Xen/unRAID-6 Discussion

[Interstellar]

Can someone clarify something for me:

 

I'm currently running V6 in a full slackware build, its working apart from AFP which is a minor annoyance, however it does enable me to mine.

 

If I run V6 as intended, can I pass the GPUs straight through to a distro of my choice (probably Ubuntu or similar) and get native performance?

 

As I understand it there is another OS in the way which will cause issues/performance drops?

[ironicbadger]

Can someone clarify something for me:

 

I'm currently running V6 in a full slackware build, its working apart from AFP which is a minor annoyance, however it does enable me to mine.

 

If I run V6 as intended, can I pass the GPUs straight through to a distro of my choice (probably Ubuntu or similar) and get native performance?

 

As I understand it there is another OS in the way which will cause issues/performance drops?

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=31716.0

[CrashnBrn]

Quick question, are we going to be able to take snapshots of VM's with 6.0?

[CyberMew]

I am not very technical, so if I upgrade to v6, do all my current apps and configuration stay and run as it is right now, with an EXTRA addition of another OS actively running?

 

v5 so far is doing good for me, storing my files and running apps in the background to do what I want. However since the box is located right next to my TV, it would be great if it could support Plex Home Theater (it supports AirPlay too!) and directly connect it to the TV.

 

So is this possible? To remain my stuff as it is, and to install a OS to support PHT like a HTPC? How would we go about doing this?

[Kode]

I am not very technical, so if I upgrade to v6, do all my current apps and configuration stay and run as it is right now, with an EXTRA addition of another OS actively running?

 

No, v5 is 32bit, v6 is 64bit, so any of your current apps which are for 32bit won't work.

[EdgarWallace]

Am I the only one who is experiencing slow parity check? With V5 I was getting up to 110 MB/s at the beginning and an average of >55MB/s. Now it's running at merely 30-40 MB/s 

 

The syslog is showing that the drives are being ATA UDMA/133 rather than SATA (BIOS has AHCI turned on). Is a driver missing in unRAID 6Beta3? Someone with the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 controller experiencing the same issues?

 

Thank you.

[RobJ]

Am I the only one who is experiencing slow parity check? With V5 I was getting up to 110 MB/s at the beginning and an average of >55MB/s. Now it's running at merely 30-40 MB/s

Parity checks that begin automatically after a restart (especially after a bad previous shutdown and numerous transaction replays) have notoriously inconsistent speeds for awhile.  I would try another parity check, when nothing else was going on.

 

The syslog is showing that the drives are being ATA UDMA/133 rather than SATA (BIOS has AHCI turned on). Is a driver missing in unRAID 6Beta3? Someone with the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 controller experiencing the same issues?

I don't see anything wrong in your syslog, but with all the new stuff I could have missed it.  There is no significance with the ATA speeds and lack of SATA link up messages here, as mvsas does not seem to report the link ups and their speeds (you will see the same in your older syslogs).  Both are there, as different layers of the communication between drive and controller.  The SATA link is the low level communication (possibly the physical layer?), and the ATA speed is associated with the higher level communication, using almost archaic terminology of UDMA/133, just means 'at full speed'.

[dalben]

Am I the only one who is experiencing slow parity check? With V5 I was getting up to 110 MB/s at the beginning and an average of >55MB/s. Now it's running at merely 30-40 MB/s 

 

The syslog is showing that the drives are being ATA UDMA/133 rather than SATA (BIOS has AHCI turned on). Is a driver missing in unRAID 6Beta3? Someone with the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 controller experiencing the same issues?

 

Thank you.

 

Are you running dynamix or simple features as your WebGUI.  Both are known to slow down Parity speed if you have a browser session open with them loaded while running a parity check.

[CrashnBrn]

Quick question, are we going to be able to take snapshots of VM's with 6.0?

 

Sorry for the self bump, I would like to know if I need to start learning about LVM snaps.

[Niccarter]

Quick question, are we going to be able to take snapshots of VM's with 6.0?

 

Sorry for the self bump, I would like to know if I need to start learning about LVM snaps.

 

Do you mean "xl save [VMname] -c" ?

[EdgarWallace]

@RobJ - thanks a lot for the clarification, relaxing now 

 

@dalben, no plugins, just the plain XEN with 2 VM's (ArchVM & Debian). However there were some server crashes recently. I was running reiserfsck for all drives but the cache. Will do the check on the cache drive tonight and a disk check for the flash. Will do another one or two parity checks and see if this helps but good to know that I'm the only one who having a slow sync issue.

