unRAID as Laptop Hypervisor - USB passthrough potential issue

[Zan]

Now that IGD passthrough is coming in 6.3, I'd like to use unRAID as a hypervisor for a few Windows VMs on a laptop.

 

I'm not sure if that would be possible and definitely not the product's intended purpose, but unRAID is so lightweight and VM creation is made so simple that I'd like to use it this way.

 

However passing through all USB ports would mean that the boot USB would be passed through and I know from experience this causes unRAID to become unreliable/unresponsive.

 

So my feature request is to enable this scenario by removing the reliance on the USB device after unRAID starts the array.

 

Possible option is for changes to the /boot partition to be held on the array. Then when the array is stopped, re-mount the USB device and write any changes back to it from the array.

[JonathanM]

I don't see this as an option. Since the USB is boot media, config location, and license control, the ability to remove this while in flight is not realistic. Consider the scenario where a dishonest person could set up several servers, and move the key around from server to server when a reboot was needed.

 

Honestly, the risk / reward ratio for Limetech to invest the time to get this working on a laptop is probably pretty poor.

[wes862]

can you use sd card instead of usb drive?