ATLAS My Virtualized unRAID server


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Is it common practice to passthrough the onboard sata controller (ICH8R in my case) or better to buy a separate sata raid card to passthrough? I'd rather not buy another card right now. I noticed in your guide you do not passthrough the onboard sata ports, correct?

 

Are the onboard SATA-ports used for anything else then datastores for the most of you? I was thinking of using the 2 port sil3132 sata card as the datastore.

 

I'd rather use my 6 ports onboard sata in an unraid VM for baremetal unraid.  Lastly, I'm assuming in passthrough, there is no performance hit whatsoever?

If your MB controller shows up as two separate controllers then you could pass a portion of it to a VM but the SIL3132 cannot be used for datastores as far as I know.  Also you might be limited to ESXi 4 as according to this post there aren't ESXi drivers for 5 yet.  That was back in Jan-Apr time frame so that could have changed but I don't believe ESXi can use a third party driver as a datastore drive.
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Thanks for the link about the sil3132. Not so much a deal breaker as the realization that my i3-530 does not support vt-d. Been looking around for older gen x3400s but prices don't justify upgrading my x8sil CPU.

 

Would I be able to use RDM for the onboard data and mv8 instead of pass through? Pros /  cons?

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Thanks for the link about the sil3132. Not so much a deal breaker as the realization that my i3-530 does not support vt-d. Been looking around for older gen x3400s but prices don't justify upgrading my x8sil CPU.

 

Would I be able to use RDM for the onboard data and mv8 instead of pass through? Pros /  cons?

You can certainly RDM MB drives.  That is how I originally did my WHSv1 drives.  The rest I had better let Johnm answer.  I have used MV8's and M1015's in passthrough to a VM but I've never tried to RDM drives off of them.
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There is no issue with SSD drive temps - consumer SSD's simply don't report temperatures as they hardly generate any heat.  It's not an unRaid issue.

 

(assuming I got your question right!)

 

ahh ok.  I thought I remembered John saying that unRAID would think it was overheating.  If not, then awesome!  Thx!

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Early sandforce sataiii and maybe some sataii SSDs report as 60 or 80 deg. I forgot the actual value at this time. Most vendors have released firmware updates to fix that.

 

Someone just posted that same issue last week.

 

As far as rmd with 8 drives. Yeah you could. It would be a bit of a pita.

Keep in mind you'll loose some features like drive temps. I can't remember if spindown works with rmd. It's been so long.

 

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Early sandforce sataiii and maybe some sataii SSDs report as 60 or 80 deg. I forgot the actual value at this time. Most vendors have released firmware updates to fix that.

 

Someone just posted that same issue last week.

 

As far as rmd with 8 drives. Yeah you could. It would be a bit of a pita.

Keep in mind you'll loose some features like drive temps. I can't remember if spindown works with rmd. It's been so long.

My OCZ SataIII reports a temp of 100c which kind of messes up my Intel MB sensor program have to continually reset the upper limit to get it to NOT report an over heat on a Windows box.  Everytime I login I have to reset it wish Intel's sensor application would let you save settings because the apply button sure isn't persistant if I log out or reboot the PC. >:(  I'll have to see if I can get rid of it by updating the firmware.
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I just need some clarification with respect to the usb ports required for an esxi and unraid setup.

 

First my board, X8SIL, has 3 usb ports (1 directly on the mobo and 2 in the back), and I assume these are all on the same controller.

 

ESXi will take one usb port for the base installation, and a second one will contain the unraid license info. Therefore the second usb with the unraid license needs to be passed thru to the  vm but if both are on the same controller, wouldn't that mean making the esxi usb invisibile and consequently screwing up the installation?

 

I also need two more ports, one for a shared printer and a second for the ups. Other thoughts here?

 

thanks.

 

I also realized that the motherboard has a usb header but as my case doesnt have front facing usb ports I am not using it. I guess I could something like this for the second usb key but I'm assuming its all on the same controller.

 

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Motherboard-4-Pin-Header-USBMBADAPT/dp/B000IV6S9S

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I just need some clarification with respect to the usb ports required for an esxi and unraid setup.

 

First my board, X8SIL, has 3 usb ports (1 directly on the mobo and 2 in the back), and I assume these are all on the same controller.

 

ESXi will take one usb port for the base installation, and a second one will contain the unraid license info. Therefore the second usb with the unraid license needs to be passed thru to the  vm but if both are on the same controller, wouldn't that mean making the esxi usb invisibile and consequently screwing up the installation?

 

I also need two more ports, one for a shared printer and a second for the ups. Other thoughts here?

