Hello,

 

So, ive been considering installing the plugin for virtual box and running a windows XP virtual enviroment as this would allow me to possibly remove one computer from my mix.

 

I currently have my servier setup with core i3 with 4 gig of ram and a cache drive plus 6 tb of storage.

 

Would this setup be OK to run such a virtual enviroment? Are you able to start and stop this to save on performance?

 

Ive never ran this before and want to prevent headaches if possible

 

Thanks

4GB of ram is a little low but would work.  I have 8GB in my N54L and three Windows VMs.  2 VMs have 1GB ram defined and 1 VM has 2 GB defined.  This leaves me with 4GB for unRAID and VirtualBox overhead.  If you want to continue with 4GB of ram then try to leave 2GB for unRAID and VirtualBox overhead.  So don't setup VMs to use more than 2GB total if you keep your server at 4GB.  Also keep your plugins on unRAID to a bare minimum so no SAB, Sickbeard, etc... If you run them and VMs you might find you run out of memory and crash emhttp.

 

With that said I would see if anybody else has additional/different advice.  I tend to like to make sure I have plenty of room to minimize problems.

Thanks for the update.

 

Ill probally add more RAM to get up to 8 gig.

 

My other question about your statement is around running the other plugins.  I do currently run SAB/PLEX/SB/CP.....

 

My thought would be to "START" or "RUN" this Virtual box only when i need it, and STOP it when it is not needed/in use.

 

Would this be acceptable and still run the other plugins do you feel?

 

I am running unRAID 5.0 on an i5 with 8gb using a VM for win 7 (1 instance) and keep sab / SB / cp on the w7 VM.

 

The VM has 1 core plus 4gb ram and I find it is very sluggish in performance on the VM

 

I have minimal plugins on the unRAID server such as webserver and vbox etc.

 

I am wondering if sab is too memory intensive for the VM? Or I am expecting too much from a VM on top of unRAID?

 

 

Thanks for the update.

 

Ill probally add more RAM to get up to 8 gig.

 

My other question about your statement is around running the other plugins.  I do currently run SAB/PLEX/SB/CP.....

 

My thought would be to "START" or "RUN" this Virtual box only when i need it, and STOP it when it is not needed/in use.

 

Would this be acceptable and still run the other plugins do you feel?

It probably will.  But the plugins you list do tend to use memory more than others (from what I've read anyway).  So you might find that to run the VM you need to kill some/all of the plugins.  With that said going to 8GB would give you allot of headroom and I wouldn't expect a problem as long as the plugins run well in 4GB now I wouldn't expect a VM to cause additional problems.

I am running unRAID 5.0 on an i5 with 8gb using a VM for win 7 (1 instance) and keep sab / SB / cp on the w7 VM.

 

The VM has 1 core plus 4gb ram and I find it is very sluggish in performance on the VM

 

I have minimal plugins on the unRAID server such as webserver and vbox etc.

 

I am wondering if sab is too memory intensive for the VM? Or I am expecting too much from a VM on top of unRAID?

I believe to maximize your performance you need a type 1 hypervisor rather than a type 2 like virtual box.  I use ESXi (type 1 hypervisor) where my hardware is VT-d capable and performance is very acceptable.  My VirtualBox VMs do run a little slow but I only have WHSv1 and 2 Win7x86 VMs and those don't do any intensive work.  One is my online VM where I've sandboxed browsing from my network.  The other one is where I access my financial institutions and do my taxes.  My ESXi boxes have an unRAID VM, a Win7x64 that records from OTA, QAM and DirecTV as well as serv up those recordings to the network.  Other choices for type 1 hypervisor are KVM and XEN which I've read can perform better than ESXi.  But the guides on the forum here were removed by the author and we don't have his expert guidance to setup any more so I haven't tried switching.

 

Edit: Good news the author is back and has promised to post his guides again on XEN and KVM so I might be able to switch when I have time in the future now.  This might be an option for you as I read it works with more hardware then ESXi.