I am on the verge of creating an esxi 5.0 server.  This is going to require me to add at least 1 hardrive for the datastores.  If I have to change a drive or 2 to a different sata port, how is this going to affect my unraid.  I am currently running 4.7 pro.

 

 

 

How do you currently have your drives connected?  Are any currently connected to MB ports?  What is your MB?  How many drives do you have?  What controllers are you using?

 

So maybe detail your current setup.  If you have done that somewhere already provide a link.  Once we know what you have we can give you a better idea.

 

But to maybe answer your question.  Swapping ports usually doesn't affect unRAID beyond making sure you connect the same drives to the same unRAID slots AFTER you switch ports.  So get a picture of your current setup first so that you know which drive to assign to which unRAID slot.  Any further info will need answers to the questions above and any that anybody else thinks are necessary.

 

When I setup mine I reserved all MB ports to ESXi and got enough controllers (now SAS expander) to handle all drives for unRAID.  Then I setup my VM, passed the controllers through, reconnected the drives in the correct unRAID slots and had my unRAID 4.6 VM up and running.  I've since had to upgrade the VMs to 5.0 to get LSI controller and SAS expander support working.

My current server specs are:

SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIL-F-O

Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz LGA 1156

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W

6X Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB

 

Most drives are attached to the MOBO sata ports.  I had to get a SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 and attach drives to this controller.

 

Reason for this thread:  I am moving into the world of home automation.  I will need to either purchase a computer for a server or virtualize to consolidate.  So I am looking at upgrading the processor and ram in my unraid server.  Get esxi functionng.  Then create my virtual unraid server.  Here are my upgrades:

 

Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G

 

Intel Xeon X3440 Lynnfield 2.53GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80605X3440

 

I am going with homeseer.  Homeseer server will run off really low specs.  Suggested spec are say 1.86 dual core atom and 4 gigs ram.

 

This  esxi server will host :

Virtualized unraid

Homeseer

So next question is if needed, can I move drives to different sata ports.

My current server specs are:

SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIL-F-O

Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz LGA 1156

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W

6X Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB

 

Most drives are attached to the MOBO sata ports.  I had to get a SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 and attach drives to this controller.

 

Reason for this thread:  I am moving into the world of home automation.  I will need to either purchase a computer for a server or virtualize to consolidate.  So I am looking at upgrading the processor and ram in my unraid server.  Get esxi functionng.  Then create my virtual unraid server.  Here are my upgrades:

 

Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G

 

Intel Xeon X3440 Lynnfield 2.53GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80605X3440

 

I am going with homeseer.  Homeseer server will run off really low specs.  Suggested spec are say 1.86 dual core atom and 4 gigs ram.

 

This  esxi server will host :

Virtualized unraid

Homeseer

So next question is if needed, can I move drives to different sata ports.

Your MB should have 3 PCIe slots and one PCI based on what I've see at Newegg.  If you only have 6 drives for unRAID they would all plug into your SASLP-MV8 with two to spare.  If you are planing for future expansion to unRAID drive total you might consider getting another SASLP-MV8 when you get more than 6 drives but until then you don't need to.  Note this would need to include parity and cache drives as well so if you really have 8 drives 6 data/parity/cache then your SASLP-MV8 should be at capacity.  You would just need to do the MV8 hack in ESXi to get your SASLP-MV8 to work in passthrough mode but as far as I know works well.  I needed PCIe slots because I have a VM that I use tuner cards with and wanted to maximize my number so I got a SAS expander and used an IBM M1015 to drive it.  So it should be possible as long as you don't need something for Homeseer that would stop this from working - never used it myself so I don't know if there are problems with VMs and Homeseer or not.  The unRAID part will work fine. So long story short if you use your MB controller for datastore drives and use virtual drives for the Homeseer VM and passthrough mode for the SASLP-MV8 it should work.  You connect your drives to the SASLP-MV8 for unRAID (as I said above the port on the card or MB doesn't matter to unRAID) and passthrough the card to your unRAID VM.  Then just attached the correct drive to the correct unRAID slot and start your VM up.  You will need to setup a USB controller on the VM and then connect a USB device (your unRAID boot flash drive) to it.  You also need a way to boot the VM since ESXi will not boot from USB device so either a CD Rom image or virtual HDD (virtual HDD is the way I went) to boot from that then uses the flash drive for configuration and plugins.  Look in Johnm's Atlas thread for instructions for all of this.  The only part that doesn't apply to you is the MB specific parts.

 

So did this long ramble answer your question?

When I disconnect all the drives on the server and change them all to the mv8, will I need to do anything special in unraid. Otherwise what I am asking is will this action change the labels of the drives?

 

Do you have any suggestions for datastore drive?  do you think 2 wd black addition 1 terabyte drives would be sufficient in a raid 1 configuration

or

maybe SSD drives I just don't want to get too expensive.  I don't even think I would need that much data store space since unraid does not take much space and neither does homeseer.  what are your thoughts?

