I was waiting out on version 5 final. Finally it came and then my life got very busy and I've been out of the loop for a while.

 

A quick skim of the forums and it leaves me confused. Do we now have version 5 32bit AND version 5 64bit AND a new version 6 (64bit also presumably?). Can someone recap and give me an update quickly? I also keep reading about people talking about Xen and KVM both of which I have googled and still don't understand what benefits they bring. In fact, I don't understand why so many people want to run virtual machines so much. What benefits do these bring? How do you run virtual machines in Linux anyway without a GUI to manage them? I'm tech savy and know a bit of Linux, but only used virtual machines in Windows VMware/Vsphere.

 

What would you recommend I do in terms of selecting an option to install? I want the minimum fuss going forward. i.e. Don't want to install 5 now, if the future is 6 and 64bit etc.

 

Regards

 

confused of unraid forums

V5 is 32-bit - the current release being 5.05.

 

V6 is 64-bit.  It includes Xen virtualisation technology as an option at boot time.    It is currently at beta 4.

 

Whether you go with v5 or v6 depends on whether you are prepared to run with a beta release or not.

If you want to get an idea of virtualization, and why you'd want it I suggest you check out the Limetech blog for a snapshot:

 

http://lime-technology.com/qa-with-tom-on-unraid-virtualization/

 

As itimpi mentions, you definitely have a decision in front of you. 5.0 is released and fully stable, while 6.0 is still in beta - however many of us have been running 6.0 since beta 1 without issue (as 6.0 beta 1 was 5.0 just with 64bit binaries, and then virtualization was added as of beta 3).

 

I would say it comes down to how much time you have to invest today. You can continue to run 5.0 with traditional plugins and likely be up pretty quickly and move on with life. If you travel the 6.0 route then you will potentially want to look at standing up a VM to run your plugins (not required, but highly recommended and is the future direction of plugins). Taking the 6.0/virtualization route is obviously going to take a larger investment in time from you as you are learning something new, and with it only being in beta it's not guaranteed that everything works today as designed.

 

I stood up my plugin VM in beta3 and had to overcome several issues that will likely be addressed out of the box (or at least well documented) closer to the 6.0 release.

 

Another consideration is what hardware you have and how well positioned you are to take advantage of virtualization. If you have an older system with limited memory then sticking with 5.0 makes sense today.

 

Unfortunately, it's not a straight forward decision today, and there are definitely more things to consider than there was when moving from 4.7 to 5.0. 6.0/virtualization opens up a whole new world, and definitely requires more thought before leaping into. Should you make the decision to move forward though there are a ton of great articles available, and even better people willing to help out with whatever questions you may have.

 

I also keep reading about people talking about Xen and KVM both of which I have googled and still don't understand what benefits they bring. In fact, I don't understand why so many people want to run virtual machines so much. What benefits do these bring? How do you run virtual machines in Linux anyway without a GUI to manage them? I'm tech savy and know a bit of Linux, but only used virtual machines in Windows VMware/Vsphere.

 

What would you recommend I do in terms of selecting an option to install? I want the minimum fuss going forward. i.e. Don't want to install 5 now, if the future is 6 and 64bit etc.

 

Regards

 

confused of unraid forums

 

it all depend on your needs and future plans when choosing your version to run.

if you want/need a simple NAS with no bells and whistles than you can just upgrade to latest V5.x and be done for a while.

if your needs a bit more complex and you are still running anything  below V5(I still see people here posting running version 4.7) you might want to still upgrade to final V5.x  as it have a lot of fixes and new options that make unRaid easier to manage.

 

as for virtualization, well there is a lot of people here who have some powerful hardware that we want to utilize to its full potential. that said not all hardware is capable of futures needed to virtualize unRaid properly (VT-D/IOMMU support for PCI pass-through)  also original unRaid did not support virtualization of itself and needed special build for each virtualization environment etc.

since Tom have been asked more for enabling support of this and there more people have been asking for 64bit  unraid for ages, V6 was created with both of this features enabled. and since Tom had to update the core OS to the latest kernel to get 64 bit support he also added Xen kernel to allow the use of unraid system  not only as VM guest (running unraid in VM ) but also  as VM host.

