Windows Licence query also new to Unraid

[R.M.H]

Hi...

 

Totally new to unraid but have looked at it on and off for a while. Came to crunch time when my aging home server started to have disks die. It is very old...

 

That started as a 2008 Server (when 2008 was new lol) and progressed over time to 2019 DC running hyper-V with 8 x 2TB WD Reds and 7x 6TB WD Reds in 2 arrays off seperate RAID cards. Now the 6TB's I have had a couple die and I replaced with WD Red Pro 20TB with the plan to slowly redo the array to 20TB drives. Simple aspect those drive when the stars align and the wind is right are £399. Rest of time they can be around £600. Which is way more than I want to pay

 

So now I started to look again at unraid as the ability to support mixed drive sizes is a very attractive option.

 

Hardware I plan to get \ got for this.

 

ASRock Rack X570D4U

Radeon R75700G

2 x 32Gb Crucial RAM (not ECC) as per supported list for Motheboard

AIO fro CPU

Not decided yet on SAS HBA but could be a LSI 9207 SAS 8i HBA if I can find out what size drives it will work with as I have 20tb ones

Fractal Labs Node 804 for it all to sit in.

 

After the waffle my main query is...

 

I know it is better to use ECC RAM, the mother board supports it but the RAM cost was nearly double and the the CPU was over £120 more to also support ECC. So non ECC was they way I decided to go.

 

As I currently have win 2019 DC that covers me for unlimited windows VM licences. Does anyone know or have have links to what a server licence model would be on unraid. As nothing I have found is clear. I know the host Windows Server can have 2 VM's as standard and unlimited if DC. Just nothing on if it is not the host. I am assuming each VM now needs its own licence.

 

I have a few Windows VM's but also Linux and other things like Home Assistant and PFsense. It is mostly used as a file and media server. I am looking to move all those across and also looking for mail server for home use I have an ancient version of Exchange running and want to get away from that and more to open source stuff, so any suggestions welcome there.

 

Anyhow waffled enough all (nice ) comment welcome.

[ChatNoir]

1 hour ago, R.M.H said:

As I currently have win 2019 DC that covers me for unlimited windows VM licences. Does anyone know or have have links to what a server licence model would be on unraid. As nothing I have found is clear. I know the host Windows Server can have 2 VM's as standard and unlimited if DC. Just nothing on if it is not the host. I am assuming each VM now needs its own licence.

Hello and welcome.

I am not 100% I understand your question.

If you plan to run Unraid on bare metal, then there is no limitation on the number of VM you can run. The only limitation is on the number of drives : https://unraid.net/pricing

 

If you plan to virtualize Unraid, you will need one license per Unraid instance.

[R.M.H]

Thanks for reply, it was more in the aspect of the VM licencing not unraid licence. Where people are running multiuple windows VM's what licencing options are there for the VM. Is it a windows licence per windows VM or if you have a data centre instance of Windows. Would that cover multiple windows VM's on unraid as it does unlimited windows VM's if it is the host.

[itimpi]

2 hours ago, R.M.H said:

Thanks for reply, it was more in the aspect of the VM licencing not unraid licence. Where people are running multiuple windows VM's what licencing options are there for the VM. Is it a windows licence per windows VM or if you have a data centre instance of Windows. Would that cover multiple windows VM's on unraid as it does unlimited windows VM's if it is the host.

This is a case where you would need to read the licence terms carefully.  My suspicion is that if Windows is not the host then you need the same number of licences for the VMs as you would if they were each physical PCs.