Unraid on Proxmox or pfSense on Unraid?

[rheumatoid-programme6086]

During my trial, I installed Unraid on the same proxmox instance that I use to host my pfSense router & some other stuff & simply passed-through a 6x PCIe sata adapter into it. This worked great, because I could restart Unraid without affecting the router, and it's what I'm planning to do (as of now) when I purchase (because Proxmox virtually never needs to be restarted). Before I do my final build, I was wondering if there would be any advantage to running Unraid on the metal and migrating my Proxmox VMs into it? Could you offer some insight on the pros and cons?

[rheumatoid-programme6086]

For anyone who comes here by Google, I've looked into this myself a little and I thought I'd share my conclusions.

 

IF you are going to do this, the way to go is definitely to virtualize unraid and run both it and pfSense on Proxmox. Having said that, doing so may be pointless for those users who are trying to reduce the energy consumption of their homelab (read on).

 

The biggest issue that I've found with running pfSense on Unraid is that it's impossible to have any VMs running if the array is not started, even if those VMs and their data are entirely hosted on non-array disks. This has a few implications: if the array is down, pfSense is down, and as a result:

 

- Your DHCP server is down. Fine if you have configured static IPs to important LAN devices (as I have), but if you've instead allocated static IPs in the pfSense DHCP service, everything on your network will be inaccessible.

- Your VPN server and router are down. This is the big one for me. If the Unraid box loses the array for some reason (or loses power and fails to re-start the array), both your Internet connection and your VPN server are gone. No remote troubleshooting for you.

- You will be unable to set any of this up in an Unraid trial -- Unraid trials will not start the array until Internet access is available. Conversely, Internet access will not be available until the array is started. Therefore, this setup is completely untestable without first buying a license.

 

None of these issues exist if you virtualize Unraid on Proxmox and pass-through your SATA controller(s) and/or HBA(s). Doing this actually works pretty well, but results in signficantly higher idle CPU usage and idle power consumption (~+8-10 watts, on a server that otherwise takes only 15 watts at idle) on my server vs. just running Unraid on the metal. A side benefit of this is that (at least on my system), Proxmox boots and starts pfSense very quickly, whereas the Unraid boot is glacially slow (and it would require still more time to start pfSense after that!).

 

Since the power consumption hit is so huge for virtualizing Unraid, at this point I'm planning to run Unraid on the HW and run pfSense on a separate system that only takes ~10 watts idle total (same as the hit to my Unraid server). Yes, this situation is extraordinarily frustrating, but I guess I just have to keep in mind that Unraid is primarily a storage server and it isn't reasonable to expect its VM management capabilities to be comparable to a dedicated virtualization product. I understand that "most" applications of virtualization would need the array up anyway ... but it's still disappointing that there's not a way to run a router VM independent of the array status.

Edited August 23, 2023 by rheumatoid-programme6086

[danioj]

On 8/24/2023 at 1:18 AM, rheumatoid-programme6086 said:

For anyone who comes here by Google, I've looked into this myself a little and I thought I'd share my conclusions.

 

IF you are going to do this, the way to go is definitely to virtualize unraid and run both it and pfSense on Proxmox. Having said that, doing so may be pointless for those users who are trying to reduce the energy consumption of their homelab (read on).

 

The biggest issue that I've found with running pfSense on Unraid is that it's impossible to have any VMs running if the array is not started, even if those VMs and their data are entirely hosted on non-array disks. This has a few implications: if the array is down, pfSense is down, and as a result:

 

- Your DHCP server is down. Fine if you have configured static IPs to important LAN devices (as I have), but if you've instead allocated static IPs in the pfSense DHCP service, everything on your network will be inaccessible.

- Your VPN server and router are down. This is the big one for me. If the Unraid box loses the array for some reason (or loses power and fails to re-start the array), both your Internet connection and your VPN server are gone. No remote troubleshooting for you.

- You will be unable to set any of this up in an Unraid trial -- Unraid trials will not start the array until Internet access is available. Conversely, Internet access will not be available until the array is started. Therefore, this setup is completely untestable without first buying a license.

 

None of these issues exist if you virtualize Unraid on Proxmox and pass-through your SATA controller(s) and/or HBA(s). Doing this actually works pretty well, but results in signficantly higher idle CPU usage and idle power consumption (~+8-10 watts, on a server that otherwise takes only 15 watts at idle) on my server vs. just running Unraid on the metal. A side benefit of this is that (at least on my system), Proxmox boots and starts pfSense very quickly, whereas the Unraid boot is glacially slow (and it would require still more time to start pfSense after that!).

 

Since the power consumption hit is so huge for virtualizing Unraid, at this point I'm planning to run Unraid on the HW and run pfSense on a separate system that only takes ~10 watts idle total (same as the hit to my Unraid server). Yes, this situation is extraordinarily frustrating, but I guess I just have to keep in mind that Unraid is primarily a storage server and it isn't reasonable to expect its VM management capabilities to be comparable to a dedicated virtualization product. I understand that "most" applications of virtualization would need the array up anyway ... but it's still disappointing that there's not a way to run a router VM independent of the array status.

Welcome. It’s a shame someone didn’t see your OP earlier and save you the journey many of us have already taken. 
 

I’ve been asking for the “feature” to start virtualisation services independently of the array for years now. It doesn’t appear to be something LT want to do. The answers from LT has long just been, they can’t.