 

the GUI for VM management will be added later. the current beta is not for Linux newbies. this is for now is for more knowledgeable users who want to have some complex builds and are feeling adventurous enough to do get their hands dirty :-).

 

as for benefits of all this, well...

one benefit is that you can forgo the use of plug-ins on the unraid form anything but core functions.  you would use plug-in only to enhance basic functionality like

adding better information to the main GUI page, adding pre-clear functions to the main GUI so you would not need to drop into CLI and mess with it. stuff like that.

 

for anything else, that currently require some one writing a plug-in ,

such running PlexServer, torrent, FTP, you name it.

you can now create a VM with what ever full distro you like and set it all up there without a worry that you do something that would compromise the whole system stability or destroy your data. also you do not have to wait on some one else to adapt any market app to run on unraid via plug-in as now you can run it on full supported distro in VM.  Plex is great on Ubuntu. create VM. install Ubuntu and run plex on it.

not only that but since you are running a market app and not some 3rd party implementation of it, any updates can be applied as soon as you want them, not when an original plug-in dev have time to do so.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the responses. Interesting. I did not realize the unraid OS could be the HOST for virtual machines as well as a guest. I'm not sure which would be better. What would be the pros and cons of either situation? In fact, why would you run it is as host? Surely it is more limiting than more mature and fully featured Linux distros designed more for VM hosting?

Well as far as. I know threre are no specific distros for cm hosting.  And v6 is just as capable as any other. The only true limitation is luck of gui. As for why, well many people have problem virtualizing unraid because of hardware limitations. In order to properly virtualize unraid you must have hardware that fullt supports virtualization as have full support for vt-d for intel and iommu for amd. Full support means cpu and motherboard both fully support the technology. This is needed so you could pass through the disk controller into vm as unraid must have full controll to controller and disks so you can get full benefits like disk spin up/down controll etc.

If unraid is a host, than that is not a problem as host always have full controll of hardware thus your hardware might not be fully vm capable as you do mot need the pass through option for most normal operations.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

 

Thanks vl1969. Makes sense. I think my hardware is virtual compatible. Will check. My heart says go 64bit. I have an issue with 32bit mostly psychologically I'm sure.

Thanks vl1969. Makes sense. I think my hardware is virtual compatible. Will check. My heart says go 64bit. I have an issue with 32bit mostly psychologically I'm sure.

 

If you don't have more than 4GB of RAM ... and don't plan to virtualize ... then there's no compelling reason to move to the 64-bit version.  But clearly if you're building a new system you'll want to build it with virtualization and 64-bit operation in mind.

 

I have 4gb of ram.

 

I have an Intel G6950 dual core CPU that states:

" - Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x)."

 

I have an Asus P7H55-M/USB3 motherboard.

 

I could host unraid as a VM but...to be honest...not sure I would want the added complexity. Features I would find nice in addition to "just" an unraid server are below, but maybe these can all be done with unraid plugins already quite well:

 

- Torrent downloads

- Possibly access some files on the server from the web

- UPS plugins for my APC UPS

 

But, I would also like the server to be able to shutdown/sleep to save power which I expect would be more complex with VMs added to the mix as opposed to unraid out of the box.

 

I think the best of both worlds would be to just trust in the betas (since historically they have been fairly sound) and just go with version 6 64bit and use unraid out of the box. However, not sure the above stuff works on 64 bit yet. Need to read up.

 

Thanks

With that setup, you can easily go with v6 and virtualization.  I'd at least double your RAM, however.

 

IMHO if you want access from the web you better virtualize.

unRaid was not designed to be open to the net directly. with VM have an extra layer of security, not much but better than nothing.

there is an APC plug in available or will be ported to v6 soon enough.

for torrents there was/is plug in  for unraid but you might be better off setting up a Ubuntu VM for that and you would be able to also setup subnzb coach potato and sick beard on it as well if want/need to.

 

sounds a pretty good case for go virtual. just bump up the RAM to @least 8GB

 

PS>> I am not sure about putting this kind of setup to sleep though.

