Hey everyone, first post here.

 

I just built my first unraid box using a computer I've been wanting to retire.  Its in my media room so I want to keep it as quiet as possible. Here are the specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA990FXA-UD3

CPU: AMD FX-4100 quad core 3.8ghz

RAM: 8gb ddr3 1600mhz

HDD: just 3 for now, 2x3tb and 1x2tb. I will pop in more once I fill up

vid card: Radeon 5450 passive heatsink

 

I feel it's a little wasted on just unraid and since its in my media room I wanted to use virtualization so it can replace my raspberry pi and my Roku as I have way too many devices now. I'd also like to put a bare minimal installation of linux on it to handle plugins (not a fan of installing plugins on unraid)

 

I've gotten ESXi to boot up fine on my machine, I just have to take the plunge to create vmdk's.  I'm seeing alot about unraid 6 with Xen though so I was wondering if I should just wait for that, but it might be a long way off.

 

Any opinions?

really you should come at this from a data angle not a VM one.

 

how many disks will you needs and what are your RAID requirements. Thats the biggest driver when you only have one box.

Right now the 1 parity drive with 2 data drives are enough for me, once theyre filled I will probably add more but I don't see myself with more than the 7 drives allowed by the plus key.  Unraid is perfect for my data needs, i just want to get the most out of my hardware if possible. If i was to go the ESXi route I would put in another ssd to act as a datastore.

 

well you have the hardware

enable all UOMMU /virtualization in BIOS

and try setting up unraid as VM, there is planti of vm drives here in virtualization board.

 

if you can do the passthrough you are good and can think about what else you want to do with the machine.

main candidates  are a small  Linux distro to run all complimentary apps that you want to repalce plugins with.

 

now if pass-through is not an option than you might start running plain unraid  for now and waight until v6 is in RC

ESX is a joy to use.

 

unRAID on ESX is not a joy. If your hardware works it will just work. if not your in for a world of pain... but it is a good learning experience.

 

XEN is way more complicated to use than ESX but the v6 combination of unRAID + XEN could be a macth made in heaven.

 

Do you know either Xen or ESX already?

 

 

I don't know either to be honest.

 

I've gotten as far as getting ESXi to boot on the computer, logging in with VMSphere client and setting up a datastore, but I haven't tried messing with setting up unraid in it.  I guess I would just have to plop a VMDK on the datastore and see what happens.

 

I guess if I set up ESXi now it wouldn't be a big deal to transition to unraid 6 with xen once a stable version comes out

That would be a fundamental reworking to do that.

 

Since you know neither I would suggest you  use use V6 as that likely fulfills your long term needs better

Since you don't have either hypervisor running with the virtual machines you want (or even UnRAID for that matter); I agree with NAS that your best bet is to focus on the Xen/UnRAIDv6 combination and build from there.

 

You've got to learn the details for either one ... so you may as well use the one that UnRAID support is evolving towards.

Yeah I figure that makes more sense, I have v5 running now.  I'll just wait till an RC of v6 comes out and just tinker with that.

I went the other way although I'm getting some new gear. I picked stuff that would work with ESXi. It's isn't all up and running yet so my mind may change but so far having played with ESXi, XenServer and unRaid beta as host.

 

ESXi is much easier to install a VM, just pick up any iso, upload it to the datastore and set it to run. It has a nicer client compared to what unRaid currently has. This may change when out of Beta but I don't know.

 

Also (correct me if I'm wrong) if unRaid needs to reboot (update or whatever reason) all VMs will have to shutdown. I see ESXi as having to update and restart less than unRaid.

 

Josh

ESX has monthly patches you should apply which require reboots. The reason it is less of an impact is that you are expected to use vmotion and have multiple boxes and licenses to end up with zero downtime.

ESX has monthly patches you should apply which require reboots. The reason it is less of an impact is that you are expected to use vmotion and have multiple boxes and licenses to end up with zero downtime.

Understandable.  But as a home user I don't think your monthly updates are necessary.  I'm still on stock 5.0 of ESXi.  I installed an update on one of my ESXi servers once but it didn't really make a difference I could see and was when it was 4.1 ESXi so I've never bothered with updates on 5.0.  Have no problems that I know about.  If it isn't broke don't fix it.  So I've gone months between reboots.  If I hadn't been adding drives and other hardware it would be years between reboots.

It depends on what you do with it. Some people put their ESX internet facing with virtual firewalls and routing which increases the necessity to patch.

 

But in general I agree all I was saying is that the perception that there are no ESX patches is wrong.