I wanted to move my bare metal Unraid installation to an Esxi 7 virtual machine, i have the instructions on how to do so but was really wondering what the performance is like.

 

Can some users that have been running Unraid in a virtual machine share their experiences and rough performance stats. This would be greatly appreciated Thank You!

i'm running unraid under VMs for years - some years under ESXi, moved to Proxmox about year ago. no problems with performance degradation at all.. 

Running Unraid under ESXi 6 for quite a few years. It's been rock solid. I haven't done any scientific performance measurements iron vs. VM but have not seen any performance issues.

One small oddity that I haven't fully investigated is what appears to be high CPU usage sometimes when an array drive spins up from standby. Not consistently reproducible and not a real issue so haven't taken the time.

Thanks for the responses, i successfully installed UNRAID on ESXi 7. It is working now the only major issues is i noticed my speeds have dropped when transferring files.

 

Before i was getting approx 130 write max and read. Now i only get about 75 Writing to the cache drive and only 30 when reading directly from the array. Can anyone please help me with this issue ?

1 hour ago, 1da said:

Thanks for the responses, i successfully installed UNRAID on ESXi 7. It is working now the only major issues is i noticed my speeds have dropped when transferring files.

 

Before i was getting approx 130 write max and read. Now i only get about 75 Writing to the cache drive and only 30 when reading directly from the array. Can anyone please help me with this issue ?

 

Did you pass through  your controllers, or did you assign virtual disks?  Those are ridiculous speeds.

Hi StevenD,

 

So for my unraid VM, i have the H310 (IT MODE),  2 x NVME drives, USB 3 controller, Quadro P2000, and a Quad Port Intel NIC all passed through to the unraid VM. I also have all 4 ports on the NIC connected to UNRAID and bonded running Link Aggregation 802ad which is also enabled on my switch. (My Ethernet MTU is 9000, which is also enabled on the switch)

 

My main concern is coping files to the array and the extremely slow speed of 20 - 30 mb/s MAX. I can provide more information about my setup if required to help troubleshoot.

 

Thank you for your time and viewing my post, this issue is bothering me so much!

I wouldn't pass through a NIC.  I get almost full 10GbE speeds using the virtual NIC.  I can write to cache at over 800MB/s and 130-150MB/s to the array directly.

So I ended up trying it out. I removed my nic passthrough entirely and added one virtual nic. Tested a file transfer coping from the array to a windows server and I got a max of 14mbps.

Sent from my GM1900 using Tapatalk

remove your NIC bound's at all and set MTU back to default, and test it with iperf3, to see that network is not a bottleneck..

Hey so i set the MTU to default and tested with iPerf3, this test is using only the 1 virtual NIC, previously i did a iperf test with my pass through NIC bonded and i got approx 800 mbps to another hard wired computer which is how i test the file transfers as well.

 

This time i got over 150 mb/s with just 1 virtual NIC so that should not be the bottle neck. Screenshot below.

 

@1da are your network 1Gbe? if yes, then ~200Mbit is really crap speed.. when i was on ESXi, and now on proxmox, i'm getting > 9Gbit on 10Gbit network - all default settings with one virtual nic with VMXnet3 Adapter type.

so, looks like you need to resolve your network problems first...

 

The only thing I have changed is converted Unraid to a VM when my speeds became slower. My network cannot be the bottleneck in this situation even if it is slower then normal.

I'm trying to figure out how I can achieve normal read and write speeds to my Unraid vm. If you know any other troubleshooting steps I can take to understand why my SMB transfers are extremely slow that would be helpful.

Thank you!

Sent from my GM1900 using Tapatalk

i will as you again - are your network 1Gbit?

and you can run iperf3 on Esxi host too, see here: https://williamlam.com/2016/03/quick-tip-iperf-now-available-on-esxi.html

Sorry I didn't answer that part, yes my network is a 1GBE network. I will follow your link and perform a iperf speed test on esxi with unraid and get back to you.

Thank you for your response!

Sent from my GM1900 using Tapatalk

So to update you guys I ended up grabbing a dedicated ESXi box and left my Unraid to it's own dedicated hardware. Thank you all for the help, I think I will test another Unraid build in a VM before I decide to migrate my main box again.

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I am also thinking about moving my bare Unraid installation onto a ESXI server,  like to the top post I have found some documentation, and youtube videos on the subject but I would like to know how people has got on with the virtual machine, and share their experiences and rough performance stats

 

my current bare machine is : motherboard : B450 TOMAHAWK,  with 16 GiB DDR4 of RAM, Nic 1000 Mbp. I also have a Ubit 6-Port SATA III 6Gbps PCIE Controller - which allow me to expand my stored.  