Thanks vl1969. Makes sense. I think my hardware is virtual compatible. Will check. My heart says go 64bit. I have an issue with 32bit mostly psychologically I'm sure.

 

If you don't have more than 4GB of RAM ... and don't plan to virtualize ... then there's no compelling reason to move to the 64-bit version.  But clearly if you're building a new system you'll want to build it with virtualization and 64-bit operation in mind.

 

Not strictly true.  If you run Plex, then it runs better on 64-bit because the transcoder is better optimized in the 64-bit version.  I can't back that up other than that is what the Plex Dev's have stated on their forums. 

 

Also at the moment, 6.0-beta is getting a little more update-love from Tom (as we've heard people complaining) but of course that is because it is Beta and all the caveats that entails. 

 

Ignoring the beta issue, I can't see any reason NOT to go 64-bit if you're making a change right now to avoid needing to deal with it again later such as when increasing memory or deciding to use VMs.  But that's me.

 

As to host or guest ... if you ask the "virtualization powers that be" they'll tell you best practice is not to run your storage array in a VM.  Less layers of complexity etc etc to get to the hard drives for something as important as your storage array.  FWIW.

As to host or guest ... if you ask the "virtualization powers that be" they'll tell you best practice is not to run your storage array in a VM.  Less layers of complexity etc etc to get to the hard drives for something as important as your storage array.  FWIW.

 

True.

As to host or guest ... if you ask the "virtualization powers that be" they'll tell you best practice is not to run your storage array in a VM.  Less layers of complexity etc etc to get to the hard drives for something as important as your storage array.  FWIW.

you are right about that mostly.

the thing is that when you use unraid you would never run it with storage array in VM.

you would run OS(unRaid) in VM and direct pass-through the HDD and controller into VM so from unRaid stand point it has a full hardware access to the controller and disks as if it was running bare-metal. this is the ONLY proper way of virtualizing unraid by most popular opinions.

 

this however brings lots of issues as to properly setup this kind of rig, regardless of your virtualization infrastructure (aka VM Hypervisor),  you MUST HAVE hardware that is #1 supports all the VM technology needed (VT-D if Intel and IOMMU if AMD    for both MB and CPU)

and #2 is compatible with the VM hypervisor of your choice that can provide the capability you need.

 

also before V6 unraid was VM incompatible by default. it did not have any VM extensions,modules etc. available  to be run in VM at all and had nothing to be used as a host either. we had several members on this board modifying and recompiling the base package  for each specific Hypervisor and providing VMDK for user who wanted to run it in VM based on specific version and flavor of HV. fainthearted need not apply.

 

V6 have all of this modules and settings enabled by default thus you do not need and specifically compiled image to run it in VM on HV of your choice. just create a virtual hardrive, copy the unraid files onto it and make it bootable. much easier than before.

 

 

 

 

Another advantage of taking the VM approach is that the VM can be 32-bit even though the host is 75-bit.  This might matter if you want to run software that is currently only available in 32-bit.

 

I think that running add-ons in a VM is seen as contributing to overall system stability as unRAID should always be running in an unpolluted environment.  Many add-ons have caused instability in the past as they replace components at the unRAID level.

Out of curiosity, why the demand for big RAM?

 

Unraid with no addons runs pretty smoothly with 1GB as I recall, and with linux being so efficient and the VM's filesystem no longer needing to be on RAM-drive, one would think 1GB for a VM would be sufficient as well?

 

I'm guessing the VM doesn't really need a great amount of free memory for buffers and cache, since the unraid host will also be providing buffering. Perhaps 512MB for a no-desktop linux VM would be sufficient as well.

 

I know people can upgrade RAM and the monetary expense is not all that great, but that would entail risk and downtime while testing stability, and eat away time/money from peoples new-mobo overhaul savings account (and in my case, my old system is DDR2 so the RAM would not even be reusable in that E3 xeon system I'd like some day).

 

So I'm just wondering where the 1 + 1GB RAM allocation theory would really fall to pieces. Remember when you look at free memory on your 4GB+ system, linux is designed to put all of your memory to use in the form of buffers + cache, so there will never be much free memory regardless of how much you put in.

