XenServer and FreeNAS NIC Homelab Configuration Question

Greetings r/homelab!

I have been splurging a bit on my homelab environment... (yay tax returns!)

 

That said, I have the following setup:

 

• 1x HP Proliant DL360P G6 - XenServer

  -8x128gb Local Storage in RAID 0 (I like to live fast and dangerous)
  -2x built in gigabit ethernet ports with
  -1x HP Quad gigabit NIC
  -74GB of ECC Memory
  -Dual Xeon X5550's

• 1x WhiteBox - FreeNAS

  -4x 2TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache WhiteLabel HDDs
  -1x 128GB SSD
  -16GB memory
  -AMD 6 core CPU
  -1x built in gigabit ethernet port
  -1x 1 gigabit ethernet NIC
  -1x Intel Quad NIC

• SRW2048 -48 Port Small Business Switch w/ Web Management GUI

• ASUS AC66U -Router with DD-WRT acting as an AP

 

Scenario
 

VHD Templates are stored on the FreeNAS server in a raidz configuration using my SSD as Cache, 3 disks in raidz with 1 disk as a spare.

When I go to create a new VM from one of the templates, but want to put the VM on the local SSD storage of the Proliant, it takes a LONG time.

The VHD templates are shared to XenServer by a CIFS Share method, while VMs whose VHD is on the FreeNAS box are using iSCSI.

 

Question

 

My question is, with the hardware above, what would r/homelab do to optimize the use of VHDS stored on FreeNAS that are to be used by VMs I am running off of the HP Proliant?

Additionally, I have a VM running pfsense using the two built in NICs on my HP server, one NIC for WAN the other for LAN.

My home LAN is using the subnet 172.16.0.0/16 FreeNAS and XenServer are each currently configured to use active/active NIC bonding using the 10.0.0.0/8 subnet.

Any advice is welcomed and very much appreciated!