I'm considering setting up an unRAID server to use as my primary home storage system, as well as KVM based hypervisor. I'd like to be able to host a Windows Server 2012 R2 VM as well as a couple Windows 7 VMs, a linux mediabrowser server VM (and perhaps other things such as dockers, but lets leave that aside for now).

 

A little background, I've been running unRAID since 4.x and it has been great. It's on a dedicated machine that just does storage. I have it wake on lan which is triggered by my home media machine. No problems other than the windows network discovery is a little clunky. I also have a Win 2008 R2 machine that hosts a Win7 VM. I use these as servers that I play with for personal development and it has a small raid array (not unraid) that is for personal file storage. This windows server stays on 24/7. So, what I would like to do is build one machine that is always on that hosts unRAID as well as hosts the VMs. I would move the windows server to 2012 R2 and install it as a VM.

 

What I want is for those VMs to be able to access the unRAID shares and for things to more or less work without me having to babysit. I don't mind lots of upfront tinkering as long as in the end, it's rock solid. I'm perfectly comfortable editing in linux config files in the myriad ways.

 

Before I go too far down the path, I'd like your opinion on how stable a setup like this could be today. And if it is stable, is the performance comparable to other Type 1 hypervisors.  I understand that this wouldn't necessarily be an easy process, but I'd like to know if I'm too close to the bleeding edge to hope for stability. It's hard to get a read on that because most of the posts here seem to center around various pass through scenarios or other problems (which is to be expected since this is a forum for help).

 

I haven't mentioned hardware, but I would spend a little money and get the proper hardware. I'm not quite sure what all of that is yet, but probably an i5 or i7 with all the virtualization support and the most stable motherboard I can find.

 

Thanks for any insights.

 

I should probably start off by saying it is still beta software and from there we all can get blue in the face debating on what that means as far as stability and safety of data (and in fact there are quite a few posts on that). At the end of the day it all depends on "your" comfort of "risk" running a beta version of anything. So I will leave it at that and go on to your other questions.

 

I have been running an Ubuntu VM and a Windows 8 VM (with GPU and mouse/keyboard) passthrough for 3+ months now and both have not given me any trouble. I got a BSOD on my Windows VM once but hey it's Windows and 3 months with only 1 BSOD is pretty impressive! The VM's have been so stable that they have completely replaced my laptop that was running Windows 7. I used to keep the laptop close by just in case something went wrong but now it's hiding in a drawer.

 

Others have not been as lucky with there setups and I think it has A LOT to do with specific types of hardware. I does sound like you understand that there is a pretty good learning curve when you first start but Dmacias has made it much easier to manage VM with his plugins

Thanks. I really appreciate the feedback. I should have mentioned the proviso that I'm ok with beta software, at least from the crew at Lime Tech. My experience has been very positive so far. I'm also open to other suggestions about a better way to achieve several VMs hosted on the same machine as unRAID. I looked at Xen first and also unRAID as VM, but KVM seems to be the slightly preferred way forward for most people. At least as far as I can tell.

KVM is being actively worked on my LT so I would start with KVM.

Just as long as you are aware that there is a MAJOR learning curve at work here.  I love the everything that KVM offers but moving from a virtualization platform that had a robust management client (ESXi) was a hard pill to swallow.  It definitely took me some time to wrap my brain around KVM and I am learning more every day.  Don't expect to have everything up an running in a day.  It just won't happen (unless of course you have prior experience).

 

However, once you get everything tweaked...it is poetry in motion!

 

John

Just as long as you are aware that there is a MAJOR learning curve at work here.  I love the everything that KVM offers but moving from a virtualization platform that had a robust management client (ESXi) was a hard pill to swallow.  It definitely took me some time to wrap my brain around KVM and I am learning more every day.  Don't expect to have everything up an running in a day.  It just won't happen (unless of course you have prior experience).

 

However, once you get everything tweaked...it is poetry in motion!

 

John

 

It is also important to mention that VMWare solutions aren't really geared for consumers.  Even their workstation product is rather sophisticated in nature and primarily meant for IT professionals to use.  What we're trying to accomplish with KVM isn't a replica of what VMWare, XenServer, or any other virtualization management solution has brought to market.  Those solutions were truly built for business customers and IT professionals, not everyday users.  Our mission is to reduce VMs down to the bare minimum required for them to run on a vast amount of disparate hardware with minimal fuss.  For right now, folks are primarily using dmacias plugin to craft their own VMs from scratch, and that's really the learning curve that johnodon is talking about.  We haven't released any pre-built VMs publicly yet, but our plans are to build ones for OpenELEC (XBMC), SteamOS, and Windows 8.1.  Windows is the trickiest of the bunch due to licensing, but we're working on that...

 

That said, I'll call out the biggest limits of KVM and VFIO which are that they don't work universally with all hardware and specifically for Windows environments, we get the best results using Windows 8/8.1.  Windows 7 is fine if you're not doing PCI device assignment to virtual machines, but if you are, Windows 8/8.1 is a better operating system for that.

That said, I'll call out the biggest limits of KVM and VFIO which are that they don't work universally with all hardware and specifically for Windows environments, we get the best results using Windows 8/8.1.  Windows 7 is fine if you're not doing PCI device assignment to virtual machines, but if you are, Windows 8/8.1 is a better operatingsystem for that.

 

Thanks for the response. I'm not too concerned about the learning curve (I plan to take it slow) but I want it to continue to work once I find the correct parameters. When you say PCI device assignments, what would be the primary reason for this, other than GPU passthrough? Also, is there a set of processors/motherboards/video cards that are most stable? Personally, I don't have any "weird" addon cards to worry about.

 

It would be nice if there was a "current best practices" guide. Sometimes a slightly stale forum post can lead one into frustrating territory. While I think the pre-made VMs are great, I also think that that nature of unRAID means your users tend to be more technically savvy than average and will want to make their own VMs. I'm sure you know this already, I guess I'm just hoping that something like the Dmacias plugins or the roll-your-own configs continue to be supported/documented.