Another advantage of taking the VM approach is that the VM can be 32-bit even though the host is 75-bit.  This might matter if you want to run software that is currently only available in 32-bit.

 

 

Wow... you have a 75-bit host? That makes you extra special. 

Out of curiosity, why the demand for big RAM?

 

Unraid with no addons runs pretty smoothly with 1GB as I recall, and with linux being so efficient and the VM's filesystem no longer needing to be on RAM-drive, one would think 1GB for a VM would be sufficient as well?

 

I'm guessing the VM doesn't really need a great amount of free memory for buffers and cache, since the unraid host will also be providing buffering. Perhaps 512MB for a no-desktop linux VM would be sufficient as well.

 

I know people can upgrade RAM and the monetary expense is not all that great, but that would entail risk and downtime while testing stability, and eat away time/money from peoples new-mobo overhaul savings account (and in my case, my old system is DDR2 so the RAM would not even be reusable in that E3 xeon system I'd like some day).

 

So I'm just wondering where the 1 + 1GB RAM allocation theory would really fall to pieces. Remember when you look at free memory on your 4GB+ system, linux is designed to put all of your memory to use in the form of buffers + cache, so there will never be much free memory regardless of how much you put in.

 

64-bit linux doesn't separate memory into low memory, and high memory.  If a process has to run in low memory, and low memory runs out, processes running in low memory will be killed. 

64-bit linux doesn't separate memory into low memory, and high memory.  If a process has to run in low memory, and low memory runs out, processes running in low memory will be killed.

 

I am very well aware, thank you, but this does not answer my question. Why would it not be realistic to run a 1GB linux VM (which would on a 64-bit OS all reside in the host's 'low' memory), and leave the remaining 1GB for unraid's use (actual memory use, ram-drive and buffers)?

You can do that, but I am sure once you start you would want more than one vm

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

 

 

As to host or guest ... if you ask the "virtualization powers that be" they'll tell you best practice is not to run your storage array in a VM.  Less layers of complexity etc etc to get to the hard drives for something as important as your storage array.  FWIW.

you are right about that mostly.

the thing is that when you use unraid you would never run it with storage array in VM.

you would run OS(unRaid) in VM and direct pass-through the HDD and controller into VM

 

Huh?  Not sure what you're saying here since it seems to contradict itself.  If you are using pass-thru of the SATA controller that means the array is running in a VM.

 

so from unRaid stand point it has a full hardware access to the controller and disks as if it was running bare-metal. this is the ONLY proper way of virtualizing unraid by most popular opinions.

 

Right.  But the "propor" way to do it at all we're told is to not even virtualize it and instead run it as dom0.  Then run a VM of another OS for all your other stuff (Plex, torrent, usenet, sab, dlna, XBMC, etc)

 

this however brings lots of issues as to properly setup this kind of rig, regardless of your virtualization infrastructure (aka VM Hypervisor),  you MUST HAVE hardware that is #1 supports all the VM technology needed (VT-D if Intel and IOMMU if AMD    for both MB and CPU)

and #2 is compatible with the VM hypervisor of your choice that can provide the capability you need.

 

Another reason to stick with running it as dom0 to avoid needing special hardware, especially if you are needing to recover from a failure.  I'd much prefer to know just about any m/b will work vice the more limited / expensive selection of iommu capable boards.

 

But like I said, I'm just parroting the "experts" [shrug]

64-bit linux doesn't separate memory into low memory, and high memory.  If a process has to run in low memory, and low memory runs out, processes running in low memory will be killed.

 

I am very well aware, thank you, but this does not answer my question. Why would it not be realistic to run a 1GB linux VM (which would on a 64-bit OS all reside in the host's 'low' memory), and leave the remaining 1GB for unraid's use (actual memory use, ram-drive and buffers)?

 

64 bit systems do not have "low" or "high" memory. Memory is treated as a single block.  The question makes no sense; the subject of "low" memory is moot.

