BLKMGK

Ah duh, yeah that's always a good account! Done, thanks! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Ya, not sure I had his most recent addy and didn't search the site. Nearly bedtime here so it'll be tomorrow night before I can mess with it, I know he's really busy! Not a huge rush but wanted to check is all :-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

What are you guys editing the cfg files with? Don't use Notepad if that's what you've used... Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

You guys running way behind on sending out keys? Been a few days and i know oyu're busy so just checking. Not in my SPAM folder either

Okay, fair enough. After seeing the dozen or so patches XenServer wanted I was curious is all. After multiple head butting events I've got a Mint VM running just by using the "other" template and ignoring the scary verbiage. Easy as ESXi really and I just had to link a pool of my ISO - I used my FreeNAS share that has ISO for ESX. Worked like a charm :-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Bummer but he did speak up first! I'm playing with a cheap 4u from Microcenter right now, I think sometimes cheap is more expensive lol! I've got a 4024 already so this would've been an addition, glad that it went to a good home :-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Patching was a learning curve! The Citrix XenServer Patcher on github was very nice since Citrix disabled their patching tool for free use. What sort of patch process for Xen can we anticipate with unRAID? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Awesome to get a status update Tom, thank you!! Fwiw my ESXi with passthru experience wasn't near the nightmare others have apparently had. I had no issues flashing my SAS cards to it mode. I had no issue identifying them under ESXi as I installed the ones I wanted to passthru first and then the last. I setup the bios on advice of another and used a known good revision. Biggest issue was passing the wrong USB hub and losing access to save ESXi configurations! I've run 5.0, 5.1, and now 5.5 with pretty smooth upgrades. I know/knew about the version 10 format issues and have upgraded none of my VMs and in fact disabled the trial license ASAP so I wouldn't trip over an advanced feature. It took me a few evenings to set it up and some advice but it came out solid. I use just one tool to manage my server - vSphere Client. I do see some weirdness with regards to responsiveness of Windows shares occasionally but I think that's just drive spinup. Installed XenServer tonight, looked eerily like ESX! I like the console status better actually. The Xen management tool seems very nice but it seems harder to manipulate datastores and I've found no easy way to create a VM from an ISO and a templated create has failed a few times for Ubuntu. No matter, I mostly wanted to gauge the management tool and get a sense for metics that could be provided. Overall I think with some adjustment I'd like this as much and possibly more than ESXi. The offer to join an HA pool right off the bat without signing over my firstborn was refreshing! The future looks very bright :-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Just tested a huge number of USB sticks for R/W speed! Not strictly necessary I know but I bought about 4 of them to find a good candidate for a second key and yet another mSD reader too. Naturally the mSD reader had a GUID that showed up in a Google search and appears to be in use by an unRAID user <sigh>. So, tried everything from small sized PNY sticks to a TINY EMTEC stick (tempting to use due to size), multiple Sandisk (one was pretty bad!), to a MicroCenter generic green stick (wow, it was more consistent than most and faster than my Sandisk sticks!), till I finally went back to my first one a USB 3.0 stick from Patriot. In a USB 2.0 slot it was very consistant and faster than the others if not by very much. In a USB 3 slot it increased speed a good bit although sadly my test mobo has no USB 3 socket. We used to test sticks at work so I know they vary wildly between manufacturers and didn't have a chance to find out what their current fave was but I think this ruggedized Patriot will be the winner. 16Gig is overkill but it was under $20 and the smallest USB 3 that Microcenter had in stock. <shrug> Anyway, I hope this is food for thought for folks and I'll be registering this ASAP for testing! :-)

