I'm hoping to setup my first Unraid Server this weekend, but would really like to be able to use the box as more than just a simply NAS.  I'm a little familiar with virtualizing having experimented with esxi, proxmox, vmware, and so on.

 

Can Unraid act as a VM host? to allow for running other OS's?    Or do you need to first install something like esxi and install Unraid as a VM?    Am I correct that if you need to install esxi (or similar) first, are you defeating the purpose of an unraid server in that the host machine needs to 'assign't the drives' to each virtual machine?

 

 

here is an excellent thread on running unRaid on ESXi and passing thru the controller cards instead of the individual drives. That way unRaid sees all the drives on the controller card(s) that are passed to it

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=14695.0

You could go with VirtualBox, depending on what you want to achieve performance wise and depending on your hardware.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=10978.0

There are pre-compiled packages.

 

 

here is an excellent thread on running unRaid on ESXi and passing thru the controller cards instead of the individual drives. That way unRaid sees all the drives on the controller card(s) that are passed to it

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=14695.0

 

Thanks' for the great link.

 

I've started working on setting up my new build, I have close to the same setup with a Norco 4020 case and I think the same MB as well.

 

But I installed esx 5.0, but have run into a couple of snags as follows

 

 

1.  I believe I have the same MB.  But ESXI tells me "Host does not support passthrough configuration".    My MB Bios does look different, but I still need to enable "Vt-d" in the bios as I couldn't find it the first time.  Mine is under the 'NorthBridge Configuration'   EDIT.  I resolved this part by enabling Vt-d last evening.  But still need to install unraid in a VM to test configuration.

 

2.  In esxi 5, I do not see where to set the block size in your datastores.  It defaults to 1.  but I can't see where to change it.  From what I read here, you can not change the block size in esxi 5  http://itswapshop.com/content/how-change-local-vmfs-block-size-esxi-5

 

3.  Raid Bios.  I have the same card,  but can only access the 'Web Bios', so am unsure if my raid card is configured properly.  I'm unsure of its firmware version, but will look to review it tonight.  Unsure if this will be an issue when going to passthrough the drives, etc.

 

I really hope to get things going by end of the week, and than start the media transfer off the old server.

 

Anyone have similar issues or thoughts?

Saw the same issue with ESX 5.x regarding block size so I left it alone. The M1015 card I'd flash to rev 14 of the firmware. I flashed mine with a DOS boot stick without issues.

 

 

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