 

I understand that I will need more ram, and that my motherboard might not be up to the job,  which is why I am looking at a new CPU xeon CPU, and motherboard.

 

one question I would like to know,   does the HD's spin down as when I have VM Unraid ? in the same manner as a bare metal unraid does. 

Edited September 4, 20223 yr by chris_netsmart

On 9/4/2022 at 11:38 AM, chris_netsmart said:

I am also thinking about moving my bare Unraid installation onto a ESXI server,  like to the top post I have found some documentation, and youtube videos on the subject but I would like to know how people has got on with the virtual machine, and share their experiences and rough performance stats

 

my current bare machine is : motherboard : B450 TOMAHAWK,  with 16 GiB DDR4 of RAM, Nic 1000 Mbp. I also have a Ubit 6-Port SATA III 6Gbps PCIE Controller - which allow me to expand my stored.  

 

I understand that I will need more ram, and that my motherboard might not be up to the job,  which is why I am looking at a new CPU xeon CPU, and motherboard.

 

one question I would like to know,   does the HD's spin down as when I have VM Unraid ? in the same manner as a bare metal unraid does. 

they do if you passthrough the entire controller (so esxi cant see it anymore)
its in the manage > hardware > pcie devices

 

then its just a case of giving them to the vm

 

 

On 9/8/2022 at 10:39 AM, mrpops2ko said:

they do if you passthrough the entire controller (so esxi cant see it anymore)
its in the manage > hardware > pcie devices

 

then its just a case of giving them to the vm

 

 

thanks for the info

doing a bit more reading, and watching YouTube, and I see that they are using plopkexec.

 

download plopkexec

if I understand it, it that you create your unraid VM,

and the PCI and USB devices,

mount he plopkexec ISO

 

then start VM, it will start plopkexec, and see the USB drive and unraid.

my question is:  if I have an unraid server already and all I am doing is moving it into VMware EXSI and my USB pen drive all ready have the Unraid config on it, then will it overright the information, with a new config ?

 

or does plopkexec just act like a boot OS, and as I have pass through my USB drive then it will automatic see this and start my unraid server - as if it was still on a bare metal

 

9 hours ago, chris_netsmart said:

or does plopkexec just act like a boot OS, and as I have pass through my USB drive then it will automatic see this and start my unraid server - as if it was still on a bare metal

this.

15 hours ago, uldise said:

this.

thanks,  that is one more thing off my list to think about.

On 10/12/2022 at 9:17 AM, chris_netsmart said:

doing a bit more reading, and watching YouTube, and I see that they are using plopkexec.

 

download plopkexec

if I understand it, it that you create your unraid VM,

and the PCI and USB devices,

mount he plopkexec ISO

 

then start VM, it will start plopkexec, and see the USB drive and unraid.

my question is:  if I have an unraid server already and all I am doing is moving it into VMware EXSI and my USB pen drive all ready have the Unraid config on it, then will it overright the information, with a new config ?

 

or does plopkexec just act like a boot OS, and as I have pass through my USB drive then it will automatic see this and start my unraid server - as if it was still on a bare metal

 

you dont need plop anymore, you can boot directly from USB attached directly to esxi. Plop is generally used for devices which has some issues booting directly from USB but those are mostly a thing of the past now it seems. 

 

just remember to change it from BIOS to EFI. 

 

 

 

then just pick it out from your menu

 

 

[EDIT: Turning off secure boot fixed my problem immediately.]

Apologies for replying to a dead topic, but figured this would leave the most continuity of the discussion. I am attempting to boot unraid on ESXi 8 and having issues with the usb not being found by vmware efi on boot. Interestingly when I boot into the bios and go to configure boot options -> add a boot option the first entry listed is an Unraid MBR. so obviously it can see the usb stick. What am I missing here?

Edited February 19, 20233 yr by Shivaess

On 2/19/2023 at 11:27 PM, Shivaess said:

[EDIT: Turning off secure boot fixed my problem immediately.]

Apologies for replying to a dead topic, but figured this would leave the most continuity of the discussion. I am attempting to boot unraid on ESXi 8 and having issues with the usb not being found by vmware efi on boot. Interestingly when I boot into the bios and go to configure boot options -> add a boot option the first entry listed is an Unraid MBR. so obviously it can see the usb stick. What am I missing here?

Not sure if you ever fixed this but since you attached a USB 3.1 controller, the USB drive needs to be 3.0/3.1 otherwise it wont boot. I removed the 3.1 controller, added a USB 2.0 controller and booted off of my USB 2.0 thumb drive, no issue.