a SSD drive. More IOPs wasted on something that can't/won't use it.

Why are you setting up Hyper-V today when you don't have drives to store the VM's on? Why not wait until you buy those 6+ large HDDs and make a OBR10 and install Hyper-V on there.

It doesn't need to be 8 drives, 6 is fine if that gives you the storage you need. Hyper-V install itself is pretty small, I'm guessing 20 GB or less.

Hmm... well, I do have 4x 6TB 7200RPM SATA drives I was planning to use for something else, but I guess I could just use them for this.

Maybe you should list all of the drives that you have to work with, and we can guide from there.

haha.. sorry.. ok so I have 4x 6TB drives and then I have a ton of 2.5" 300GB 10k and 15k SAS drives, but the problem here is I only have a couple of 2.5" to 3.5" caddie spacers.. I'd have to really dig to find more.

So if I just wanted to use the 4x 6TB drives, would I create a RAID array and then create two separate volumes on that, one for Hyper-V and one for storage, or just have one volume and install Hyper-V to that?

@dashrender said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Maybe I should see if I can install Hyper-V on an SD card.. I have an iDRAC with the card slot

No, don't do that. MS used to semi-support that long ago. Now they do not at all.

k then.. I guess I'll just leave the single SSD in and finish installing it to that. I started the install process to one Intel SSD then paused to come post my questions here.

FYI, this is a complete waste of a SSD drive. More IOPs wasted on something that can't/won't use it.

Why are you setting up Hyper-V today when you don't have drives to store the VM's on? Why not wait until you buy those 6+ large HDDs and make a OBR10 and install Hyper-V on there.

It doesn't need to be 8 drives, 6 is fine if that gives you the storage you need. Hyper-V install itself is pretty small, I'm guessing 20 GB or less.

Hmm... well, I do have 4x 6TB 7200RPM SATA drives I was planning to use for something else, but I guess I could just use them for this.

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Maybe I should see if I can install Hyper-V on an SD card.. I have an iDRAC with the card slot

No, don't do that. MS used to semi-support that long ago. Now they do not at all.

k then.. I guess I'll just leave the single SSD in and finish installing it to that. I started the install process to one Intel SSD then paused to come post my questions here.

Maybe I should see if I can install Hyper-V on an SD card.. I have an iDRAC with the card slot

@aaronstuder said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Dell will often reject consumer drives. Or any non-Dell drives.

What? What do you mean reject them? They will complain, but the drives work just fine... At least everything I have tested.

Yeah I'm using a non-Dell SSD right now in this server and it's working fine.

@dustinb3403 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

Installing the role moves the previous bare metal installation to be above the hypervisor.

The windows server installation needs to be licensed and activated.

It binds the 2 VM's you can have to that hardware.

The part you are mixing up is that Installing the role on Windows (10 or Server 2016 or any Windows environment) is that it is taking that environment and transforming it into the Dom0.

The control domain.

So all of the limitations of that control domain are then brought into the hypervisor. Where as installing Hyper-V creates a completely free to use control domain at $0 cost to you, and without any of the restrictions from a Microsoft environment.

oh cool. I didn't know that.. I really need to do some learning..

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

My thinking is that I'd like the OS partition to be fast as possible, because why not.

Couple terminology pieces...

Your HV is what runs the system, not the OS. Hyper-V is an HV, Windows is an OS. Your OSes are in your VMs and will go on the big RAID array. Your HV alone, which is tiny and has no performance needs, is what will go on the SSD array.

They are not partitions, they are arrays. Partitions are a completely different, but very specific, concept.

Sorry, when I say OS in this case, I mean Hyper-V. I'm installing the bare-metal Windows Hyper-V 2016 hypervisor.

Right, Hyper-V is not an OS. Avoid that term.

Also there is more confusion about the product. Let's break this down.

Hyper-V is the Type 1 hypervisor, that means it is always bare metal. Never use the term "bare metal" with Hyper-V, because that is implied. It's redundant, but implies that you are confused and think that there is another option.

I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn't talking about the Hyper-V role in Windows.

Right, but that doesn't imply that in any way. But calling your install Windows Hyper-V, instead of Hyper-V, implied that you were doing the role. Because the role is every bit as bare metal as the normal install, saying bare metal doesn't mean anything at all. But including the word Windows would mean a lot.

