What is the simplest way to convert my installation of Unraid from a VM on ESXi to just running on the bare metal?

 

So it's been a few years since I've really dug into the details of my install, and I was just reaching the threshold of my abilities to follow the tutorials and get unraid set up as a VM along with some windows and linux VMs. I've since transitioned most of the apps that were running on the other VMs to Dockers in Unraid, and I'm finding I have no use for keeping unraid virtualized. Unfortunately, over the years, there are a few performance issues I'm noticing that could be attributed to it being a VM, but I'm apprehensive about swapping out the USB stick and trying to just run it directly from the MB. I'm assuming there are some settings to be changed, and backups to create just to make sure I don't lose my settings or my data.

 

Does anyone have a simple tutorial for what steps need to be taken to move to bare metal?

Since Unraid runs from a USB, this is pretty straight forward and you can test it quite easily. Just boot your server from the USB instead of ESXi.. It should load right up into Unraid with your disks, etc..

 

If you were running in ESXi you probably passed through the disks for the array so those will just appear. There really shouldn't be anything you need to do.