I that even possible? NAS/MediaServer + Osx + Win10 + Oculus


mchamplain

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Hi, new to Unraid and looking for some suggestions/recommendations for my setup:

 

I'm currently dual-booting between OSX and Windows 10. On OSX, I do web and game development, on Windows I game and use Oculus. I also have an old NAS that is just way too slow for my taste.

 

I'm thinking of combining everything into 1 beefed up PC.

 

Current hardware:

  • 2x 250gb SSD  (Crucial BX100 + Samsung SSD 850 EVO)
  • 1x 500gb SSD (Crucial BX100)
  • 4x 2TB HDD currently in a NAS (2x Seagate ST2000DL004 + 2x WDC WD20EFRX)
  • 2x 2TB HDD  (WDC WD20EZRZ)

 

Current motherboard only support quad-cores CPU so I want to upgrade that to have at least 6 physical cores assignable. (If my idea is possible:)

 

Here's what I think would be my ideal setup from what I understand so far

  • Leave 2c/4t for the main unraid OS (application server?) 
  • OSX vm with 4c/8t and 32gb of ram
  • Win 10 with the same cores and 32gm of ram (shared with osx vm)

 

Most of the time, the OSX and Win10 vm will run at the same time but both with light usage: web development, browser testing, playing small indie game.

Some times I'll want to have OSX use the full power so I would pause the Win10 VM (game development, rendering, etc.)

Other times I'll want to have Win10 use the full power so I would pause the OSX VM (Play AAA games, Oculus VR)

the applications server would host a Plex server, Deluge, etc.

 

I would buy a new motherboard with a 6-cores Intel CPU (thinking I7-6850K or I7-7800X)

use my 3 SSD as cache drives
use my 6 HDD as 4 data drive + 2 parity

use a USB KVM Switch to use the same keyboard/mouse in both OSX and Windows

dedicate a GTX GPU to Windows10

dedicate another GTX GPU to OSX

dedicate a usb controller to Win10

maybe dedicate a network card to Win10 to be able to prioritize network traffic? (less lag while playing games)

 

 

My Questions:

  1. Would the 2 VMs sharing resources works as I think? Or will that cause performance issues on the running VM even if the other is on pause.
  2. Will having 4x 2TB data drive give me (approx.) 8TB of usable storage?
  3. Would a dual cpu server motherboard yield better performance with two 4c instead of a single 6c cpu on a desktop motherboard? (making sure the core OS and the VM use a different CPU)
  4. Anything I didn’t think of?

 

 

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions/thoughts :)

 

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18 hours ago, mchamplain said:

 

My Questions:

  1. Would the 2 VMs sharing resources works as I think? Or will that cause performance issues on the running VM even if the other is on pause.
  2. Will having 4x 2TB data drive give me (approx.) 8TB of usable storage?
  3. Would a dual cpu server motherboard yield better performance with two 4c instead of a single 6c cpu on a desktop motherboard? (making sure the core OS and the VM use a different CPU)
  4. Anything I didn’t think of?

 

 

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions/thoughts :)

 

 

my opinion

 

1.  best performance will be isolated dedicated cores without anything running on it.

 since you plan to pause one shared vm via the unraid vm manager I think performance loss will be very small.

2.  yes. (others may disagree, but double parity is like preparing for a plane crashing on your house.

better use this drive for external backup outside your unraid for the really important files)

3. in theory yes. but totally depends on your workloads. since you either this/or that vm without no heavy loads in the background you should be fine with single cpu and assigned vcpus to the individual workloads/vms

4.

- ram for unraid and everything that is not the osx/win10 vm

- pci lane capacity of the mainboard of your choice 

- dedicated usb controller for oculus is a good idea

- extra NIC likely not necessary * if you have quality (intel) dual NICs on your mainboard

 

cheers

 

*(unless your in competive gaming) 

 

 

 

 

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