How is installing the Windows Hyper-V role on a Windows Server installation the same as installing the hypervisor? I thought that installing the role was worse than just installing the hypervisor since it's kinda sitting on top of the Windows Server OS and adds overhead or something.

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

So wait, are slots 0 and 1 the 2.5" bays?

This R510 has 8x 3.5" drive bays. My SAS drives are 2.5" but I have the Dell caddie spacer things..

But you can't scrounge up eight drives, only six, that match?

I have a lot of low capacity drives (like 300GB drives) but it's a mix of 10k and 15k and then some are dead and some aren't.

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

My thinking is that I'd like the OS partition to be fast as possible, because why not.

Couple terminology pieces...

Your HV is what runs the system, not the OS. Hyper-V is an HV, Windows is an OS. Your OSes are in your VMs and will go on the big RAID array. Your HV alone, which is tiny and has no performance needs, is what will go on the SSD array.

They are not partitions, they are arrays. Partitions are a completely different, but very specific, concept.

Sorry, when I say OS in this case, I mean Hyper-V. I'm installing the bare-metal Windows Hyper-V 2016 hypervisor.

Right, Hyper-V is not an OS. Avoid that term.

Also there is more confusion about the product. Let's break this down.

Hyper-V is the Type 1 hypervisor, that means it is always bare metal. Never use the term "bare metal" with Hyper-V, because that is implied. It's redundant, but implies that you are confused and think that there is another option.

I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn't talking about the Hyper-V role in Windows.

Hyper-V is Hyper-V, not Windows. There is no such thing as Windows Hyper-V. There is Windows the OS, and Hyper-V the HV. The two are distinct, separate entities that never merge together. So you have to figure out if you mean you are installing Windows or installing Hyper-V.

I meant "Microsoft" instead of "Windows"

Hyper-V has a native installer ISO or it can be installed through a "helper" inside Windows. Those are purely deployment methods and not related to anything else here.

?

@coliver said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

My thinking is that I'd like the OS partition to be fast as possible, because why not.

Hyper-V loads into memory no need to put it on fast expensive disk. If you're talking about putting VMs on this then that would make more sense.

That's kinda what I thought, but I wasn't 100% sure..

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

So wait, are slots 0 and 1 the 2.5" bays?

This R510 has 8x 3.5" drive bays. My SAS drives are 2.5" but I have the Dell caddie spacer things..

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

My thinking is that I'd like the OS partition to be fast as possible, because why not.

Couple terminology pieces...

Your HV is what runs the system, not the OS. Hyper-V is an HV, Windows is an OS. Your OSes are in your VMs and will go on the big RAID array. Your HV alone, which is tiny and has no performance needs, is what will go on the SSD array.

They are not partitions, they are arrays. Partitions are a completely different, but very specific, concept.

Sorry, when I say OS in this case, I mean Hyper-V. I'm installing the bare-metal Windows Hyper-V 2016 hypervisor.

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

My thinking is that I'd like the OS partition to be fast as possible, because why not.

Because this is totally useless and has no purpose and goes against everything. It will make the things that matter slow while speeding up the thing you will never use. It wastes capacity and you don't have very much of that to spare.

https://www.smbitjournal.com/2015/02/slow-os-drives-fast-data-drives/

Yeah I'm already aware of that. My limitation now is that I don't have 8 drives of the desired capacity to make OBR10. So I'm just setting up a RAID1 volume for the OS. Then it comes down to the question I made my post about.

So you have spare bays? That's a bit different. If you have extra bays, and spare drives, and nowhere else to use them... then whatever. How many spare bays do you have after you use up your 15K drives? A RAID 1 might not make sense. A larger RAID 5 might make sense (with the SSDs) and put some VHDs there.

I put all this in my original post

I have 8 bays in my R510. Right now, I just want to install Hyper-V, on a single drive, or two drives in RAID1. Then later, when I have a chance, I'm going to acquire 6 high capacity drives to put in a RAID10 which I can use for storage to hold virtual machines.

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

My thinking is that I'd like the OS partition to be fast as possible, because why not.

Because this is totally useless and has no purpose and goes against everything. It will make the things that matter slow while speeding up the thing you will never use. It wastes capacity and you don't have very much of that to spare.

https://www.smbitjournal.com/2015/02/slow-os-drives-fast-data-drives/

Yeah I'm already aware of that. My limitation now is that I don't have 8 drives of the desired capacity to make OBR10. So I'm just setting up a RAID1 volume for the OS. Then it comes down to the question I made my post about.

