I have been looking to implement a virtual server setup for awhile now, and have been reading quite a bit regarding setup of server and installations etc. I did have a few questions however.

 

1. By making UnRaid a VM does it still allow the ability just to drop the bzroot and bzimage files when upgrades are released?

 

2. I have decided to go the XenServer route baremetal for most hardware pass through configuration and the open source.  I do not understand how it should be installed onto the server however. Are most people installing XenServer on a SSD and using a regular hard drive to install the VM datastore to it? Or are they just installing XenServer on a thumb drive like UnRaid for the boot up and then utilize another hard drive for the VM's?  I would take using a SSD for the VM's is not a good idea as they are constantly writing to the SSD. I may be totally wrong here.

 

3. Are the onboard SATA ports of the motherboard left for XenServer operation, and the UnRaid hard drives all placed on Expansion cards placed on the pcie? 

 

4. I plan on having 4 virtual machines on this to start: UnRaid, Ubuntu, Windows 8, and pfSense. I currently have a X9SCM-F-O motherboard, I3-2120T which I was going to replace with a E3-1230 as the I3-2120T does not have VT-d support. I currently only have 4 GB of ram installed and will obviously need to upgrade it. Do I really need to max out the motherboard with 32 Gigs or can I just get 2 8 Gig sticks for a total of 20 GB? Difference is like $150 as I already have the 4 GB!

 

Thanks in advance for the information, I really enjoy lurking around the forums. Unraid has a great community and the users are what make Unraid different from all the other distributions!

1. By making UnRaid a VM does it still allow the ability just to drop the bzroot and bzimage files when upgrades are released?

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yes it does,  but you will need to remember to drop the files onto VHD as well as on the USB stick

the issue is that Hyper-visors do not support booting VM from USB sticks  so you need a VHD to add to your VM can probably find one here on this forum and just upgrade the files as needed.

I am not sure how to build a bootable VHD for unraid.

keep in mind that you still need a USB Flash drive to be connected to VM for the license key if you going past the free basic setup(free version can work off the HDD without Flash drive or so I have hear).

 

 

2. I have decided to go the XenServer route baremetal for most hardware pass through configuration and the open source.  I do not understand how it should be installed onto the server however. Are most people installing XenServer on a SSD and using a regular hard drive to install the VM datastore to it? Or are they just installing XenServer on a thumb drive like UnRaid for the boot up and then utilize another hard drive for the VM's?  I would take using a SSD for the VM's is not a good idea as they are constantly writing to the SSD. I may be totally wrong here.

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the choice is entirely up to you. there are few caveats though when installing on flash sticks that might turn you the other way.also I do not see a particular need for USB stick installas you will have to use an add on card to pass through to unraid leaving you a plenty SATA ports on your MB for SSD or HDD to use. only plus for usb stick is that it does not take a valuable HDD space in the case. but if you use a SDD or small laptop HDD you should be fine.

 

 

3. Are the onboard SATA ports of the motherboard left for XenServer operation, and the UnRaid hard drives all placed on Expansion cards placed on the pcie? 

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this is usually the case for VM setup.

the reason being that you would want UnRaid full control of drive controller and HDD attached to it

so you can utilize the drive spin down/spin up options and such.

most MB have only one controller so if you are passing it through to unRaid VM where will your Host system and DataStore go?

if you run unraid baremetal it is not an issue as unraid have full control of the system, but in VM

it is not possible as even if you run the host(hypervisor) from thumbdrive you still need at least 1 or 2 SATA ports for DataStore that are not part of unraid, thus you will need a controller.

some MB have split controllers having 2-3 sata ports on one and 4-5 on the other.

if you have such MB you might get a way with passing the most port to unriad and leaving the smaller set for the host.

 

4. I plan on having 4 virtual machines on this to start: UnRaid, Ubuntu, Windows 8, and pfSense. I currently have a X9SCM-F-O motherboard, I3-2120T which I was going to replace with a E3-1230 as the I3-2120T does not have VT-d support. I currently only have 4 GB of ram installed and will obviously need to upgrade it. Do I really need to max out the motherboard with 32 Gigs or can I just get 2 8 Gig sticks for a total of 20 GB? Difference is like $150 as I already have the 4 GB!

based on your comment I assume you have 4 ram banks on the MB

just get 2x8GB for now.

 

20GB of RAM should be plenty .

your host(xenserver)will run on 2GB max 4GB but not likely.

unRaid only need 1GB, 2 at most and only if you plan to run plug ins on it (which in this case most probably will not be needed as most things you would want to run on unraid as plug-in would be better of in a dedicated VM)

pfsence will work just fine with 2GB unless you plan to do something crazy with your network

 

Ubuntu may need 4GB depending on what you will be using it for

and windows will most definitely need at least 4GB again depending on what you use it for but 4 is the least.

so that is:

2+1+2+4+4 = 13 minimum

4+2+2+4+6 = 18 Max if we increase RAM for host / unraid /windows

 

if you will need more later you can always get 2 more 8GB and max out the MB.

 

FYI I think my ram location is very generous though...

 

the basic pfsence setup recomends 512MB of ram unless you will run lots of additional packages

 

Depending on the number and type of packages you intend to install, a basic pfSense VM should run very, very comfortably in 512MB.  A lot of simple, non-virtual installations run on old PCs with 256MB and less. 