 

I was just asking because there was a discussion about slow parity check during the V5Beta phase if I remember right, at least servers with a specific Supermicro board were affected.

[ironicbadger]

Quick question, are we going to be able to take snapshots of VM's with 6.0?

 

Sorry for the self bump, I would like to know if I need to start learning about LVM snaps.

 

LVM isn't supported in unRAID. You're waiting for btrfs from Tom before this is possible.

[CrashnBrn]

Quick question, are we going to be able to take snapshots of VM's with 6.0?

 

Sorry for the self bump, I would like to know if I need to start learning about LVM snaps.

 

Do you mean "xl save [VMname] -c" ?

 

Looks like that's different than the snapshot, since that does a byte by byte copy as opposed to delta. I was thinking/hoping there would be something like the xencenter snapshot ability.

 

ironicbadger: you're right looks like that's a btrfs thing, but if we use btrfs for the VM then we can do LVM snapshots within the VM?

[ironicbadger]

Ok, so unRAID would 'see' a BTRFS subvolume, partition, whatever. You can snapshot that in unRAID (completely independent of the VM, in fact the VM won't even know).

 

Then how you install your VM within that partition is up to you. Whatever you do in there unRAID and btrfs won't care. Yes, you snapshot within there too...

 

Make sense?

[CrashnBrn]

Ok, so unRAID would 'see' a BTRFS subvolume, partition, whatever. You can snapshot that in unRAID (completely independent of the VM, in fact the VM won't even know).

 

Then how you install your VM within that partition is up to you. Whatever you do in there unRAID and btrfs won't care. Yes, you snapshot within there too...

 

Make sense?

 

Understood, would this work with a Windows VM as well? Also what would be the snapshot method (I'm not sure if that question makes sense)

 

Edit: Also am I correct in thinking that xl save does a full copy as opposed to a delta snapshot?

[lars]

But Xen changes all this.  What I want to do is keep unRaid dom0 “minimal” – just enough to support storage management and the hypervisor.  Now if you want to run true applications, create a VM with your distro of choice and install those applications there.  The distro running in the VM can get at unRaid storage in a couple ways: accessing shares via the virtual network, and/or via virtualized storage assigned to it at VM-start time.

 

In this environment we still have plugins.  But plugins are much simpler – they would just extend the functionality of the webGui mainly, but could also implement some specialized web-based applications such as a simple VM manager.  (But how about this: run your VM manager in a VM!)

 

IMHO I think this move is counter-productive to unRAID.  Adding VM support is great, but if you're competing with your QNAS, Synology and etc out there then the average home user just wants a simple plugin system where he can find a repository and just click install.  From what I am reading, VMs are a long way from that simplicity.  Instead of making the home NAS+Apps server segment more open to unRAID, you seem to be shutting it down.

 

unRAID still needs a solid plugin framework for it be a player in the SOHO market.  Maybe nicinabox's tools are the answer, or maybe it's Docker.  Dunno.

 

How about if there is a plugin manager and one of your options is "Install XBMCbuntu in a VM"?

 

hi all! i just getting myself started on the whole xen story. reading alot, here on the forum as well as at the xen website. have to say, my head is kinda spinning  ! i am more the hardware guy, that's all cool. when it comes to the software part, well i have to study, ask questions, research..... i am still confident i will get my head wrapped around the whole xen story finally. but i would agree with some ppl here, saying it is rather beyond 'average user' knowledge.

 

and there we get to: "How about if there is a plugin manager and one of your options is "Install XBMCbuntu in a VM"?" - there i think you get lost in specific use cases again. the better thing would be: how about install ubuntu (just as example) from the plugin mgr? shouldn't it be easy, once the vm is installed to install any kind of apps in it? if i am wrong there, plz correct me! but that's my understanding of the matter so far. so, the way should be: from unraid gui - install ubuntu or windows or centos etc (maybe with more packages to load) to a working vm. and from there users can install whatever software they want.

 

just a thought, as said before, i still try to figure out the whole xen possibilities.