 

thanks.

 

I also realized that the motherboard has a usb header but as my case doesnt have front facing usb ports I am not using it. I guess I could something like this for the second usb key but I'm assuming its all on the same controller.

 

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Motherboard-4-Pin-Header-USBMBADAPT/dp/B000IV6S9S

Just pass the USB flash drive through not the controller.  Add a USB controller to the VM.  Then add a USB device and select the unRAID flash drive.
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Anyone running the Sammy 830 SSD with ESXi? I'm looking to run a W7 VM on it.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147163

 

It has phenomenal reviews and from the research I've done supports TRIM and has garbage collection which is needed in ESXi, right?

 

Thanks!

Well, I sure hope it works out because I just bought one for $85... (actually, I did research that it will be fine :) )

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Anyone running the Sammy 830 SSD with ESXi? I'm looking to run a W7 VM on it.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147163

 

It has phenomenal reviews and from the research I've done supports TRIM and has garbage collection which is needed in ESXi, right?

 

Thanks!

 

I am also looking into that for my next build. As the next gen. is on its way, you can find some pretty good deals ATM.

ESXi VFS does not support TRIM, so you'll rely on the drives internal garbage collection.

According to this: http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/4863?cPage=2&all=False&sort=0&page=6&slug=the-samsung-ssd-830-review the 830 will only perform this task when idle.

I think this is not much of an issue for home use....at least it isn't for me, serving the family only and the box simply idles when everyone is at school or work.

My current build runs on an older Kingston 128GB V100+ which supports TRIM but has not an internal GC. The disk has not seen a single issue since two years now.

 

..so I am confident that the 830 will make a good datastore drive, besides that issue with online-GC.

 

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In my build, I purchased 2x 256GB SSDs, the best performance as per the reviews.

 

my initial plan was to use 1 for datastore for ESXi, and second one as a cache drive for unRAID.  Initially also, was planning to install SAB, SickBeard...etc, all on unRAID, then decided to segregate, and keep unRAID strictly for storage only.  So the second SSD, now, is idle, unused.

 

any recommendations?  Would I still need a cache drive, or should i use this second SSD as my second datastore for ESXi?

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I just need some clarification with respect to the usb ports required for an esxi and unraid setup.

 

First my board, X8SIL, has 3 usb ports (1 directly on the mobo and 2 in the back), and I assume these are all on the same controller.

 

ESXi will take one usb port for the base installation, and a second one will contain the unraid license info. Therefore the second usb with the unraid license needs to be passed thru to the  vm but if both are on the same controller, wouldn't that mean making the esxi usb invisibile and consequently screwing up the installation?

 

I also need two more ports, one for a shared printer and a second for the ups. Other thoughts here?

 

thanks.

 

I also realized that the motherboard has a usb header but as my case doesnt have front facing usb ports I am not using it. I guess I could something like this for the second usb key but I'm assuming its all on the same controller.

 

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Motherboard-4-Pin-Header-USBMBADAPT/dp/B000IV6S9S

 

depending if you have 1 or 2 motherboard headers, you can get one of these for more ports http://www.amazon.com/USB-4-Port-Bracket-Dual-Headers/dp/B0027YYMQA

 

as bob said, pass the usb flash not the usb bus (i have seen people pass the bus with success on multi bus systems).

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Sorry, bit of an ESXi newbie here!

 

How are you guys managing to maintain two copies of your datastore? via backups or via RAID1?

 

Also, would you mind explaining your method?  :)

I don't it only takes 15 minutes to setup the VMs.  I have my Windows VMs boot off of RDM'd drives and unRAID config is on a USB flash drive.  Those due get backed up.
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Is it common practice to passthrough the onboard sata controller (ICH8R in my case) or better to buy a separate sata raid card to passthrough? I'd rather not buy another card right now. I noticed in your guide you do not passthrough the onboard sata ports, correct?

 

Are the onboard SATA-ports used for anything else then datastores for the most of you? I was thinking of using the 2 port sil3132 sata card as the datastore.

 

I'd rather use my 6 ports onboard sata in an unraid VM for baremetal unraid.  Lastly, I'm assuming in passthrough, there is no performance hit whatsoever?

If your MB controller shows up as two separate controllers then you could pass a portion of it to a VM but the SIL3132 cannot be used for datastores as far as I know.  Also you might be limited to ESXi 4 as according to this post there aren't ESXi drivers for 5 yet.  That was back in Jan-Apr time frame so that could have changed but I don't believe ESXi can use a third party driver as a datastore drive.