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Do you have any suggestions for datastore drive?  do you think 2 wd black addition 1 terabyte drives would be sufficient in a raid 1 configuration

or

maybe SSD drives I just don't want to get too expensive.  I don't even think I would need that much data store space since unraid does not take much space and neither does homeseer.

My vote would be for SSD's as long as you aren't going to have feature creep and load a bunch more VM's. I'm quite happily running homeseer on an old 8GB SSD, with 1.5GB free space left. You could pick up a pair of 128GB SSD's for much the same cost as 2 1TB Blacks, and the speed isn't even close.

So I have a 60 gig SSD I can just buy 1 more and put them in raid 1 how does that sound.  I might  1 more server sageTV but not sure at this time.

is it hard to replace datastore hard drive when they become full

 

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When I disconnect all the drives on the server and change them all to the mv8, will I need to do anything special in unraid. Otherwise what I am asking is will this action change the labels of the drives?

It shouldn't if by label you mean the name of the drive and serial number.

So I have a 60 gig SSD I can just buy 1 more and put them in raid 1 how does that sound.  I might  1 more server sageTV but not sure at this time.

is it hard to replace datastore hard drive when they become full

 

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If you leave your MB ports for datastore drives it should be easy until you fill them up anyway.  Just add a new drive as a datastore drive.  Copy any files and VMs you want to the new drive then remove the old drive if you need to - you will loose any VMs you haven't moved.  ESXi 5.0 and earlier (at least) don't have a trim function so your SSDs will die faster unless the SSD has a built in Garbage Collection function - some of the newer SSDs have it.  I use a SSD as my datastore myself but I don't bother with a RAID setup for the datastore.  I just backup the VMs periodically.  There are free backup solutions for ESXi VMs at least one is mentioned in Johnm's Atlas thread.  I believe Veeam has a free option now as well.

So to save money (or spread out the cost over time anyway), I could use the 60 gig ssd I already have and backup my vm's using a free utility to my unraid server, does that sound like a good plan to get started at least.

So to save money (or spread out the cost over time anyway), I could use the 60 gig ssd I already have and backup my vm's using a free utility to my unraid server, does that sound like a good plan to get started at least.

Sure, as long as you have a plan in place to retrieve your backups when the unraid install is one of the vm's that's lost. It should be doable, since the drives are just reiserfs, but I don't know the ins and outs of backing up and restoring esxi vm's. If you do like you say, one of the first things I would do is make a backup, remove the SSD, then restore the backup and make sure you can be back up and running with the vm restored to a different disk before you commit a bunch of data to your setup. Theoretically you should be able to boot your unraid usb and get to your backup no problem, but I'd test that theory.

So to save money (or spread out the cost over time anyway), I could use the 60 gig ssd I already have and backup my vm's using a free utility to my unraid server, does that sound like a good plan to get started at least.

The unRAID VM doesn't need to be backed up.  You can setup a new one in 5 minutes or less if you document the ESXi settings and use a CD boot or copy the HDD VMDK somewhere else.  Most of what you need for unRAID is still on the flash drive with your key - I do back that up regularly.  Other VMs are not so lucky.  I use my WHSv1 VM to backup my Windows VMs and just record settings of the VMs themselves somewhere.  I haven't even setup a backup for the VMs in ESXi anywhere yet.  I use BDBB to backup my WHS backup database to a completely separate NAS box occasionally.  I probably should do it more often just haven't gotten around to it yet.  And that is probably something I need to take care of.  However I can acheive a separate backup with Windows backup or Acronis or even just zipping up my SageTV server directories with a Windows scheduled job so I may not bother with a VM backup.  I can setup my Windows VM's for my SageTV servers in just the time it takes to reinstall Windows again.  Then copy the SageTV directory back from a backup.

 

Note I would never store a backup of a machine on the same machine even if they are in separate VMs if I didn't have a copy somewhere else as well.

So to save money (or spread out the cost over time anyway), I could use the 60 gig ssd I already have and backup my vm's using a free utility to my unraid server, does that sound like a good plan to get started at least.

The unRAID VM doesn't need to be backed up.  You can setup a new one in 5 minutes or less if you document the ESXi settings and use a CD boot or copy the HDD VMDK somewhere else.  Most of what you need for unRAID is still on the flash drive with your key - I do back that up regularly.  Other VMs are not so lucky.  I use my WHSv1 VM to backup my Windows VMs and just record settings of the VMs themselves somewhere.  I haven't even setup a backup for the VMs in ESXi anywhere yet.  I use BDBB to backup my WHS backup database to a completely separate NAS box occasionally.  I probably should do it more often just haven't gotten around to it yet.  And that is probably something I need to take care of.  However I can acheive a separate backup with Windows backup or Acronis or even just zipping up my SageTV server directories with a Windows scheduled job so I may not bother with a VM backup.  I can setup my Windows VM's for my SageTV servers in just the time it takes to reinstall Windows again.  Then copy the SageTV directory back from a backup.

