unRAID 6.0 Build to Combine 3 PCs using Dockers and KVM - Questions

[boy914]

Greetings,

 

I'm currently running 5.0.6 Plus on 5-year-old hardware originally designed for power savings. Over the last few years, I've added two more servers to my home network, and I'm looking at an unRAID 6.0 build to consolidate. The other two servers are:

 

1. Next PVR server - PVR software to record shows and serve live TV to Kodi. TV Tuner is PCI Express x1 dual tuner card.

2. Plex server. The only reason this exists is that my current unRAID hardware isn't up to the task. Yes, I run both Kodi and Plex 

 

unRAID is running MySQL (Kodi DB), OpenVPN Client (always connected to PrivateInternetAccess), and the usual array of NZB add-ons and plugins (SAB, SB, CP, etc.).

 

My goal is to build an unRAID 6.0 box capable of hosting a single Win7 VM (to run Next PVR) and also run Dockers for Plex along with all of the other add-ons and plugins currently running on unRAID. For hardware, I'm looking at:

 

• ASRock Z97 Extreme6
  
• i5-4460 (3.2 GHz Haswell) CPU
  
• 16 GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance RAM
  
• 2x128 GB SSDs for cache pool (haven't selected the model yet)
  

 

I've done quite a bit of reading and I'm comfortable with the Docker side of things for MySQL, Plex, and the rest. I work in IT but I have minimal experience with VMs, so I'm wondering how best to set up a Windows 7 VM. I understand that the new VM Manager makes KVM a snap, but I have a few questions:

 

[*]I'd like to give my VM the most direct access to the PCI Express x1 TV tuner card. I see posts about "passthrough" for non-GPU PCI devices, but most of what I've read is pre-Beta15 and I can't tell if I'm still going to need to edit XML or if the VM Manager makes this easy. What's the latest on this?

[*]Networking: I'd like to keep all external unRAID/Docker traffic on the OpenVPN Client, but I'm not concerned about securing traffic from the VM. Does anyone know how the Open VPN Client plugin in unRAID will affect VMs (if at all)? Since the mobo has 2 NICs, does it make more sense to have one NIC dedicated to the VM and the other to unRAID?

[*]I'd like the VM to have its own dedicated non-array drive for recording TV shows. Eventually the TV shows are converted to .mp4 and copied to the video library on my array, but in the meantime, I don't need the huge .ts files parity protected. What's the best way to mount a non-array disk inside a VM?

 

Sorry if some of these questions are redundant. I was able to gather most of what I need from other forum posts, but after several hours of research, these are the questions I still have left.

 

Thanks in advance for the help. Looking forward to the new build!

 

-boy914

[BobPhoenix]

[*]I'd like to give my VM the most direct access to the PCI Express x1 TV tuner card. I see posts about "passthrough" for non-GPU PCI devices, but most of what I've read is pre-Beta15 and I can't tell if I'm still going to need to edit XML or if the VM Manager makes this easy. What's the latest on this?

[*]Networking: I'd like to keep all external unRAID/Docker traffic on the OpenVPN Client, but I'm not concerned about securing traffic from the VM. Does anyone know how the Open VPN Client plugin in unRAID will affect VMs (if at all)? Since the mobo has 2 NICs, does it make more sense to have one NIC dedicated to the VM and the other to unRAID?

[*]I'd like the VM to have its own dedicated non-array drive for recording TV shows. Eventually the TV shows are converted to .mp4 and copied to the video library on my array, but in the meantime, I don't need the huge .ts files parity protected. What's the best way to mount a non-array disk inside a VM?

[*]I believe this http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38259.0 is the way to do it.  I've just started with 6.0 but it has worked for me for Sata Controller, Network and USB controller cards.  I plan on switching my ESXi servers to unRAID 6.0 at some time since I have a SageTV windows VM and unRAID VM on each of my ESXi servers.

[*]Can't help here - sorry.

[*]I think you would be best to pass a Sata controller to the VM and then just connect drives up to it directly.  That's what I will be doing with my SageTV Windows VMs.  Although I plan on trying Linux VMs once SageTV goes open source in the next few months.

[boy914]

Thanks BobPhoenix! I hadn't considered passing through a SATA controller to the VM, but I just happen to have a small 2-port card that I wasn't going to use now that the new motherboard has 10 onboard ports.

 

So, I'll try the XML method to get the tuner, 2nd NIC and SATA card passed through to the Windows VM.

 

Thanks again!