I'm interested to know what are the best options for setting up vm's when using ssd's.

In my unraid build I am planning to have two windows 10 vm's and games on ssd's other stuff on hdd's.

 

Option 1)

250GB ssd dedicated for (Vm1)

250GB ssd dedicated for (Vm2)

500GB cache (with games partition set to always)

4 TB HDD (Array)

4 TB HDD (Parity)

 

Option 2)

 

Put all ssd drives in the cache

Create user shares for the vm's so that each vm is on a different 250GB ssd and then all remaining space is automatically available for cache.

4 TB HDD (Array)

4 TB HDD (Parity)

This may help a little:

 

I'm just testing so my setup is pretty primitive.

Thanks for the link TiHKAL. I had actually already watched that one but re-watching it again didn't hurt

 

In the video he essentially adds both ssd's to the cache and then adds a vidsk user share set to cache only. This sounds like Option 2) I listed above. There is no way to control which physical ssd it goes to in this scenario so it seems possible both vms could exist on the same ssd within the cache? And this was basically what I was asking. Performance wise it would be more performant to have each vm on a different physical disk.

 

Is there anyone that has gone with an alternate setup (like option 1 or something different? Be keen to see what options are available.

You could leave the SSD's unassigned and dedicate each one as the boot drive for a single VM.

 

I haven't installed any really demanding titles for performance testing yet. If my testing goes well, I will probably just stick with the cache setup.

 

I just leave my VM SSD's independent of the array and assigned through Unassigned Devices. Works well for me. Currently have 3 unassigned SSD's with 4 VMs on them total.

It seems like passing ssds through unassigned is the peoples choice. Cheers!

It seems like passing ssds through unassigned is the peoples choice. Cheers!

 

It comes down to whether you value capacity or data protection.

 

Option 1 => you don't get any protection of your VM at all. So in the (unlikely) scenario that your SSD fails, you lose all your data. The benefit is you get more capacity.

Option 2 => the reverse => less capacity but you are more resistant to hardware error.

 

I can see why people would pick option 1 since SSD failure rate is relatively low and cost is high.

 

Now let me throw a spanner into Option 1. I just learned (from reading the forum) recently that certain cache setting can make the cache works better than being a direct pass-through (at the cost of some risk in case of power failure) - I still have to actually test it out but there's nothing on paper that says it wouldn't work.