June 11, 201412 yr So I got my LSI 9211-8i SAS controller today and I thought that I was going to have to flash it to IT mode. I have read a few post stating that to use this card and similar cards that it has to be flashed to IT mode. I decided to just plug in the card without flashing it and see if it would work and it did. Is there some reason that I am not seeing that requires the IT mode over the IR mode? My next question is since I hear that unRAID is moving away from XEN and towards KMV will KMV be similar to ESXi as in will it have a GUI client that is run on another computer to manage it? The reason I ask is I like the idea that unRAID is the host but I was put off of XEN by the difficulty of the config and install of VMs. I have plans to run windows 8 on a VM to serve as my tv tuner server and xbmc library and would like to know how KVM will be implemented before I make the decision to activate windows on ESXi or KMV.
June 11, 201412 yr IR mode works with ESXi but at least with my M1015 anyway unRAID did not work with IR mode. So when you say it works did you mean each drive was recognized individually by unRAID and you could get smart reports and spin down worked and drive temps were visible?
June 11, 201412 yr Author IR mode works with ESXi but at least with my M1015 anyway unRAID did not work with IR mode. So when you say it works did you mean each drive was recognized individually by unRAID and you could get smart reports and spin down worked and drive temps were visible? Yes. All drive were visible along with temps, drives will spin up and spin down, and get smart reports. Does unRAID v5 no support IR mode and previous versions didn't? Or maybe the firmware shipped with newer cards are not a issue with unRAID.
June 11, 201412 yr Yes. All drive were visible along with temps, drives will spin up and spin down, and get smart reports. Does unRAID v5 no support IR mode and previous versions didn't? Or maybe the firmware shipped with newer cards are not a issue with unRAID. That is a possibility because my testing was with 5.0 beta (not even an RC of version 5) so newer linux kernels may be why yours is working. Or it could be that the LSI IR firmware works with unRAID and the IBM firmware on the M1015 does not. I cannot test that theory out as ALL of mine are on IT firmware now. But if I buy one in the future I will test again.
June 11, 201412 yr Xen is only this difficult in Unraid. since it is a stripdown slack distro with it's own UI that was not designed for this functionality and still needs refinement and updates. on many other distros you either get some GUI management tool or can install one to use with Xen and/or KVM there are also some other tools exist to be used with Xen/KVM that you can setup on your own as they are distro independent somewhat. virt-manager or Convirt for example. you can install it onto other PC and manage Xen or KVM from it here some others as well, some still exist some maybe stopped developing or target a specific distro base like debian or rhel. Management tools and interfaces Libvirt and virt-manager. http://libvirt.org and http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/ xen-tools. http://gitorious.org/xen-tools/xen-tools Zentific: http://www.zentific.com/ Convirt: http://www.convirture.com/ OpenQRM: http://www.openqrm.com/ Xn-Suite: http://www.xncore.de/node/61 Xen Orchestra: http://xen-orchestra.com/ Ganeti: http://code.google.com/p/ganeti/
June 11, 201412 yr Author Xen is only this difficult in Unraid. since it is a stripdown slack distro with it's own UI that was not designed for this functionality and still needs refinement and updates. on many other distros you either get some GUI management tool or can install one to use with Xen and/or KVM there are also some other tools exist to be used with Xen/KVM that you can setup on your own as they are distro independent somewhat. virt-manager or Convirt for example. you can install it onto other PC and manage Xen or KVM from it here some others as well, some still exist some maybe stopped developing or target a specific distro base like debian or rhel. Management tools and interfaces Libvirt and virt-manager. http://libvirt.org and http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/ xen-tools. http://gitorious.org/xen-tools/xen-tools Zentific: http://www.zentific.com/ Convirt: http://www.convirture.com/ OpenQRM: http://www.openqrm.com/ Xn-Suite: http://www.xncore.de/node/61 Xen Orchestra: http://xen-orchestra.com/ Ganeti: http://code.google.com/p/ganeti/ Setting something up like that is out of my league, I'm a novice at best meaning I can copy and paste commands into a CL. I am prefer plug and play and ESXi was very easy to setup and get unRAID running on it once I found out I couldn't passthrough any of my SATA controllers to any VM and I had to by a LSI 9211-8i to get it all to work. I like that I can just open up vSphere and manage my VMs, passthrough devices with ease, and open up the VM in a window all with the same program. I hope that I would be able to do this with whatever Lime-Tech decides to use as a hypervisor.
