I was running unRAID on metal with Windows 10 as a VM but it just wasn't really working out for me. I'm also not in a great financial position to build a second machine, as much as I would like to.

 

I'm back to having Windows 10 running on metal but I really miss using unRAID as a Docker frontend/manager. I really like how it does this and frankly have found Docker Desktop on Windows a confusing drag. I can handle it on Ubuntu but I get out of my comfort zone very quickly with CLI on Windows.

 

I want to pass through a SATA SSD to use as a cache and one of my HDDs as the 'array'. I won't be running any typical VMs, just Dockers. I have switched to running my media server online but I want to have some torrent clients, a backup occasional use Plex and some other assorted media management/frontend apps. 

 

I do not have a HBA to segregate the drives for Windows 10 from the hypothetical unRAID VM. I am hoping whatever I am using to virtualise can mount these two drives into the VM as I've been doing with an Ubuntu VM in VMWare Workstation. 

 

What is the correct or easiest route to do this?

i was tried unraid on VMWare workstation some time ago with no success.. i don't remember, what was wrong.

if you are on Pro version, MS have builtin Hyper-V, but i never heard any success story with unraid.

another path would be qemu kvm + virtmanager for windows, but i never tried that. but i have such combination working on my Ubuntu Desktop now..

I'm not sure I understand which hypervisor you are trying to use? Or are you in fact asking which one to use?

At any rate, with VMWare (ESXi), which I happen to be using, you can dedicate single drives (slightly complex but workable) or whole controllers (much easier) to Unraid, and it works quite nicely (albeit unsupported by Limetech).

You can do similar things with other hypervisors as well, more or less conveniently.