 

thx for your time and patience,

 

lars

 

[vl1969]

You are sort of right lars, once you have a vm setup you shoild be able to setup anything you want in it. One small thing is xbmcbuntu is an os package. Based on ubuntu, but optimised for xbmc use. So in a sense you would be installing a ubuntu variant os. So the entry in plugin management was an examle of how it might be  possible to have some specialised vm setup right from the menu, but you can certainly do it the long way and start with a base os setup.

 

Xbmcbuntu is a distro like any other ubuntu based but streamlined, and optimised to be used for media center htpc.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

 

[lars]

You are sort of right lars, once you have a vm setup you shoild be able to setup anything you want in it. One small thing is xbmcbuntu is an os package. Based on ubuntu, but optimised for xbmc use. So in a sense you would be installing a ubuntu variant os. So the entry in plugin management was an examle of how it might be  possible to have some specialised vm setup right from the menu, but you can certainly do it the long way and start with a base os setup.

 

Xbmcbuntu is a distro like any other ubuntu based but streamlined, and optimised to be used for media center htpc.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

thx for your response mate. i am aware that xbmcbuntu is a streamlined os. my main concern, based on the post i used as a starting point, is more in terms of not getting 'hung up' on special need cases as plugins for the unraid web gui, but instead offering the 'average user' (including me ) an easy way to get a vm on the start. from there one can install ALL the needed/ wanted programs fairly painless. i am sure the community here will offer in no time all kind of 'special need' packages. but, to keep unraid in the ranks of an easy to use nas/ media storage alternative with extended possibilities i think it needs to focus on the 'average user's' capabilities. if the use of unraid to it's full capabilities requires a to steep learning curve, you drive ppl away from using it. with other words, you want to create an environment for new users to be set up with a functioning unraid/ vm environment in an easy way. from there they can install all of their favorite 'extensions' painlessly. kind of it was with the unraid/ plugin way, but with the much safer, potentially more stable for the whole system  opportunities xen offers.

like in my case, i don't mind the xbmc option at all - it is sth i would use. but at the same time i have good use (for various reasons) for subsonic. which would be the second vm installed by me. subsonic for unraid dev is on a stall this days. so to be able to use it, i would want a linux (my pref.) etc. os install without streamlining for a specific app. this os should be (ideally) install-able from the gui without major research from my end. same would be true for many other uses.

 

i hope i made my reasoning for an unmodified os install from the web gui a little more clear.

 

cheers, L

[vl1969]

I am sure someone will come up with a plain vm setup plug in where you would just provide the os iso to install soon enough. Untill then there are some posts here for manual cli setup of vm. Not for total noobs but easy enough.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

 

[ironicbadger]

I am sure someone will come up with a plain vm setup plug in where you would just provide the os iso to install soon enough. Untill then there are some posts here for manual cli setup of vm. Not for total noobs but easy enough.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

You think someone will write an entire plugin to basically replicate the droplet style system that digitalocean use? For free?? Haha! No chance! Installing from scratch isn't for the feint of heart tbh, there are a lot of pitfalls and each distro does things differently.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[vl1969]

I did not mean anything complex, just put together some scripts driven from plugin interface to allow user to suply some basic info and iso location and than create ans save the vm config file.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

 

[ironicbadger]

I did not mean anything complex, just put together some scripts driven from plugin interface to allow user to suply some basic info and iso location and than create ans save the vm config file.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

That would definite be useful, but doubt such a thing will be made gratis.

[vl1969]

Who knows,  some one here might put something together for him/her self and decide to share. I seen lots of stuff here that imho more complex

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

 

[lars]

one would hope sth like it will come with time.

also to keep in mind for tom, not everybody here enjoys the privilege to own several pc's with one to spare for trial and error experiments. with other words, you are leaving your potential clients out of the loop, if not offering an easy setup using vm's. nobody with a serious collection of 'whatever' will be seriously inclined to experiment on their working setup.

i get at the moment an idea how complex all of this is on my sandbox pc 

 

[eek]

You have to remember this is still very earlier days. We are still in unraid Xen beta 1 (not 3 as this is the first release with Xen readily available).

 

I moved over to beta 3 as my ESXi box died (for no reason I could fathom) and for my needs it just works. I downloaded a ubuntu stacklet following the instructions at the top of this thread and now have 3 virtual machines talking via samba to the appropriate unraid user shares.

 

The actual issue most users will find is not going to be getting the VMs up and running, it will be getting those VMs to connect to unraid shares easily.....