My Setup - Any Advice or Recommendations?

[NixonInnes]

Hey folks!

I'm somewhat new to Unraid, and would like to share my setup to get any advice or feedback from those wiser than I

 

I've got 2x Unraid machines, brief details below:

 

NIXSERVER

Hardware:

- Intel® Core™ i3-8100

- AMD RX 570 8GB

- 16 GB DDR4

- 2x 2TB Seagate Barracuda & 2TB Parity

- 240GB Sandisk SSD Cache Drive

 

Purpose:

Runs apps, i.e. my Plex server, Nginx proxy, several databases, Git repo, Docker container reg, Grafana, various data ingesters, other homemade apps (typically websites), & PhoenixAMD miner (crypto mining). Also houses shares for any media.

 

NIXDESK

Hardware:

- Intel® Core™ i5-8400

- AMD RX 580 8GB

- 16 GB DDR4

- 1x 2TB Seagate Barracuda

 

Purpose:

Runs my virtual desktop; I switch between a Ubuntu VM for development, Windows 10 for work whilst I have another PhoenixAMD miner running. Then if i want to do some gaming, I turn the miner off and start a VM with passthrough (at least that's the intention, setup still TODO...). Have shares to share common folders (e.g. My Documents type stuff). Gives me freedom to try out various OS's, because i'm always tinkering.

 

 

I use a Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB) on Arch (arm64) as my main desktop, and spin-up then VNC/RDP into whichever VM I need. I've got more drives in NIXDESK (another 1TB HDD and 1TB M2, but they're still packing my regular Windows 10 install in case I need to switch back). 

 

So far I've found the performance pretty good, although always looking to reduce latency on the VM's. I've still to setup the gaming VM; does anyone have any guidance on how I can make the switch from running the miner and onboard to passthrough? Also, may need to move peripherals across from the Pi to NIXDESK, maybe a KVM?

Any other wise words are greatly appreciated! Anything useful I could add into the mix? What hardware should I look to upgrade first?

 

Thanks!

Nix

Edited April 11, 2021 by NixonInnes
Docker container clarity

[RiDDiX]

Server seems fine for his "workload".

Within you NIXDESK I would passthrough the 1TB M2 directly to a Win 10 VM. So you are able to use your Win 10 Installation within a VM or if you want to boot directly from it, you can just boot directly from it 🙂

 

It should then looks like this:

 

With this setting you can use your already installed and setuped Windows within Unraid as VM, and you are still able to boot directly from it. (If you want to).

 

Keep in mind that just one VM at once can be booted up with passthrouged Graphicscards, USB-Controllers and so on... Maybe for the Ubuntu VM it is enough when you just use VNC as Graphicscard and emulated USBs  

[NixonInnes]

4 hours ago, RiDDiX said:

Within you NIXDESK I would passthrough the 1TB M2 directly to a Win 10 VM. So you are able to use your Win 10 Installation within a VM or if you want to boot directly from it, you can just boot directly from it 🙂

 

 

Ah that's awesome, I didn't know that - thanks!