Hello all.

 

I just purchased a 120GB Samsung SSD to utilise as an App/Cache drive. I've yet to install it and am wondering if I should have gotten something bigger.  Yeah I know, it's based on personal usage, but it was a really great buy (€39) and at the moment I only have a 10GB docker image (4 containers), with Logitech media server and Plex being the main culprits.

 

I have yet to dip my toes in to VMs, but may do in the future. So the question is, how big is the average VM?.

I have an HP Gen 8 Microserver, with a Celeron CPU, 10GB RAM, I'm not even sure if this is viable for a VM to be honest.

 

Thanks for the advice.

Hello all.

 

I just purchased a 120GB Samsung SSD to utilise as an App/Cache drive. I've yet to install it and am wondering if I should have gotten something bigger.  Yeah I know, it's based on personal usage, but it was a really great buy (€39) and at the moment I only have a 10GB docker image (4 containers), with Logitech media server and Plex being the main culprits.

 

I have yet to dip my toes in to VMs, but may do in the future. So the question is, how big is the average VM?.

I have an HP Gen 8 Microserver, with a Celeron CPU, 10GB RAMI'm not even sure if this is viable for a VM.

 

Thanks for the advice.

If your thinking of running a windows VM and also store docker config and data then yeah you will probably find 120GB too small. I've got a 250GB and it's a bit tight, I would love a 500GB SSD but they are too much for my liking at the moment.

 

My vdisk is currently 70GB which is about as small as I can get it with a reasonable collection of apps installed

 

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

30GB for a W10 VM will be pushing it - I tend to allocate 40GB per VM.  A default W10 installation before you install any extra software is about 16-20GB

 

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-10-specifications#sysreqs

 

 

Hard disk space:

16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS

My Windows 10 VM currently takes up 66GB, that is with it running a Minecraft and Garry's Mod server and a PXE server with a handful of ISO's.

My win10 installation is 60-ish GB, on a 100GB image.

Kind of basic install with Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and MS Visual studio. I guess that would make my minimum size for a VM 80GB, to leave space for updates etc.

Ok, thanks for the replies.

Sounds like 1 VM plus docker image is doable.

Actually the docker image, this is the runtime right? So the application data itself is completely separate, e.g. the Plex DB.

 

To be honest I have no idea why I would need a VM at this point in time, but one never knows I guess.

Keep in mind you want to have enough free space to be able to complete file transfers without it filling up completely.

Hmm, I kind of wanted to set the drive to "app and data" only if possible and not bother with the cache part of things... I'm in no hurry to move things to the server and rather write directly to shares.  I presume this is possible?

Hmm, I kind of wanted to set the drive to "app and data" only if possible and not bother with the cache part of things... I'm in no hurry to move things to the server and rather write directly to shares.  I presume this is possible?

Yes, this is exactly what I do. I have never cared about write speed so I don't cache any user share writes.

 

I don't have any VMs but I run several dockers including plex. I just have appdata and a few cache-only shares that I want to keep accessible without spinning anything up. I ran for a long time with only 120GB SSD cache and it was never more than half full, but as I said, no VMs.

 

I recently upgraded my SSD cache to 275GB simply because I wanted to put a DVR share there and decided it would be good to have more space.

VMs can range in size.  If you intend to run Linux VMs without a GUI loaded, some can be really small.  Even with a GUI like OpenELEC or LibreELEC, the actual vdisk size is < 1GB.  VMs get large mainly because of applications and user data.  The ideal setup for a VM is to utilize a vdisk to store the OS and applications and then store all user data directly to the array (e.g. over SMB).  So for a Windows VM with nothing more than Office apps installed and a few other random applications, between 50-60GB in allocation is fine, but the main purpose for that much storage is for all the bloat that comes with Windows itself and its updates.  Linux-based VMs can remain very small in size as they can be packaged around very specific application sets, thus reducing the overall amount of bloat that has to be delivered with the core operating system itself.  Of course we don't always get to make that choice due to application support and this is most prevalent with gaming.

 

But the biggest culprit in storage waste in VMs is actually misplacing user data inside the guest VM instead of storing it on the array itself using the network.  This keeps the VM's vdisk as lean as possible and keeps the data that matters most (that which you created) in the protected array.  Keep in mind, applications and operating systems can be reinstalled and reinstanced, but your kids pictures and all the work you put into editing your home videos will be lost if not placed in protected storage and backed up properly.  If you only have a single SSD in your system, it is vital you store the data you create directly to the array so that if the SSD fails, your most important files are not lost.

 

Another big area that can save you is to create a secondary vdisk that lives on your array and store your games there.  Sure it's not as fast as your SSD, but if you don't have enough space on the SSD, this is a decent alternative.  I just don't recommend using vdisks on the array for an OS installation or frequently used applications.

Dropbox is making this hard. It has to be installed on the VM, including the file storage.

Maybe making a third VM disk is a solution. Like my seperate games-disk.

Dropbox is making this hard. It has to be installed on the VM, including the file storage.

Maybe making a third VM disk is a solution. Like my seperate games-disk.

 

There is a Dropbox container that you can install on unRAID I believe.  This would circumvent needing to install Dropbox inside the VM.

Agree that if you store your data on the array a 120GB SSD is fine for a few Dockers and a couple VM's

 

It will certainly be good enough to "dip your toes in the water" of virtualization => it's very simple to switch it out for a larger unit if/when the need arises.    Been a long time since I've used one that small, but at the price you got it for you may as well use it for at least some initial experimentation with virtualization.