June 11, 201412 yr well the thing is, unRaid will never be as simple as ESXi because they have different main goals. ESXi if first and foremost a Hyperviser nothing else. unraid is first and foremost NAS with an additional capability(es) for convenience. also if you move to unraid v6 you really do not need to use pass-through for most of the thing you might want to virtualize on it. reason you need pass-through when virtualizing unraid is basically so you can use the power saving built into unraid such as proper drive spin down, SMART info display on GUI, etc. also when using paid license you need direct access to the flash drive for license to be recognized as you need to see the device UUID in VM. as unraid becomes the HOST, all of this is not needed anymore. as HOST unraid have direct access to the drives and controllers, thus all the features works as expected. the only reason you would want/need pass-through is if you want to virtualize video adapters, tunners,or some hardware that is not supported by unraid , which is very rare situation. everything else would simply works as usual , connecting to the unraid shares via network shares. no matter what limetech decide to use (I personally would choose Xen over KVM as it has some better support for HVA guests more importantly it now have PVHVA guest support and unlike KVM it can work on not VT/IOMMU supported hardware) they or some one here will develop and add a GUI to manage VM. it may not end up as advance as vCenter but it should be usable eventually :-)
June 11, 201412 yr Author ... the only reason you would want/need pass-through is if you want to virtualize video adapters, tunners,or some hardware that is not supported by unraid , which is very rare situation. everything else would simply works as usual , connecting to the unraid shares via network shares. ... I plan on passing through 3 TV tuners to a windows 8 VM.
June 11, 201412 yr then you will need a VT-d/IOMMU compatible hardware anyhow. also if you did not buy the tuners yet, consider the network tuner like silicone dust homerun kind. this you do not need to pass through but simply add to VM from network
June 11, 201412 yr Author then you will need a VT-d/IOMMU compatible hardware anyhow. also if you did not buy the tuners yet, consider the network tuner like silicone dust homerun kind. this you do not need to pass through but simply add to VM from network I have VT-d compatible hardware and have already passed through my 9211-8i to unRAID and a tuner to a windows VM to test to make sure it would work, which it does. I already have the tuners. I originally didn't buy the network tuners because the tuners I bought were cheaper and I was unsure if I was going to have enough bandwidth be able to record 6 shows at once and watch at least one previously recorded show at the same time over my net work. In the future I may replace the tuners I have but I don't feel the need to pay over $300 to replace them at this time.
June 11, 201412 yr Cool, but have a question for you than, if you have eaxi up and running, why bother with unraid host. Keep your setup, run unraid nice and clean as vm. In nas only mode, no plug ins. And run all the toys in other vms. That what I would do. Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk
June 11, 201412 yr My next question is since I hear that unRAID is moving away from XEN and towards KMV will KMV be similar to ESXi as in will it have a GUI client that is run on another computer to manage it? The reason I ask is I like the idea that unRAID is the host but I was put off of XEN by the difficulty of the config and install of VMs. KVM is way more customizable and has many more options to configure when compared to Xen. Does Xen look easier / make more sense? name = 'windows' builder = 'hvm' vcpus = '2' memory = '2048' disk = ['phy:/mnt/cache/VM/windows/windows.img,hda,w','phy:/dev/sdd,hdb,w'] boot = 'c' usbdevice = ['tablet','host:413c:3016','host:413c:2005','host:05e3:0719'] pci = [ '01:00.0','01:00.1','05:00.0','05:00.1','05:00.2' ] #---Other Settings xen_platform_pci='1' on_poweroff="destroy" on_reboot="restart" on_crash="destroy" vif = ['mac=00:16:3E:51:20:4C,bridge=br0,model=e1000'] #network bridge device_model_version="qemu-xen-traditional" acpi = '1' apic = '1' sdl = '0' stdvga = '0' viridian = '1' usb=1 #VNC SETTINGS vnc = '1' vnclisten = '0.0.0.0' vncdisplay = 1 or... KVM? qemu-system-x86_64 \ -enable-kvm \ -machine type=q35,accel=kvm \ -m 24G \ -boot menu=on \ -cpu host,hv-time \ -smp 6,sockets=1,cores=3,threads=2 \ -mem-path /dev/hugepages \ -bios /usr/share/qemu/bios.bin \ -vga none \ -nographic \ -device ioh3420,bus=pcie.0,addr=1c.0,multifunction=on,port=1,chassis=1,id=root.1 \ -device vfio-pci,host=02:00.0,bus=root.1,addr=00.0,multifunction=on,x-vga=on,rombar=0,romfile=/home/user/tahiti.rom \ -device vfio-pci,host=02:00.1,bus=pcie.0 \ -device virtio-scsi-pci,id=scsi \ -drive id=ssd,format=raw,discard=on,cache=none,file=/dev/virtual-machines/windows \ -drive id=hssd,format=raw,cache=none,file=/dev/sdc \ -device scsi-hd,drive=ssd \ -device scsi-block,drive=hssd \ -netdev bridge,br=br0,id=hostnet0 \ -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=hostnet0,id=net0,mac=00:16:3e:00:01:01 \ -device vfio-pci,host=08:00.0,bus=pcie.0 \ -qmp tcp:127.0.0.1:5555,server,nowait \ Neither has a WebGUI that makes it easy for you. When someone develops one, they end up making it closed source and selling it. The 2 that are open source are not production ready and have many issues that still need to be addressed.
June 12, 201412 yr Author Cool, but have a question for you than, if you have eaxi up and running, why bother with unraid host. Keep your setup, run unraid nice and clean as vm. In nas only mode, no plug ins. And run all the toys in other vms. That what I would do. Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk I liked the idea of having unRAID as the host but it looks like it will work much better in my situation to run ESXi.
June 12, 201412 yr Well for now anyway. Untill a reasonable gui is developed Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk
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