October 18, 201510 yr Hi Everyone, So whilst preparing to buy some new hardware for an unraid install as 2 VM gaming rigs, and a nas/emby server, i have a few questions in regards to passthrough and the unraid install itself. I have seen a couple of videos in regards to this, but they did not really explain what i need to know. Sorry if these have been asked before but i know since unraid 6 came out, things have changed a lot compared to some older questions. Here are some details of my proposed system to give some background for the following questions. Unraid 32GB USB storing unraid, an emby docker, and my nas settings A 4TB HDD for storage VM1 An entire 120GB SSD An entire 4TB HDD 1 USB 8 port Hub (keyboard, mouse, usb pen drives etc.) a gtx 780 VM2 An entire 120GB SSD An entire 2TB HDD 1 USB 8 port Hub (keyboard, mouse, usb pen drives etc.) a gtx 770 1. Someone showed setting up a unraid server, but to use the nas/docker sections, they used a separate hard drive for storing the docker and the nas settings. Is this needed? or can the dockers and nas settings be saved on the unRAID usb itself? So the entire install is on the USB given one with large enough space? i.e. 16 to 32GB Dockers must be installed on a separate drive (share) to the main USB 2. For passing through USB devices, i know you can do this individually on the vm settings screen, and have seen people sharing through an entire pci e usb controller, or oboard usb controller. For my new system (ASUS x99 DELUXE), i am not sure how many onboard controllers it has, and will not be able to add a pci usb controller due to GPU installs. Is it possible to pass through an entire usb hub? Say an 8 port USB 3 hub to each vm? allowing usb devices etc. to be plugged in without having to change any vm settings each time? The reason i ask is because my unraid build will be rather out of the way of the screens so it would be more practical to have usb hubs per vm. But if i can not pass through a hub, can i login to the unraid dashboard, and edit my vm whilst using it to pass throiugh the new usb devices without a reboot? For example, i am using VM 1, i need to connect a USB pen drive to it. Can i open up to unraid gui on vm1, modify vm1's settings to add the new usb device, click save, and have it connect straight through? Similar to adding a new device through something like VMware? USB devices can only be passed through to a vm whilst the vm is shut down. This means to allow plug and play, a usb controller must be shares. As a usb hub doesn't often show as a usb device itself to a system, it would not be allowed to be shares 3. Am i able to pass through my entire onboard audio to a virtual machine? For our set up, one VM will have no audio, and the other needs to use the onboard optical output. (we do not use any audio outputs on our gpu's) Onboard audio can be passed through but can get a little messed up. It is recommended to output audio via a dedicated device per vm (such as a gpu) 4. I have been told that i am able to allocate an entire hard drive without plugins to a vm rather then storing virtual disk images. As my current host machine has the OS on an SSD, and storage on a single drive, i was looking to perhaps install unraid on a usb, add a vm, and add my current SSD and Storage drive to the VM and boot it without doing a re-install. Is this possible at all? Or is it something that i can do with plugins? (Current drives are NTFS, with GPT partitioning so i am aware this may be an issue as i am unsure if unraid will support these) The vm needs to be allocated a user share for the OS and one for the storage. Whilst there are ways to pass an entire HDD, this involves altering the vm settings xml file so can be difficult depending on the method used. This means that as standard, the vm would write to actual disk images at all times. (These can be expanded in size but not reduced). A specific share can also be told to write only to a single drive meaning you can store 1 vm's storage on a single drive, and another vm's storage on a different drive using a different share 5. For the unraid licenses's, am i right to assume that the device limit is the number of hard drives that can be attached and run at the same time? And not the total number of devices including GPU's and USB's? If so, how would unraid go about a raid array from a PCI raid card? Would it see the final raid images or pick up the drives being used? The license device is running hard drives and not attached devices as a whole. 6. I like the way unraid does its drive arrays allowing for different size drives as long as the parity drive is the largest drive, but is a parity drive required in all systems? Even in my instance of passing a entire drives to a VM? I know it is also similar to a raid 5 array, being that it allows for a single drive failure. But in the instance someone ever went to 8 or more drives, would it be possible to have it run more like a raid 6 having dual parity? Dual parity is a possibility but not implemented either 7. In the instance that i wish to test unraid before buying new gpu's and just virtualising my current system to test it, can i give the vm a virtual gpu to use? If so, how would i see the display from this vm? During the install process etc. Unraid has VNC built in for virtuals so a remote connection could be made. Some dockers allow for a web browser based virtual desktop, so vnc may allow remote viewing via a browser? I know its rather a lot of questions but it should cover everything i need to get the system in order or at least test it to see if it will work. Many thanks in advance. Regards, Jamie EDIT: After watching the following video, questions 6 and 5 have been answered. I have scrubbed these questions and answered them myself. http://mediaserver8.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/cat5tv-does-unraid.html EDIT 2: I found the answer to a few other questions also, so have bluffed those out and wrote the answers, if any of my findings are wrong, please let me know
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