Any way to use unassigned drive for VM?

[xxredxpandaxx]

I have a couple old drives (pre fail disks) laying around and I wanted to use those for some non critical vms. Can I have the disk not assigned to my array or cache array and still use it somehow?

 

 

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[1812]

Yes, just change the primary vDisk location to the drive you want it on.

[xxredxpandaxx]

Yes, just change the primary vDisk location to the drive you want it on.

[JorgeB]

Assign the disk to the cache slot or leave it unassigned and use the unassigned devices plugin.

[xxredxpandaxx]

Assign the disk to the cache slot or leave it unassigned and use the unassigned devices plugin.

Oh I didn't realize there was a plug in for that. Thanks.

 

 

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[SpaceInvaderOne]

You can either put vdisks on the unassigned drive or pass through the whole disk as a block device for exclusive use by a vm

[darianf]

You can either put vdisks on the unassigned drive or pass through the whole disk as a block device for exclusive use by a vm

 

If full disk is to be used by the VM, which is the preferred method? or what are the advantages of one method against the other? (performance, stability, etc..)

Does it matter if it's ssd or standard HDD?

Thanks

-d

[dmacias]

 

 

You can either put vdisks on the unassigned drive or pass through the whole disk as a block device for exclusive use by a vm

 

If full disk is to be used by the VM, which is the preferred method? or what are the advantages of one method against the other? (performance, stability, etc..)

Does it matter if it's ssd or standard HDD?

Thanks

-d

 

If the full disk is to be used, the preferred method would be to pass the whole disk. You are removing one layer of virtualization. I also prefer to pass the whole raw disk and partition it in the VM OS but you can also just pass through a partition. So you could have multiple partitions passed to multiple VM's but with a drop in performance. The fastest a side from passing a sata controller, would be adding whole SSD. The performance difference between SSD and HDD would be the same as any other computer.

[darianf]

thanks for the good explanation dmacias.

i think now it really makes sense to buy the ultra cheap small ssd, like 120 GB, and pass them entirely

 

[JonathanM]

thanks for the good explanation dmacias.

i think now it really makes sense to buy the ultra cheap small ssd, like 120 GB, and pass them entirely

Depends on how close you are to your server limits. Since Unraid counts all attached devices for the license, you could find yourself needing to upgrade either hardware or software to add more drives, where if you have one large SSD, it only takes one SATA port to host multiple VM's.

[darianf]

is it my [wrong?] understading that unassigned devices do not count against the license limit, since they are not part of the array...

somebody can clarify please?

[SpaceInvaderOne]

is it my [wrong?] understading that unassigned devices do not count against the license limit, since they are not part of the array...

somebody can clarify please?

 

Yes they do count towards the license.

[jang430]

What if I only want to assign a portion of the SSD (unassigned devices)?  Will create several different VMs on it.  How do I do this?  During creation of VM, what drive to I assign to it?  I've pre-cleared my SSD already.

[testdasi]

10 hours ago, jang430 said:

What if I only want to assign a portion of the SSD (unassigned devices)?  Will create several different VMs on it.  How do I do this?  During creation of VM, what drive to I assign to it?  I've pre-cleared my SSD already.

I'm surprised by these questions given your 1k+ posts.

• Create vdisk on the mounted UD. UD mounts are under /mnt/disks/[mount name]. Mount name can be found (and changed) on the UD screen on the Main page.
• Don't preclear SSD. Poor thing just wasted write cycles.

[jang430]

Thanks @testdasi

 

noted Ed on the ssd preclear.