 

Note I would never store a backup of a machine on the same machine even if they are in separate VMs if I didn't have a copy somewhere else as well.

 

So is that why you have 2 different esxi servers?  It seems as though we have traveled alot of the same circles as far as the web goes.

I have a unraid server, sagetv and a whs server (mainly for backups).  My WHS server is the sagetv server but that is going to change because I have 2 hauppage colosuss that don't play nice with out having to reboot nightly.  I have been contemplating reinstalling sagetv on windows 7 64 bit (to see if that would fix the nightly reboots) but that will have to happen after I get esxi up and running with the other vm's.  So for now I am going to virtualize my unraid server and homeseer.  I will be targeting sagetv but it depends on what will be required for that.

 

I wanted to make sure I am correct is my understanding.  With vt-d If I have an on board serial port, I can pass that through to a vm, correct.  The same would go if I need to add on serial ports via pci?

 

I am a little confused by the memory requirements for my motherboard.  If I remember right the memory changes when I move to the Xeon.  I am reading the following web page and get a little confused:

 

http://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/mem.cfm

 

I am reading a pdf downloaded from this link on that page:

 

For X8 DP motherboards, click HERE for speed & capacity limitations on memory.

 

I am trying to ensure that when I make my hardware purchase, I will not have any problems.  I would be very grateful if you would confirm that the following memory and configuration would work.  I followed a link in John Atlas thread for memory for my motherboard.  Here is the memory I am looking to purchase:

http://www.provantage.com/kingston-technology-kvr1066d3q8r7s-8g~7KINM1MT.htm

 

I am going to purchase the following processor (which is a quad core).  I am not sure if I can run 2 sticks of ram with a quad core unless I am understanding this incorrectly.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117225

 

 

 

Thanks for all the discussion and suggestions

I talked to super micro tech support and confirmed that 2 dimms was compatible with the quad core zeon.  So I took the plunge and ordered the xeon and 16 gigs of ram.  I decided to use my existing 60 gig ssd for my datastore.  Over time I will get the proper ssd and change to the ibm 1015.  I think this will get me started.  My journey begins when the parts come in;D

 

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So is that why you have 2 different esxi servers?

I have two because I ran out of room on my original and I wanted to combine computer functions into individual boxes.  It I didn't I would have 6 computers in basement instead of 3.  The reason I have 3 is that I have 4 SageTV servers 3 in basement and one in living room.  Two of those servers are VMs in the 2 ESXi servers.  Each of those ESXi boxes also has an unRAID server.  At the time I started virtualizing I didn't want to use unRAID 5.0 so I was limited to 40TB storage and by current count I have 39TB used on two servers.

It seems as though we have traveled alot of the same circles as far as the web goes.

I have a unraid server, sagetv and a whs server (mainly for backups).  My WHS server is the sagetv server but that is going to change because I have 2 hauppage colosuss that don't play nice with out having to reboot nightly.  I have been contemplating reinstalling sagetv on windows 7 64 bit (to see if that would fix the nightly reboots) but that will have to happen after I get esxi up and running with the other vm's.  So for now I am going to virtualize my unraid server and homeseer.  I will be targeting sagetv but it depends on what will be required for that.

I used to have WHS as one of my SageTV servers.  But backups were getting in the way when watching TV so I split them into separate VMs and got my responsiveness back on my extenders since WHS was limited to the resources ESXi gave it.

 

I wanted to make sure I am correct is my understanding.  With vt-d If I have an on board serial port, I can pass that through to a vm, correct.  The same would go if I need to add on serial ports via pci?

Are you talking serial port here or USB?  I've never used a serial port with ESXi although I got close to needing to for DirectTV channel changing.  But the STBs I currently have connected to VMs are either OTA only or use HTTP tuning so haven't needed to yet.  If you meant USB then there are two ways to get it into a VM.  Using a virtual USB controller will get you less than USB 2.0 speed but a lot more than USB 1.1 speed.  Or you can passthrough a controller.  That is what I do for the NEC USB controller for my HDPVRs.

I am a little confused by the memory requirements for my motherboard.  If I remember right the memory changes when I move to the Xeon.  I am reading the following web page and get a little confused:

 

http://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/mem.cfm

 

I am reading a pdf downloaded from this link on that page:

 

For X8 DP motherboards, click HERE for speed & capacity limitations on memory.

 

I am trying to ensure that when I make my hardware purchase, I will not have any problems.  I would be very grateful if you would confirm that the following memory and configuration would work.  I followed a link in John Atlas thread for memory for my motherboard.  Here is the memory I am looking to purchase:

http://www.provantage.com/kingston-technology-kvr1066d3q8r7s-8g~7KINM1MT.htm

 

I am going to purchase the following processor (which is a quad core).  I am not sure if I can run 2 sticks of ram with a quad core unless I am understanding this incorrectly.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117225

 

 

 

Thanks for all the discussion and suggestions

Looks like you got this one sorted.