Hello,

 

I am planning on getting rid of a few physical servers and have them made into 1 big server with several virtualized machines. BUT I am not sure if it works the way I want it. So I ask you guys, will this setup work?

 

Currently I have 1 Gateway server and 1 File server/game hosting server. What I want is one big server that handles it all and virtualizes the different servers I need.

 

1. The Gateway server must start first since it handles all the IP distribution in my network.

2. Then I want the unRAID server to start up and utilize all the HDDs I have connected in the mobo.

3. Then I want the Windows 7 server to start up.

 

For the windows 7 server, can that virtualization be run from the unRAID servers hdd space? Or how can I configure this?

 

Here is a badly drawn picture for the setup I want:

 

I like how unRAID works and I dont want to waste space on many different drives for a normal raid setup. That is why I dont use a raid configuration with VMware.

 

Can this setup work? Or what can I do to get as close to this as possible.

 

Best Regards,

Uroth

if you do the proper setup it should work...

 

#1. if you are set on using VMWare remember that Free ESXi is limited to 32GB of physical RAM  for host. that means you can only have 32GB total RAM on your VM server unless you are ready to pay for the License.

 

#2. VERY IMPORTANT is make sure you hardware supports VT-d/AMD-V IOMMU

on both MotherBoard and CPU. read the ESXi HCL carefully and pick from there.

this is needed to virtualize UnRaid and pass-through the USB and Disk controllers.

you can do RDM for hard drives but unRaid works better when you pass whole controller into it.

you can find ESXi VM images and how to use them if you search for ESXi virtualization here on the forum

 

I do believe VMWare has capability to set the VM start order option, not sure though 100%

 

#3. not sure what you mean when you say  "For the windows 7 server, can that virtualization be run from the unRAID servers hdd space?"

 

do you mean can you put the win7 VM on unraid share and run it from there, I am sure you can, but it would be slow.UnRaid is a Data Store first everything else second system. thus read/write speed is somewhat limited to the hardware speed. it would be better to have disk for active VMs and do a VM backup to the Unraid share as needed IMHO.  but you decide this. you can always try and see if it works.

 

I say do your reseach very thoroughly  first. make sure that 32GB RAM is enough for your needs.

if you think it is not take a look at XenServer as an alternative.

 

 

 

I do believe VMWare has capability to set the VM start order option, not sure though 100%

 

 

Its under Configuration...Virtual Machine Startup and Shutdown.  You basically set delays for when you want each VM to power on.

Quick glance on your hardware, it'd say:

 

Make the Gateway server a ESXi 5.1 free server. Then make the gateway server a host on the original hardware, There are some considerations to this. If you don't have proper pass-through hardware, expect to do a migration on your unraid box. (It's for the best, if it doesn't support pass-through, would you trust your data to it?)

 

So, you've got a ESXi server (single socket, 32gb ram, for free) ... with this setup you can setup the server start order ( select server, start times, etc)

 

Yea, it's doable. You can also configure hardware specs for each server. Want your main OS to have a min of 8 gigs always avilable to it? Give it 8 gigs reserved in the config. Or specify CPU time, or have 3 nics in the main server, each one going to a different switch port? It's doable.

 

Overall, I'd reconsider the 'main server with internet input' and probably use monowall or another firewall based virtual machine with 2 nics to send this out. (really, that can be rock solid design)