I currently have unRaid running as a guest in ESXi.  All of my apps such as SAB/SB/CP/Plex are running as plugins.  I think I'd rather have unRaid running as bare as possible and run all the apps off their own VM.  What's the best way to do this?  Any suggestions on type of OS?

I use Ubuntu Server.

it depends what apps you want to run. some apps have versions for specific OSs only.

I currently have unRaid running as a guest in ESXi.  All of my apps such as SAB/SB/CP/Plex are running as plugins.  I think I'd rather have unRaid running as bare as possible and run all the apps off their own VM.  What's the best way to do this?  Any suggestions on type of OS?

This may sound strange, but if you are already familiar with the setup and operation of these plugins, why not run another instance of unraid as an apps only vm? The only issue I can see with this is moving any file locations that were on the cache drive to /mnt/disk1. You really don't even need a parity drive, unless you want data protection for your apps. Just run the free basic version of unraid with only one smallish data disk assigned. I think I saw a prebuilt vm image posted here somewhere that would be ideal for that.

I will say that setting up all these programs on Ubuntu server took a little searching and a lot of playing around in command line. If you are looking for something that is really easy to set up you might want to go with something else.

 

The reason I went with Ubuntu was I wanted to be able to expand it over time to do other things as well like run my own web server.

I also use ubuntu server and moved the data dirs of all the apps to that. Then I just changed the config files a bit, but it was just a fun project. Its nice to run a stock unraid.. Dont really need to worry about that at all now

I currently have unRaid running as a guest in ESXi.  All of my apps such as SAB/SB/CP/Plex are running as plugins.  I think I'd rather have unRaid running as bare as possible and run all the apps off their own VM.  What's the best way to do this?  Any suggestions on type of OS?

 

Checkout my esxi pointers thread.. I have done what you suggest and am really happy with it..

I have sab/sick (main/torrent/anime branches, 3 instances)/couch/headphones/lazylibrarian all running on a Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server, built from the mini-ISO, so it's extremely lightweight.  Yes it can be a challenge to install, but if you're up for it, I'd give it a shot.

 

There is also a turnkey appliance available that has it all ready to go if you can't be assed/find linux command line stuff challenging.  Take a look here: http://aceshome.com/nzbapp/

I've started to play around with the Ubuntu Server, and have installed SAB to start, but I can't access the Web GUI from within my network.  And I thought getting familiar with unRaid was a Linux crash course...this is gonna be interesting.  Good thing about VMs, I can just blow it all away and start over when I've made a mess.

 

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys, I'll take a look at the goods.

Use ubuntu 32 as vmware base, make it 2 cores and 4gb, give it 16gb of storage, do thin provisioning, choose VMXNET3 for a network adapter.

 

Installing SABNZBD: http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-media-server-ubuntu-11.10-sabnzbd-sickbeard-couch-potato-headphones-serviio-p2

 

Installing SickBeard: http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-media-server-ubuntu-11.10-sabnzbd-sickbeard-couch-potato-headphones-serviio-p3

 

Installing Couchpotato: http://linuxplained.com/install-couchpotato-v2-on-ubuntu/

 

Installing VMWare Tools: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VMware/Tools

 

 

I've started to play around with the Ubuntu Server, and have installed SAB to start, but I can't access the Web GUI from within my network.  And I thought getting familiar with unRaid was a Linux crash course...this is gonna be interesting.  Good thing about VMs, I can just blow it all away and start over when I've made a mess.

 

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys, I'll take a look at the goods.

 

Once you have the server setup (before installing apps, etc) you can back it up (copy the vmdk somewhere), that way if anything goes wrong you just restore the file and not reinstall the OS.

Make snapshots along the way:

 

- Linux installed

- Sabnzbd installed

- Sickbeard installed

- Couchpotato installed

 

That way you can easily get back to a previous situation..