On your OpenElec VM in ESXi, goto system, system info and tell me what Video Card Driver is showing. Is it VMWare? If it isn't showing AMD or nVidia (if you a Quattro Series)... You are not using Hardware Video Acceleration. Instead your CPU in the VM is doing all the processing / decoding of your video files. So basically simply drivers for the customized virtualized hardware that the hypervisor presents? Ya, understand that but had thought you meant something special rather than just drivers lol. I don't hypervise Openelec as I have a pair of Haswell NUC I use for frontends, I do use software decoding though and would think ESXi would be dragged down. I've got no way to send video out so bit of interest but the term caught my eye and I wasn't completely sure if Xen had something I wasn't familiar with. (Shrug) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I can't point to any papers but I can say I've gotten some very strange looks mentioning that I pass through controllers when I've discussed this with folks who know more about ESXi than I do! Passthrough is apparently not done by many was the impression i got - distinctly. The HardOCP virtualization and storage forums may be good places to read up on some of this, I've learned some reading in there - no Tapatalk tho dammit. Do note that on ESXi and probably others you don't just pass A drive through, the entire subsystem like a SAS card or USB hub gets passed - it's fairly drastic. No snapshots sux! My .02... Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Peter virtualizing OpenElec should be possible although I'm not clear on some of the paravirtualizing drivers Grumpy mentioned before so it might not be as clear cut as on ESXi. The CEC would require a USB interface passed in maybe and possibly even an entire USB hub. I'd stay tuned and to make plans just yet, maybe Grumpy. Will share his XBMC VM ;-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I don't imagine plugin developers being scared away by virtualization, that makes no sense. However some of the harder to maintain plugins that maybe work more easily In a standard Linux VM might not get the same love. Makes sense to me anyway but since all of that is volunteer their motivations are their own. Now I better understand what folks do with virtualized XBMC! I have a pair of Haswell NUC, one i3 OpenElec and an i5 full Mint14. I'll stick with them but was wondering what magic I was missing to distribute a video signal lol! An HDMI extender pushing HDMI over cat5 might work but my server really is tucked away from all of my TVs. Thanks for explaining! One day I might try PXE booting them maybe. Grumpy - not everyone is keeping track of developments as closely as others. They see lots of excitement over virtualization and become worried that the product they've grown used to is suddenly changing. Many of us that are excited about virtualization realize that's not the case and that they will be able to continue to use the system as they have before. If folks are nervous and ask questions out of ignorance not having kept up on this we really just need to reassure them and try not to get too frustrated that they aren't reading up as much as we might like. In the end I think this will work great for everyone but in the meantime we may need to reassure folks that the rug isn't being pulled out from under them! Peter - yes it should be possible to split traffic. I'm not sure how Xen and KVM compare to ESXi regarding networking but ESXi can setup virtual networks and do some pretty crazy stuff (I've considered virtualizing my firewall in a VM on a different "network"). Software routers and all sorts of things can be done, I'll be surprised if we can't do at least some of this and more as things mature - makes my head spin! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

A question: above it was mentioned hardware being passed through. In ESXi doing this means no other VM can have access, does Xen have this same limitation? I assume so, does that mean that the paravirtualized drivers are a near must? Does Windows have these as well under Xen or KVM? If I do passthrough of hardware is there an advantage to running a more capable video card? I've seen talk of virtualizing XBMC for instance, what's the front end for that at the TV? Guess that was more than one question ;-) From the config posted above spinning a text file to launch a VM doesn't look too bad, a simple web GUI could produce that and even query the drive subsystem for parameters. What about performance monitoring, thoughts? I too look forward to a cache setup that's running something like BTRFS and perhaps a diagonal parity drive for the rest of the array if it can be done without too great a performance hit! I'm excited! Today I believe the cache drive can already be mirrored with a RAID card, yes? I don't currently run a cache, sounds like I need to soon! If a switch from ESXi I'll have a few SSD freed up ;-) P.S. as to the point of some folks wanting to stick with ESXi or for those wanting to just run plugins - go for it. None of this precludes you from doing ANY of that! Now, you may find that the folks who have been building the Couch/Sick plugins no longer have an interest because they have a better way. If so you may have to begin building your own plugins or move up. I doubt that will happen and certainly not soon but if something WAY better comes along people will move to it. UnRAID never promised to be able to be much more than a secure place to store files, plugins have been icing on the top built by volunteers so IMO you can't cry too much IF those folks lose interest in the future.... Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I have a VPN as well via a ClearOS firewall. However I want to be able to access desktops on both my main machine and VMs on my ESXi server. UnRAID pretty much needs no attention ever lol. The VPN has also been VERY handy when a hotel's firewall blocked Plex from streaming - I simply VPN'd in and then ran Plex as if it were local :-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I switched to TeamViewer too! I sent Logmein a thank you note for having forced me to explore options. Not only did I find an equal product but I found one that supports OS that Logmein didn't. I thanked them for pushing me to a better product. I've not yet looked at the TeamViewer licensing but I might be convinced to pay if its reasonable. I seldom need this functionality but TeamViewer appears to have something superior so far! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Haven't found a speed comparison with Reiser yet but BTRFS seems to compare well in the Pharonix test I'm reading against EXT4 and others, they aren't using compression though which could actually speed things. Very interesting, I may have to spin a VM to play! Got some of the hardware to get the test system spun up but may have to hack it together some. I'll grab a USB tomorrow and try to take 6x for a spin on fast 64bit hardware :-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I wasn't told it had to be done in mirrored pairs just that it was a good idea and would allow the easy expansion I have with unRAID sorta. I know the ZFS can be run on more normal RAID. In the end I concluded that a more "normal" RAID wasn't going to meet my needs but it did make for a pretty interesting conversation over there if you wanted to check it out lol P.S. yes, I'd love it if the file system generated and checked my data with hashes and created snapshots so long as it didn't blow up if all my "slack space" was used for it. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