@dustinb3403 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

@dave247 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

My thinking is that I'd like the OS partition to be fast as possible, because why not.

Hypervisors have stupidly low IOPS requirements.

It would be look cooking a hotdog by standing behind a fight jet as it preps to take off.

hahaha .. ok then it's settled. I'll just throw in the SAS drives. I guess I'm being silly about this...

@dustinb3403 said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

If you wanted to use SSD's I'd hit up xbyte and see if they have any decent deals going that might work well.

I don't want to buy anything right now. I want to use parts I currently have on hand.

@scottalanmiller said in Enterprise 15K SAS drives vs consumer grade SSD in a Dell server?:

The 15K drives have a lot more capacity here. For most lab purposes, that will be far more useful.

Well I want Hyper-V on these drives I'm talking about, then later I plan to have a huge RAID10 volume in the remaining 6 slots - like 4TB or something.

My thinking is that I'd like the OS partition to be fast as possible, because why not.

I'm putting Hyper-V on a decommissioned Dell R510 for a general LAB environment and testing, etc. I'm trying to scrounge up some spare drives (I have a lot) for a stable/reliable config. I have 8x 3.5" drive bays on this thing and my plan is to use slot 0 and 1 for two drives in RAID1 for the OS, then use the rest for a RAID10 array for storage (at a later time). Yes, I know usually you'd just do OBR10 but I'm not doing it that way.

Right now, I'm trying to decide which would be better: a set of 300GB 15K SAS Dell Enterprise drives or a set of consumer-grade 128GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD drives.

I assume both will work fine but I've never really used consumer SSD's on a Dell server before.. input?

@scottalanmiller said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@jaredbusch said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@scottalanmiller said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@dave247 said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@scottalanmiller said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@dave247 said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@scottalanmiller said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@dave247 said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

So then what good/safe/secure/reliable/free DNS servers should I be using?? All I know of right now is google and DNSwatch..

Google. It's what everyone uses. Unless you are going to pay for something, which is perfectly fine as things like Cisco Umbrella really do a good job, you just use Google. Google's DNS servers are screaming fast, insanely secure, and standard the world over. Google's only competition was OpenDNS' free servers and they were only competitive when they did free filtering and other tools. Without that, Google is still the best. So no reason to look around for anything else.

rips hair out google it is then

LOL, remember it is IT, "keeping it simple" is often the right answer.

Yeah I can't remember why, but for some reason I remember changing my thoughts about "just setting DNS to google" ... like it wasn't the best thing to do or something.

Best thing is likely a service like Umbrella. But for free, nothing will touch Google.

An alternative to Umbrella is Strongarm.io. They have recently added content filtering options to their service which was originally only designed to interrupt connections to malicious sites.

Yes. Probably much cheaper than Cisco, too. OpenDNS was great before Cisco bought them. I'd personally be pretty wary of using a Cisco service, my interactions with Cisco are pretty consistent that they lack integrity and so I don't see them as a company I would trust in any situation where they were involved in security. They don't seem to have a lot of ethics and that is a big deal when talking about security products - what good is their security if you can't trust the people who are the security people!

Definitely check out Strongarm.io. If you are going to be in Austin in two weeks, Strongarm will be hanging out with us on Sixth!

Same impression I get

@scottalanmiller said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@dave247 said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@scottalanmiller said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

@dave247 said in Best DNS choice for a financial institution?:

So then what good/safe/secure/reliable/free DNS servers should I be using?? All I know of right now is google and DNSwatch..

Google. It's what everyone uses. Unless you are going to pay for something, which is perfectly fine as things like Cisco Umbrella really do a good job, you just use Google. Google's DNS servers are screaming fast, insanely secure, and standard the world over. Google's only competition was OpenDNS' free servers and they were only competitive when they did free filtering and other tools. Without that, Google is still the best. So no reason to look around for anything else.

rips hair out google it is then

LOL, remember it is IT, "keeping it simple" is often the right answer.

Yeah I can't remember why, but for some reason I remember changing my thoughts about "just setting DNS to google" ... like it wasn't the best thing to do or something.