Its been a while since i looked at UNRAID, but now 6.2 is here with 2 parities and 30 drives etc, well its time to get on with this and get er done.

 

I need to do several things on one server setup - OK, so VM's.

 

Do i install UNRAID on bare metal and then run the other VM's on top of UNRAID

 

OR

 

Could i  setup a hypervisor on bare metal and run UNRAID in a VM ?

 

I am pretty sure its install UNRAID as the base OS and run VM's from there, but just want to make sure i have this right as i try to figure out how to do what i want to do.

 

 

You're correct =>  you install UnRAID, and then create the VM's to run from there.

 

FWIW it is possible to run UnRAID as a virtual machine -- several users on this forum run ESXi as their bare metal hypervisor and run UnRAID as a virtual machine.

 

But with the newest version's built-in hypervisor most users who run virtual machines do so using UnRAID's built-in support.

 

Thanks Gary. Goldmine of information as always.

 

Right, so off the the UNRAID hypervisor sub forum i go.

 

If you dont mind, what are the pro's/cons of either way? Will the built in Hypervisor give better performance to the other VM's or just make UNRAID perform better?

 

I need to get this basic concept right before i go too much further. I want to spec and purchase hardware so knowing how i should be setting up helps.

Given the same hardware, I think either way does well with VM performance.    Most UnRAID users prefer to let UnRAID manage their VM's, and I do think Limetech has put a lot of effort into creating a nice VM manager.

 

The only significant advantage I can think of for ESXi is that all of the VM's are completely independent -- including UnRAID.  If you're using UnRAID as the hypervisor, then you can't shut down UnRAID without killing all of the VM's.  But for most users, that's not a significant factor.