 

For future reference I tried this on my X8SIL with esxi 5.1. The sil3132  seemed to work fine as a datastore but when I tried to start the vm with the onboard controller passed through everything crashed. It shows up as one six port intel ibex peak. I'm guessing the network card and other components are also dependent on that controller. Now to get a M1015.

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Sorry, bit of an ESXi newbie here!

 

How are you guys managing to maintain two copies of your datastore? via backups or via RAID1?

 

Also, would you mind explaining your method?  :)

 

In my main ESXi box (Atlas) I have 3 datastores.. 2 SDD's and 1 RAID5 (raidz1 via NFS on freenas guest) with 4x 2TB Mechanical drives.

My second ESXi box has 1 7200RPM  Spinner (the SDD in it died) and also points back to the Raid5 datastore on the main box. (mostly for manual load balancing plus some test or dev VM's)

 

 

I for a backup target, I have a cheap HP Microserver that is running freeNAS with Raidz1 and NFS shares on..

 

I backup using ESXi scripts (modified ESXi Ghetto backup).

 

have a script that runs nightly and backs up the 2 SSD datastores and the spinner in the second box (only if it is turned on) to the Raid5 datastore on the main box.

 

I then have a second script that runs every Sunday night after the first backup is done.

that script wakes up the HP server, backs up the datastore raid5 to the HP raid5. it then powers off the HP when it is done.

 

I could back it up to the unraid guest. but I have to justify the HP somehow.. also, if I had a failure, I would have to rebuild the unraid first to do the restore...

 

I also do manual backups with veeam backup free edition if I am about to do something to a VM where I know I'll want to have a current snapshot handy. Like apply service packs to my exchange server  (yes I know I can also use the ESXi tools to make a snapshot for this. I like 1 to 1 copies better) or maybe take a snapshot to work with me.

 

On top of all that. some of my windows VM's use windows backup that backup the entire server to a share on my unraid server (my whs2011 and my usenet downloader) nightly. this kicks off sometime after my nightly workstation backups to my WHS2011 are done. so that my workstation backups are replicated.

 

 

In all my wisdom, I have a decent backup plan that could probably be better. I also will admit I have no fail-over or redundancy if something breaks, especially hardware. but it is not a production environment and it have backups of everything.

 

I still have to incorporate my Timemachine backups into this plan.

For now they all have a dedicated TM drive in each mac (honestly, the macs have nothing critical on them. I could rebuild them quickly since they are all SSD)

 

 

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I've been chatting with BobPhoenix about his ESX server setup and have been researching here - I'm interested. I currently run two separate unRAID boxes and would like to virtualize them. In the past having two machines has been good in that one stores backups and TV shows, the other just Movies and Music. I upgrade the TV one first and if things ran well I'd upgrade the Movie server. ;D Both machines are running the latest V5 RC8a as of today.

 

I'm looking at a Tyan S5512GM2NR mobo, a Xeon E3-1240, and 32Gig of RAM in a Norco 4224 4U chassis, possibly a 4020/4220. I am considering an M1015 SAS card and the RES2SV240 expander. I have an SASLP-MV8 sitting on my shelf presently, Bob says that multiplexing it's lower throughput is a bad idea and I think he's right.

 

Researching here I think I see some areas of concern, I'll admit I've not read all of the ESX threads nor all of this one. I do have some experience with ESX at least but not passthru - I'm a novice. I noted that Atlas mentions that using passthru for a controller card passes ALL of the drives attached, correct? In my case I'd like to have two separate unRAID instances running, I would also like to have the ability to run other VMs so this sounds like a problem. Likewise if I pass through the NICs will I be able to have any other VM use them - I think not? Could unRAID be presented with virtual NICs? The third NIC is designated for server management, can it be accessed by a VM?

 

I suppose it's possible I could move to using a single unRAID server. I'm currently using 18TB of space, mostly in 1, 1.5, and 2TB drives so consolidating could be interesting and add still more cost. This is starting to sound like a less complicated avenue though!

 

I'd appreciate some guidance and advice regarding the build. It sounds like using the expander might be a mistake. What combination and configuration would folks recommend? I've got no experience with server level hardware presently but would like to gain some. Likewise I've got a small i7 ESX server now but it won't allow passthru since I specced a 2600K for it, Intel neutered them and I went through hell figuring it out. I'd like to gain some ESX knowledge too, my current ESX box isn't used enough to be worth powering up....

 

Thanks!

 

P.S. If it matters I think I'm going to be needing 2.5+TB support. Will the MV8 do that if I have to use it?

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