Unraid-ESXI questions

[zoltran]

Hi All

I'm a new unRaid user.

I'm building a new ESXi server and will have unRaid as it's major guest, along with a few others.

The server is based on the Givabyte EP35-DS4 MB with a Q6600 CPU and 8Gig of RAM.

 

I've read thru most of the posts here about unRaid and ESX.. but still have a couple questions i'd like to ask to the people that have done this already.

 

1) Do drives spindown properly when not in use.    ?

2) Does all the 'SMART' stuff work right .. does unRaid see all the goodies it needs to see?

3) Was there something you needed to do to make this work right?

4) Any reliability issues?

5) Would u do it again?

 

Thanks in Advance

Wes

[prostuff1]

The server is based on the Givabyte EP35-DS4 MB with a Q6600 CPU and 8Gig of RAM.

Does that board support VT-d?  If not you are going to have to do RDM for all of your drives you want to add to any guest.

 

 

1) Do drives spindown properly when not in use.    ?

When using passthrough on a controller card like the SASLP I can confirm that it does work.  If the drive is RDM'ed into unRAID I do not know.

 

2) Does all the 'SMART' stuff work right .. does unRaid see all the goodies it needs to see?

Again, when using passthrough it works just fine with my SASLP cards... not sure about RDM'ed drives.

 

3) Was there something you needed to do to make this work right?

Your best bet is a motherboard that supports VT-d so you can passthrough and entire controller to unRAID.  I run by unRAID array off of 2 SASLP cards that are enabled for passthrough.

 

4) Any reliability issues?

None with mine so far, has been working a treat for me.  I moved everything into a norco 4220, have an XP DVD ripping VM set up on it and moved everything to a new location so it was out of my main living area.

 

5) Would u do it again?

When (not if) this one gets full I probably will.

 

The main part of my build is a Supermicro c2sbc-q, 10GB of RAM, 2 SASLP's, and a Q9300 CPU.

[zoltran]

Thanks for the info.

 

I'm not sure if this Gigabyte board supports VT-D.  Is there a way to find out , inside or outside of ESX? 

 

Also .. do you keep your VM guest/datastore on Unraid or outside on an ESX managed disk pool.

I plan to run SageTV or Windows MCE as a guest.. I like the idea of keeping them in Unraid for the protection benefits.

 

 

[prostuff1]

I'm not sure if this Gigabyte board supports VT-D.   Is there a way to find out , inside or outside of ESX? 

Best way is by reading through the manual for the board via the Gigabyte site.

 

Also .. do you keep your VM guest/datastore on Unraid or outside on an ESX managed disk pool.

I keep the one I use the most on an SSD managed by ESXi.  I have not RDM'ed an other drives yet for other guests.

 

I plan to run SageTV or Windows MCE as a guest.. I like the idea of keeping them in Unraid for the protection benefits.

I don't know how well that will work... it could be really slow.

[zoltran]

Well ..  It all works well. ;-)

The MB does not support PCI Controller Passthru but it does support passing thru just the disks.

Using V5 B14.  And .. all disks spin up/down as normal.  Onlything missing is the temperature and some other SMART info.

 

Thanks for the help

 

So .Hijacking my own thread ...

 

Is unMenu appropriate for a V5 machine?  Or better to wait for V5 plugins? 

 

 

 

[prostuff1]

Well ..  It all works well. ;-)

The MB does not support PCI Controller Passthru but it does support passing thru just the disks.

Using V5 B14.  And .. all disks spin up/down as normal.   Onlything missing is the temperature and some other SMART info.

 

Thanks for the help

 

So .Hijacking my own thread ...

 

Is unMenu appropriate for a V5 machine?  Or better to wait for V5 plugins? 

 

 

 

I use unMenu on 5.0b6a and it works just fine.

[BobPhoenix]

Thanks for the info.

 

I'm not sure if this Gigabyte board supports VT-D.   Is there a way to find out , inside or outside of ESX?  

 

Also .. do you keep your VM guest/datastore on Unraid or outside on an ESX managed disk pool.

I plan to run SageTV or Windows MCE as a guest.. I like the idea of keeping them in Unraid for the protection benefits.

 

 

I have the following VMs setup in ESXi (SuperMicro X9SCM MB):

• unRAID on two SASLP-MV8 cards 14 drives currently connected 2TB each.  Using passthrough and the MV8 hack - 2nd unRaid server
  
• WHS using RDM for 2 1TB drives for the DATA drives.  This way I can get snapshots for backing up WHS
  
• Win7x64 SageTV server.  Using passthrough for Sil3132 controller to Rosewill external enclosure 2-3TB & 3-1TB, HVR-2250 using passthrough, HDHR network encoder
  

[Johnm]

I installed unmenu so that I can can install clean shutdown, APCUPSD, shutdown on overheat, mail support with health check emails, some other add-ons and have the tool-sets that are available in unmenu.

 

don't forget to install the VMware tools in unraid.