As to host or guest ... if you ask the "virtualization powers that be" they'll tell you best practice is not to run your storage array in a VM.  Less layers of complexity etc etc to get to the hard drives for something as important as your storage array.  FWIW.

you are right about that mostly.

the thing is that when you use unraid you would never run it with storage array in VM.

you would run OS(unRaid) in VM and direct pass-through the HDD and controller into VM

 

Huh?  Not sure what you're saying here since it seems to contradict itself.  If you are using pass-thru of the SATA controller that means the array is running in a VM.

 

so from unRaid stand point it has a full hardware access to the controller and disks as if it was running bare-metal. this is the ONLY proper way of virtualizing unraid by most popular opinions.

 

Right.  But the "propor" way to do it at all we're told is to not even virtualize it and instead run it as dom0.  Then run a VM of another OS for all your other stuff (Plex, torrent, usenet, sab, dlna, XBMC, etc)

 

this however brings lots of issues as to properly setup this kind of rig, regardless of your virtualization infrastructure (aka VM Hypervisor),  you MUST HAVE hardware that is #1 supports all the VM technology needed (VT-D if Intel and IOMMU if AMD    for both MB and CPU)

and #2 is compatible with the VM hypervisor of your choice that can provide the capability you need.

 

Another reason to stick with running it as dom0 to avoid needing special hardware, especially if you are needing to recover from a failure.  I'd much prefer to know just about any m/b will work vice the more limited / expensive selection of iommu capable boards.

 

But like I said, I'm just parroting the "experts" [shrug]

 

Jumeralex is correct. Running unRAID as DOM0 is the default configuration and requires no special hardware. Guest VMs can run without special hardware if the guests do not require direct hardware access. Plex, torrent, usenet, sab, dlna, etc., do not require direct hardware access and will run in a guest VM on a system with no special hardware. VMs. for XBMC, Windows, a second unRAID instance, etc., do require some level of direct hardware access and there are at least 2 hardware varieties that allow varying levels of direct hardware access for VMs.

 

Mosts users can run stock unRAID in DOM0 and put add-ons in 1 or more VMs without regard to hardware.

guys I am flattered to initiate this kind of response fury :-)

 

but I think my comment regarding running array inside VM was taken out of proper context or maybe I did not properly formated my response.

 

you see for me, if you pass-through a hardware into VM, than you are not running it in the VM , you are controlling it from VM. I take the VM paradigm a bit too far (maybe) ?

if hardware is virtual it is running in VM and controlled by VM

if it's a pass-through it is not running in VM, it runs baremetal  but belongs to VM and controlled from VM.

how right or wrong it is I am not sure but I guess I need to express my POV a bit more carefully in the future sorry for confusion.

 

 

as for

But the "propor" way to do it at all we're told is to not even virtualize it and instead run it as dom0.  Then run a VM of another OS for all your other stuff (Plex, torrent, usenet, sab, dlna, XBMC, etc) [\QUOTE]

 

it maybe true  that recommended use is to run unraid as Dom0

but until V6 there were no Dom0. unraid did not support being a VM Host and was relegated to be a VM Guest.

even now some people might not want to disassemble their existing VM solution using other HyperVisors (ESXi, XenServer, VMWare, etc.) , that are already up and running , have working GUI management support etc. and replace it with unRaid.

many of those people might still want to run unraid as Guest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

64-bit linux doesn't separate memory into low memory, and high memory.  If a process has to run in low memory, and low memory runs out, processes running in low memory will be killed.

 

I am very well aware, thank you, but this does not answer my question. Why would it not be realistic to run a 1GB linux VM (which would on a 64-bit OS all reside in the host's 'low' memory), and leave the remaining 1GB for unraid's use (actual memory use, ram-drive and buffers)?

 

64 bit systems do not have "low" or "high" memory. Memory is treated as a single block.  The question makes no sense; the subject of "low" memory is moot.

 

The question is - Why would it not be realistic to run a a 2GB system with a 1GB linux VM, and leave the remaining 1GB for unraid's use (actual memory use, ram-drive and buffers)? I'm just trying to understand why everyone feels it's essential to have 4, 8 or even 16GB of RAM. I'm pre-disposed with an opinion that it is not a necessity, of course completely without having tried it... So will listen to reasons that make sense.

 

I didn't bring up the low vs. high thing - that in deed makes no sense.