I've sifted through the VMWare thread on the boards, but I can't find the answer to the following questions.  Please be gentle - I'm a n00b to unRAID:

 

1) I'm building a high-powered, quad-core 64bit rig and I want to use it as a main desktop for my household (Vista 64) and also to run unRAID server.

2) After some searching, it seems that this is possible.  However the other VMWare thread only covered VMWare Server and I was interested in VMWare Workstation.

 

So my question is, can I run unRAID under VMWare Workstation?  Would this pose any issues/limitations to unRAID?  Thanks!

Running unRAID in a guest VM on a host Windows Vista system is a very, very, bad idea.

Running unRAID in a guest VM on a host Windows Vista system is a very, very, bad idea.

 

What's the ideal setup?  Thanks!

Running unRAID in a guest VM on a host Windows Vista system is a very, very, bad idea.

 

What's the ideal setup?  Thanks!

 

What are your goals?

Ideally having unRAID on it's own small machine is the best setup. Doesn't have to be a quad core power house.

Why run a server (unRAID) under windows?

You will be limited to max of three virtual drives because you cannot boot and/or register from the USB key.

I think you can pass the USB through on VMworkstation directly to the VM-OS.

I know there a ways to do it on the server side, presenting the USb key as a scsi drive, but then I am not sure if it would read the guid.

I gave up trying to do this through ESXi, only because I have so little time. If only we could do a raid 0 or 5  for the cache drive to speed up the transfers.

 

Is there a limit to the number of disks (virtual and/or physical) you can have in a virtual machine on VMware Workstation?

If only we could do a raid 0 or 5  for the cache drive to speed up the transfers.

 

It's possible with external hardware raid controllers such as the Silicon Image Steelvine raid storage processors.

http://www.siliconimage.com/products/productfamily.aspx?id=3

However this ends up being external to unRAID and all unRAID sees is a hard drive.

The individual drives part of the array are not accessible with SMART.

 

I've tried the RAID 0 on cache, it does work, it adds a small amount of performance.

One of these days I'll try it with one of my hardware caching raid controllers.

 

I gave up on this even though it would be the ideal solution.  I ended up purchasing another set of hardware to use as the Vista machine.

 

Thanks for the replies!

I bought a AMD 4850E, which has virtualization support.

 

With this, I want to get KVM running on unraid. In the KVM I'll be running mythbuntu and Windows.

 

I'll keep you updated.

 

Gr,

Deva

Install unRAID to a full Slackware distro, and you can do whatever you want.

 

I run unRAID natively, with KDE and a VM for WinXP (although I use VirtualBox, not VMWare).  Then use VNC for remote control.

I run unRAID natively, with KDM and a VM for WinXP

Can we assume that KDM is a typo?

 

Should have been KDE