Hey all, decided to clean up my ragbag "servers' and make the switch to unRaid. I'm converting a GA-MA770T-UD3P (16gb, 4 x 4tb disks, a 120gb ssd) from win10 to unraid.  That box presently hosts 2 ubuntu VM's and a few Dockers.  Performance is good.

 

So here are my questions:

 

I've found directions on how to convert the Hyper-V VM's to KVM, but wanted to see if anyone has actually done this.  Any pitfalls to be aware of?

 

Most of my data is movies/TV, large files that never change, unRaid seems perfect for that. My downloaders, SABnzbd and rtorrent, have a lot of disk I/O, with all the downloading and unpacking.  Am I understanding correctly that I can use the SSD as a cache to reduce the load on the array?

 

In the present arrangement, my VM's and dockers consume about 10gb of ram, leaving 6gb for the host.  Is 6gb ram plenty for the unRaid system?

 

Thanks for the help!

Hey all, decided to clean up my ragbag "servers' and make the switch to unRaid. I'm converting a GA-MA770T-UD3P (16gb, 4 x 4tb disks, a 120gb ssd) from win10 to unraid.  That box presently hosts 2 ubuntu VM's and a few Dockers.  Performance is good.

 

So here are my questions:

 

I've found directions on how to convert the Hyper-V VM's to KVM, but wanted to see if anyone has actually done this.  Any pitfalls to be aware of?

 

Most of my data is movies/TV, large files that never change, unRaid seems perfect for that. My downloaders, SABnzbd and rtorrent, have a lot of disk I/O, with all the downloading and unpacking.  Am I understanding correctly that I can use the SSD as a cache to reduce the load on the array?

 

In the present arrangement, my VM's and dockers consume about 10gb of ram, leaving 6gb for the host.  Is 6gb ram plenty for the unRaid system?

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Your current setup would look as follows on unraid (typical scenario):

 

3 * 4TB data disks (giving you 12TB of space)

1 * 4TB parity disk

1 * 120 GB SSD

 

Your VM's should live on the SSD, the parity protected array will be to slow for them to function with any kind of performance.

 

I think your SSD would be to small to function as the home base for the VM's as well as temporary cache storage, but it might work and you can easily expand it by adding another SSD in the future.. If you want to have a redundant cache system you would need to add 2 SSD's.. Or move to a non redundant SSD cachepool, then you can jbod them together.

 

I cannot comment on the KVM convert.. No idea..

 

Have never converted Hyper v to KVM so cannot answer that one.

 

You can likely find a torrent docker and there are quite a few SabNZB dockers to choose from.

 

Yes you can use an SSD for cache, it is actually recommended.

 

6GB is enough for the main system, yes.

 

Be careful with the CPU core assignments for your VM, leave cores 0,1 for unRAID.

Hey all, decided to clean up my ragbag "servers' and make the switch to unRaid. I'm converting a GA-MA770T-UD3P (16gb, 4 x 4tb disks, a 120gb ssd) from win10 to unraid.  That box presently hosts 2 ubuntu VM's and a few Dockers.  Performance is good.

 

So here are my questions:

 

I've found directions on how to convert the Hyper-V VM's to KVM, but wanted to see if anyone has actually done this.  Any pitfalls to be aware of?

 

Most of my data is movies/TV, large files that never change, unRaid seems perfect for that. My downloaders, SABnzbd and rtorrent, have a lot of disk I/O, with all the downloading and unpacking.  Am I understanding correctly that I can use the SSD as a cache to reduce the load on the array?

 

In the present arrangement, my VM's and dockers consume about 10gb of ram, leaving 6gb for the host.  Is 6gb ram plenty for the unRaid system?

 

Thanks for the help!

Hi, welcome -

 

Using an SSD for cache is the preferred way to go.  6GB is fine for unRAID, but keep in mind there is virtualization overhead so keep an eye on it - you could run unRAID on 4GB as well but you don't want to go below 2GB.

 

I think your SSD would be to small to function as the home base for the VM's as well as temporary cache storage, but it might work and you can easily expand it by adding another SSD in the future..

 

I'm going to be using all the sata ports on the motherboard, so adding a disk later isn't an option.  Right now, the VM's and Docker's only consume ~20gb of space, which would leave close to 100gb for caching.  That might be enough, but what happens if the cache disk fills up?  Does it simply revert to the array or do bad things happen?

Using an SSD for cache is the preferred way to go.  6GB is fine for unRAID, but keep in mind there is virtualization overhead so keep an eye on it - you could run unRAID on 4GB as well but you don't want to go below 2GB.

 

In Hyper-V you can allocate a fixed amount of memory instead of dynamic, I assume KVM can do the same?

You can likely find a torrent docker and there are quite a few SabNZB dockers to choose from.

 

Yeah, I know, but I spent a long time getting everything working perfectly, so I'm hoping to take the easy route and migrate everything over.

 

Be careful with the CPU core assignments for your VM, leave cores 0,1 for unRAID.

 

Thanks, I'll be sure to do that.  I have two cores assigned to each VM right now, but they rarely use >20% cpu unless they're extracting files

You must let unRAID format any disk it will use for cache or array so if your existing disks have contents you will have to consider that.

You must let unRAID format any disk it will use for cache or array so if your existing disks have contents you will have to consider that.

 

Yeah, I saw that.  I have an external 6TB drive to aid in the process, and everything is backed up to Amazon Cloud just in case of disaster.  It will only take 80-90 hr's to restore 

 

 

You must let unRAID format any disk it will use for cache or array so if your existing disks have contents you will have to consider that.

 

Yeah, I saw that.  I have an external 6TB drive to aid in the process, and everything is backed up to Amazon Cloud just in case of disaster.  It will only take 80-90 hr's to restore 

You can start with an array that doesn't use all the disks, and have the Unassigned Devices plugin mount your Windows disks for copying to the array.

 

Since these disks are already "burned-in", if their SMART looks OK, you could just let unRAID clear as you add them rather than preclearing them. You can also add as many at one time as you want without clearing them if you don't build parity until after the initial disks are added. Clear disks are only required when adding a disk to a new slot in an array that already has parity. This is so parity will remain valid. Note that a formatted disk is not a clear disk.