1.) Losing data can NEVER be over hyped 2.) Not all of my data comes from torrents I can hash check. I have plenty of personal documents that would just get corrupted Umm, none of my movies are from torrents and I have 100s of hours invested in ripping and compressing them. I used a Windows based program called Hashcheck to create hashes by file type. It took more than two days to do it for all of my movies... I could as easily do this for documents but frankly flipping a single bit in them is less likely to have disastrous consequences. Hashcheck can also check against the stored hashes to find errors. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I'm mostly file system agnostic. I care mostly that I have protection for my drives from a single failure. If a double failure occurred I won't lose my entire array, that's important. It's also important that I'm able to use drives of disparate size efficiently and that I don't use half my drives for parity. In a discussion about ZFS on Ars I was told to make ZFS pools with pairs of mirrored drives - a 50% loss of storage space. Bonus, since these other systems stripe data they spin ALL the time - unRAID doesn't. It IS important to me that I can pull a drive out and diagnose it and access it offline for data recovery but not a complete show stopper. Snapshotting with BTRFS seems like a good idea, but having no experience with it I may be misunderstanding. The Ars comments thread was helpful but not all inclusive and home user needs like mine seemed dismissed lol. Oh and yeah, bitrot which IMO seems overhyped. I did break down and hash my ISO and MKV files just to check. I did point out to those guys that with their stats and my YEARS of using unRAID on machines without ECC that my parity checks should've spotted errors quite often for no explained reason and yet haven't :-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

For redundancy: min is 2. Eventually (they say) btrfs will have raid-5 capability. Gotcha', a two drive mirrored pool then? Perfect and we can snap as well as do some sort of backup! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

If the cache subsystem, since it doesn't sound like it need be a single drive, has enough redundancy backing it up could simply be a snapshot using the file system, yes? ZFS can do this and I think BTRFS can as well. The caveat apparently being that if you completely fill the drive it can be "bad" from what I've read... Truthfully ZFS and BTRFS spin my head so I could be off in the weeds :-( Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Now that you laid it out like, using BTRFS, with the addition of people running VMs... That makes a lot of sense. Had you "stuck" with Resier for the Cache "pool"... I would have suggested / run it outside of it. I've been curious about BTRFS obviously. How many drives would you need to run in a cache like this for both VM and classic unRAID cache for it to be protected? To date the heavy redundancy has kept me away from using it - I'm unwilling to give up that many drives to prevent a dual failure from wiping out everything. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Heh I asked once before but I'll timidly ask again - any chance of moving from Reiser to BTRFS? Not with standard RAID under it but unRAID. My understanding, subject to ignorance, is that the snapshot capability using slack space would be an advantage? Perhaps a bridge too far but I'm curious as to thoughts ;-) Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I think that folks asking questions concerning virtualization who haven't had the benefit of experience with it and no reason for having immersed themselves in the technology have got some of us spun up ;-) Not everyone follows Linux this closely or encounters virtualization in their daily lives. It's normal for the to have questions that might seem obvious to others. Had I not taken the plunge myself awhile ago on ESXi and needed to learn other things for my job I'd be further out of my depth as well. Can we please try to realize that not everyone eats and s,reps this stuff? ;-) Tom, for now if its possible I think keeping both an enabled and a disabled version available makes sense. Folks who aren't interested in virtualizing or who have more resource constrained systems may need this. They can try booting the enabled version to test and if no one reports problems perhaps then it would make the most sense to drop it? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk