I have a trial of unRAID running on an esxi 6.7u2 vm and I'm trying to get it setup properly. 

 

#1. What are preferred virtual OS settings? ESXi is yelling at me saying the configured guest OS does not match the guest (linux 5.10.28-unraid slackware 14.2+) What OS choice do people pick? 

 

#2. Does unRAID require device pass-through? I created a VM with 4 vCores, 16gb vRAM and one (default) 8gb vHDD. I then deleted the vHDD and created two 64gb vHDD on NVMe drives and two 128gb vHDD, each on spinny metal drives. I then "added existing vHDD" to the VM's setup in esxi and powered on the machine. The VM does not see any of the virtual drives attached to it. Is it possible to setup an unRAID machine as a demo and attach virtual drives to it? Or must they be direct pass through? 

 

#3. Is there a rule of thumb for recommended memory per TB of hard disk space? 

 

#4. Is there a rule of thumb for recommended SSD/NVMe cache per TB of hard disk space? 

 

#5. What filesystem or parity structure does unRAID use? Do you simply "throw hard drives at it" and let unRAID figure out the parity? 

 

#6. Is there a preference for ecc vs. non-ecc memory and/or xeon vs. core CPUs? 

 

#7. Could someone critique or provide suggestions on a potential build: 

 

## Mobo/CPU:

We/I don't know yet. Either possibly an i7-10700 (or maybe 10700k) or something like a Xeon E-2226G. 

## Memory:

If xeon ECC, if Core i7, non-ecc. Is 64gb enough? 

## Cache: 

2x (mirrored) 1tb NVMe M.2 pcie x4 drives. Do we need more than that?

## Disks: 

We have 4x 8tb WD Red drives and 2x 14tb WD Red drives. Ideally I would build mirrored vdev-1 with 2x 8tb drives, mirrored vdev-2 with 2x 8tb drives, mirrored vdev-3 with 2x 14tb drives, and then stripe a pool across the three vdevs. This would give the ability to expand in the pool future by adding additional mirrored vdevs with drives in pairs. 

## Case:

Fractal 804. We like the case, it will look decent and presentable to the house, friends, guests where we want to keep it --but starting to feel a bit boxed in with mATX mobo choices forced on us with the Fractal 804 case. 

## PSU: 

We own a 450W Corsair Gold PSU. 

 

#8. More a comment than a question:

We are looking for a CPU with on-chip graphics and most probably would not add-in a PCIe GPU.

 

Thanks. Looking forward to better understanding unRAID so we can start buying parts!

15 minutes ago, whiskytangofoxconn said:

running on an esxi

Do you intend to run Unraid as a VM? That is not supported, but there are some users in the Virtualizing Unraid subforum that help each other with that.

 

Also, Unraid itself can host VMs and dockers.

1 minute ago, trurl said:

Do you intend to run Unraid as a VM? That is not supported, but there are some users in the Virtualizing Unraid subforum that help each other with that.

 

Also, Unraid itself can host VMs and dockers.

Thanks for the reply. 

No. I want to run unRAID on bare metal. I put it on a VM just to try and test it out and poke around the web GUI.

 

Personally I think if you have to do device HW pass through to a VM, it should be run on bare metal. 

 

Unraid can host VMs? Is it Debian/Ubuntu's KVM? What is the hypervisor? I've used Xen, Citrix and have been using ESXi since before they added the "i" but I'm a little late to the party with Docker, containers, etc. (Docker as I understand it is same thing as BSD jails correct?) 

KVM. The OS itself is Slackware Linux.

Just now, trurl said:

Slackware

Lean and customized to be a NAS OS, it is not intended to be a full multiuser linux. Only root can login to the webUI or command line. Other users are strictly for network file access. If you want to run a Linux OS you can create VMs.