Hi All, just curious and I'm unable to find my answer in the forums. I'm thinking about playing with unRaid and trying out V6 as a Xen host. Does this require that I have access to USB still? Are there limitations to how many hard drives I can use like in V5 and V4 before I need to spend $$? How does drive management work in this case now that the OS is virtualized. In my experience, it's usually the VM server that manages the hard drives and creates virtual partitions for the VMs to use. I guess I'm understanding that using unRaid 6 as a Xen host would then allow these partitions to be located on the backed up drives?

 

1) Yes you need USB,  this is the medium unraid starts from, with some tinkering you can startup from something else but you will still need to physical usb stick inserted and working, its carries your license;

 

2) Without a paid license you have 3 drives available, read the website for more details

 

3) The OS is not virtualised but can be the host virtualisation runs on

Thanks for the clear answers. I have been very confused trying to figure out how a virtualized server could manage the physical hardware.

 

To your point #2, where on the website does it discuss the licensing for the BETA version? I would hate to shill out some $$ for a product that might not fit my needs before I can fully test it. My goal is to incorporate all the duties of my XBMC server, NZB server, File Server, and Home Automation server into 1 box that has protected arrays. The stable version of unRaid (V5 or V4.7) looks like it requires me paying for the software before I can test out having a full Slackware distro running unRaid.

Licensing for betas is the same as for stables. Since betas don't expire there is no incentive to buy a stable if all betas were free. Not clear why you would need more drives than free supports if you just want to try before you buy. The parity feature is fully supported in the free version.

 

will try to give a bit detailed answer for you.

 

Hi All, just curious and I'm unable to find my answer in the forums. I'm thinking about playing with unRaid and trying out V6 as a Xen host. Does this require that I have access to USB still?

[\quote]

it depends,

although you technically can setup unraid to boot from HDD (or so I heard and there are some posts here that can walk you through it, it should be the same for V6 as it was for older  versions ) the basic operation is using USB stick.  USB stick is also needed for Licensed operation as unRaid will look for License ONLY on USB media and License it self is tied to the USB stick GUID.

however even though the system it self works from USB stick

you would not use the stick to hold the VM files on it.

you would put VM files on the Array once you have the system up and running.

and with paid version you could use the cache drive as well.

 

 

Are there limitations to how many hard drives I can use like in V5 and V4 before I need to spend $$?

[\quote] the v6 have the same limits as any other version before it

the main differences for V6 are:

1. it is a 64 bit OS from ground up as well as it is using more updated Slack Kernel

2. it has all virtualization extensions  needed to run the system within VM  included and turned "ON" by default. which was not true in previose versions thus the need to special compilation for specific VM host.

    i.e. with version 6 is VM aware from the box and can be setup and run with in a VM as is. simply download the files, prepare USB stick, prepare virtual HDD (this is needed because even today VM host do not support booting VM from USB and require VM to have a hard drive, with few exceptions)

boot VM from HDD

 

as opposed to getting the unriad source code, compile it with target Vm host specific VM extensions turned on and preparing the virtual HDD for that specific platform.

 

 

3. V6 includes per-configured Xen host boot, so it can be used as a VM host it self

thus if you boot unraid as VM host you can create and run VMs right on unRaid directly using Type-1(bare-metal) hypervisor as opposed of what many people used before Type-2 Hypervisor (VirtualBox plug-in)

 

 

How does drive management work in this case now that the OS is virtualized. In my experience, it's usually the VM server that manages the hard drives and creates virtual partitions for the VMs to use. I guess I'm understanding that using unRaid 6 as a Xen host would then allow these partitions to be located on the backed up drives?

again this depends on your setup  but even if you unriad is virtualized it should be the OS that manage the drives used in the array. thus all the issues with  hardware  compatibility that existed and still exist in this kind of setup.

 

 

IF you run unRaid as VM GUEST(setup unriad in VM) using other Virtualization technology (VMWare/KVM/XEN/XenServer)

your hardware MUST support virtualization to allow the PCI - pass through  of hard drive controller to unraid  VM so unraid would have full direct access of the controller and hard drives as if it was running directly on the hardware.

 

all other systems, including host would have access to this  arrays after the VM boot up, via  shares.

 

 

now when you setup unRaid to be the HOST system.

you would setup your array as usual but now the HOST have full control of the hardware form the boot time thus you can use the protected share to place all your VM files onto and thus all that data will be protected as well.

it also means that you have less dependency on unraid  plug-ins

for functionality since you can run many existing applications that until now had to be ported to unraid as plug-in (Plex, utorent etc.)  by simply creating a specialized VM and install/setup the app with in  that VM as needed.

 

 

 

Thanks you for the detailed response!

 

My last question is, do I need the full version to be able to run a XBMC server, NZB server, Home Automation Server, etc... or can I host these "virtual machines" in the array and have unRaid as the host OS. From reading the documentation about unRaid <5 it looks as though the cache drive is required for these "plugins" to work.

 

Thanks you for the detailed response!

 

My last question is, do I need the full version to be able to run a XBMC server, NZB server, Home Automation Server, etc... or can I host these "virtual machines" in the array and have unRaid as the host OS. From reading the documentation about unRaid <5 it looks as though the cache drive is required for these "plugins" to work.

 

You can do this with the free version.

 

In unRAID 6 , VMs do not run as plugins. unRAID effectively boots as Xen dom0 with full hardware access.  Xen domU VMs are instantiated on top of this.

 

The only disadvantage you will have is that if you store your VM images on the array, they will be somewhat restricted by your array read / write speeds. The flip side is they will be parity protected. With a cache drive, your disk images can be stored on the cache and will likely benefit from faster read/write access (but of course won't be parity protected)

 

In my own set-up, I'm running the free version of beta 6 with no cache, 2x 500GB data drives and 1 500GB parity drive in the array.

 

On this I'm running;

 

Windows 7 VM with DVB-S2 / t tuner cards passed through. This is my TV Server (media portal / argus TV). This VM also has direct access to 2x additional drives which live outside of my unRAID array. These are timeshift and recording shares respectively.

 

Windows 8 VM with GPU passthrough. This is my TV Client (media portal) with wireless keyboard and ir receiver usb passthrough.

 

Manjaro Linux VM with no passthrough, accessed via VNC only.

 

 

So you can see, even with the free licence, it's entirely possible to set up and test pretty much any configuration you want. I'll be migrating my production server to this machine when v6 becomes a little more mature.

 

Hope this helps

 

Peter

You don't need to install the VMs on the array.

 

You can install it on a non-array drive (not a cache drive) using this method.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=32225.0

 

They use plugins there, not sure if you can use plugins on the free version, but it is essentially mounting a drive.

I have a pro licence so I never needed to push the free version to see what it could or could not do.

 

They use plugins there, not sure if you can use plugins on the free version, but it is essentially mounting a drive.

I have a pro licence so I never needed to push the free version to see what it could or could not do.

You can run any code you want on the free version, including plugins. There are no license restrictions except those specifically mentioned in the chart