 

If you’re really squeezed for physical RAM on your host - perhaps because you intend to run lots of other virtual machines - you could cut back the allocation to the pfSense VM to, say, 384MB. If you intend to run lots of memory-hungry packages give it more.

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the basic unRaid setup with no plugins runs very well on the same.

 

 

 

 

I'll preface my answers by saying that I am still using ESXi 5.5.

 

 

1. By making UnRaid a VM does it still allow the ability just to drop the bzroot and bzimage files when upgrades are released?

 

This is why I set up my unRAID VM to PXE boot.  That way when new a new version of unRAID is release, I just copy the bzroot and bzimage files to my PXE server.  No need to make/update a VHD. 

 

2. I have decided to go the XenServer route baremetal for most hardware pass through configuration and the open source.  I do not understand how it should be installed onto the server however. Are most people installing XenServer on a SSD and using a regular hard drive to install the VM datastore to it? Or are they just installing XenServer on a thumb drive like UnRaid for the boot up and then utilize another hard drive for the VM's?  I would take using a SSD for the VM's is not a good idea as they are constantly writing to the SSD. I may be totally wrong here.

 

As far as I know, XenServer will not run from a USB drive.  However, the drive that XenServer is installed on is also automatically used as a datastore drive.  That being said, you can add additional drives to be used as datastores as needed.

 

3. Are the onboard SATA ports of the motherboard left for XenServer operation, and the UnRaid hard drives all placed on Expansion cards placed on the pcie?

 

This is how most people do it.

 

4. I plan on having 4 virtual machines on this to start: UnRaid, Ubuntu, Windows 8, and pfSense. I currently have a X9SCM-F-O motherboard, I3-2120T which I was going to replace with a E3-1230 as the I3-2120T does not have VT-d support. I currently only have 4 GB of ram installed and will obviously need to upgrade it. Do I really need to max out the motherboard with 32 Gigs or can I just get 2 8 Gig sticks for a total of 20 GB? Difference is like $150 as I already have the 4 GB!

 

I currently have 24GB and have 4 WIN7 VMs (4GB each), and Ubuntu server (1GB), unRAID (3GB) and 2 XBMCBuntu VMs (2GB each) and my system is humming along.

 

 

 

Thank you for the excellent feedback!

1. By making UnRaid a VM does it still allow the ability just to drop the bzroot and bzimage files when upgrades are released?

 

No, currently the kernel that Tom compiles doesn't include the necessary stuff. That'll be resolved soon I suspect, for now just follow my guides on how to compile your own kernel (it isn't that hard after the first few times I promise).

 

2. I have decided to go the XenServer route baremetal for most hardware pass through configuration and the open source.  I do not understand how it should be installed onto the server however. Are most people installing XenServer on a SSD and using a regular hard drive to install the VM datastore to it? Or are they just installing XenServer on a thumb drive like UnRaid for the boot up and then utilize another hard drive for the VM's?  I would take using a SSD for the VM's is not a good idea as they are constantly writing to the SSD. I may be totally wrong here.

This is up to you. XenServer is just a Linux OS, like Ubuntu or Slackware - the difference is XenServer is stripped down and designed to do only one thing (which is does VERY well incidentally). Installation to an SSD or USB makes a difference only to the speed of the hypervisor OS (not the guests) so it's up to you. If you're short on sata ports, install to USB - if not, SSD. You can use the GUI client to provision storage however you see fit, so long as the host OS can see it.

 

3. Are the onboard SATA ports of the motherboard left for XenServer operation, and the UnRaid hard drives all placed on Expansion cards placed on the pcie? 

This depends on your motherboard, most consumer boards either pass through all mobo ports or none. If you are using the mobo sata for an SSD upon which you installed XenServer then you may be forced to passthrough an entire second controller (a PCI card for example is what most people do like the Supermicro in my sig). You'll also need to passthrough the USB port for unraid obviously.

 

4. I plan on having 4 virtual machines on this to start: UnRaid, Ubuntu, Windows 8, and pfSense. I currently have a X9SCM-F-O motherboard, I3-2120T which I was going to replace with a E3-1230 as the I3-2120T does not have VT-d support. I currently only have 4 GB of ram installed and will obviously need to upgrade it. Do I really need to max out the motherboard with 32 Gigs or can I just get 2 8 Gig sticks for a total of 20 GB? Difference is like $150 as I already have the 4 GB!

 

I have 16GB in my server and that's sufficient, but the more the merrier with RAM. Again, this is up to you. I have 8GB for Windows, 2GB for Arch (the host) and 2GB for my other OSs each. So I have some to spare.

 

 

I'll preface my answers by saying that I am still using ESXi 5.5.

 

 

1. By making UnRaid a VM does it still allow the ability just to drop the bzroot and bzimage files when upgrades are released?

 

This is why I set up my unRAID VM to PXE boot.  That way when new a new version of unRAID is release, I just copy the bzroot and bzimage files to my PXE server.  No need to make/update a VHD. 

 

 

This won't work with Xen (or KVM) at the moment because the unRAID kernel doesn't include the necessary flags yet.  Of course, you can update your PXE files and then do it from there but you still need to modify the kernel.