March 17, 201412 yr Good day fellow Unraiders. For a good click now my always on unraid machine (see signature) has been going strong. This machine consumes almost no power, and stores 9TB of the 12TB available. I am very tired of having 1 windows pc for a backup server, 1 windows pc for a gaming/encoding rig, 1 ubuntu machine for banking, and 1 ubuntu machine for remoting into work. 1 - Does it appear to you fellow members that the following hardware should work ...from what I can tell the cpu support virtualization ...I cannot tell if the mobo support pci-e passthrough 2 - Better to keep Crashplan on Windows 7 VM, or on the always on Unraid? Note that I do NOT backup to the cloud my massive movies folder full of ISO (legally purchased DVDs). 3 - Do the Windows/Ubuntu VMs start/stop easily and quickly 4 - Should the power requirements be fairly low when in unraid idle and VMs not running? 5 - Possible to have only Windows VM use dedicated GPU and Unraid / Ubuntu VMs use i5-2500? 6 - Should I leave low power server always on (in the same house) or only bring it up monthly? If possible I would like to recycle one machine - hardware mostly purchased fall 2011 - and use Virtual Machines. What I have: * H67MA-E35 (B3) * AMD HD 7750 single slot gpu * i5-2500 (with 2 year old all in one liquid cooler) * Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 with firmware mod * Crucial 128 GB SSD (2 partitions for Ubuntu VMs) * 4 Seagate Barracuda XT ST33000651AS 3TB (for 12 TB of storage) * COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M700 * G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) *5.25 - 3.5 hot sways/slimline ODD adapter * Fractal Design R3 What I believe I need * 250 GB SSD for Windows VM with Games * new Unraid Pro usb * 4 TB hgst for parity 5 Sata for Unraid 2 Sata for VMs 1 Sata for ODD 1 Sata for Hot Swap bay (for preclearing drives and pulling files on/off). THANKS
March 17, 201412 yr Looks like a nice system. Only one way to know for sure if the nice stuff, like passthrough, will work though... Try it! I'm not sure on the h67 chipset, you may need to swap out the mobo. Your project is entirely doable, you may need just a couple of upgrades if you want to do passthrough (which it looks like you do). If you want to run all VMs concurrently you'll need a GPU per instance. Its not easy to switch between without rebooting the host every time. Oh and more ram. 4gb is not enough for a VM host. I have 24gb in my system which runs - unraid - archvm - windows - debianvm - another archvm for compiling for my repo especially - xbmcbuntu Sent from my S4 via Tapatalk
March 17, 201412 yr Author Thanks ironicbadger. Out of curiosity - does Xen support something like IMPI among the VMs? That would let me skip the GPU for unraid. Then 1 gpu for windows + i5-2500 GPU for Ubuntu. I will not have more than 3 VMs open at any given time (unraid being always on). Thanks for the heads up regarding ram too. So at a minimum I need WAY more ram and probably a new mobo - time to do some digging!
March 18, 201412 yr Just enable vnc for machines which don't support console. Sent from my S4 via Tapatalk
March 18, 201412 yr Author It looks like the i5-2500 - LGA1155 supports Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) and Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) - I assume this means that the CPU supports both VMs and Passthrough It does NOT support ECC memory. It has the Intel HD 2000 GPU. The H67MA-E35 (B3) has only 2 DDR3 1066/1333 memory slots. It looks like realistically I will only be able to give this board 16 GB of ram for $140 The boards bios seems to support Intel Virtualization Tech The boards network driver is a Realtek® RTL8111E - can the various VM's share a single network connection? All the SATA ports are over the H67 PCH ************************** I think my best bet would be the ASRock C216 WS ATX Server Motherboard $215 6 Intel C216 Sata for Unraid 4 ASMedia ASM1061 Sata for Windows/Ubuntu Lots of well placed expansion slots Up to 32 GB of Ram. ECC ram IF I use a Xeon 2 LAN Broadcom BCM57781 PXE (i have not yet done the research to see what this may mean) Support VT-d and Intel Virtualizaion Tech ************************** Options - TRY current board - 16 GB of ram for $140 ASRock with i5-2500 - double my non-ecc ram for $265 ASRock with E3-1220 Xeon for $200 and grab ECC ram at $100/8GB for $615 Other - am I perhaps missing a good option here? Thanks! **************************
March 18, 201412 yr It looks like the i5-2500 - LGA1155 supports Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) and Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) - I assume this means that the CPU supports both VMs and Passthrough It does NOT support ECC memory. It has the Intel HD 2000 GPU. The H67MA-E35 (B3) has only 2 DDR3 1066/1333 memory slots. It looks like realistically I will only be able to give this board 16 GB of ram for $140 The boards bios seems to support Intel Virtualization Tech The boards network driver is a Realtek® RTL8111E - can the various VM's share a single network connection? All the SATA ports are over the H67 PCH ************************** I think my best bet would be the ASRock C216 WS ATX Server Motherboard $215 6 Intel C216 Sata for Unraid 4 ASMedia ASM1061 Sata for Windows/Ubuntu Lots of well placed expansion slots Up to 32 GB of Ram. ECC ram IF I use a Xeon 2 LAN Broadcom BCM57781 PXE (i have not yet done the research to see what this may mean) Support VT-d and Intel Virtualizaion Tech ************************** Options - TRY current board - 16 GB of ram for $140 ASRock with i5-2500 - double my non-ecc ram for $265 ASRock with E3-1220 Xeon for $200 and grab ECC ram at $100/8GB for $615 Other - am I perhaps missing a good option here? Thanks! ************************** VT-d support relies on the holy trinity of CPU, Motherboard and exact specific bios support. Motherboards may claim but support but the only way to know for sure unfortunately is to try it. I'd spend as much or as little as you can but buy from retailers with generous returns policies (like oooo, Amazon).
April 14, 201412 yr Author ironicbadger - I am swapping out my Motherboard from the H67MA-E35 to your P8H77-V LE (and upping the ram from 2x4 to 2x8). I am doing this because I have a PCIex16 GPU and a PCIex4 AOC-SASLP-MV8. The H67MA-E35 only has PCIe 1x16, PCIe 2x1, and 1 PCI. - I am short a PCIe x4 slot for my supermicro card. So... I ordered your P8H77-V LE which comes equipped with 2x16, 2x1, and 3 PCI slots. Now my confusion - in the XEN configuration section you state having a HD7970, a HD6450, and a AOC-SASLP-MV8. By my count you have here two x16 and one x4 cards. How can this work? It appears that you are missing a x4 slot? Did I perhaps order something wrong? Thank you
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