I've recently built an unRAID server based on an i3-530 processor, in an Intel DH55TC mobo, and I find that benchmarks show the i3 processor to be 3 times more powerful than my old Core Duo T5200 Ubuntu machine, and 6 times more powerful than my old Athlon XP 2700+ WinXP machine.  I've been prompted, therefore, to consider the possibility of making use of the Intel Virtualization Technology in the i3.

 

What is required in order to use Intel Virtualization?

 

I presume that either:

1) The OS(s) used need to have some knowledge of Virtualization and the new instruction subset.

2) There has to be some form of supervisory software sitting above the individual OS(s)

 

I've tried searching for guidance on this subject but remain rather confused.  I found one topic here, but it seemed to relate to software virtualization, rather than the newer hardware-supported virtualization.

Can standard a standard OS (eg Slackware, Ubuntu, WinXP etc) be used?

Can I run one, or more, of these other OSs alongside unRAID?

Do I need a supervisory layer (VMware, Parallels ...)?  If so, is this expensive?

 

I'm an old computer hack, who started programming in Fortran IV with hand-punched cards, and whose first personal computer had a massive 128 bytes of RAM (with no offline storage, and only a hex keypad/LED as a UI this wasn't a great limitation)!  I know that there are people on this board with a great deal of up to date knowledge and experience who can guide me, or point me in the right direction.

Hi Peter,

 

The "software virtualization" that you talk about is correct. Most people on these forums who discuss virtualization are normally talking about one of two things:

 

1) Running an unRAID VM (guest-OS, Virtual Machine) on top of another host-OS (Windows, Mac, another flavour of linux, etc.)

2) Running VMware Server under unRAID which allows someone to run other operating systems on top of the unRAID OS (Windows, linux, etc.)

 

Option #1 is normally used in testing scenarios. I use Option #1 on my Mac to test the unRAID 5.x series since I don't want to be messing with my production environment. Option #2 is used by users to run another flavour of linux, Windows Server or other OS on top of unRAID (given the unRAID machine has enough memory to run multiple OSes at the same time).

 

There is also 3rd option which isn't discussed as much, and this is running unRAID as a VM on top of a Hypervisor (most popular being VMware's ESX(i), Novell's Xen or Microsoft's Hyper-V). You can grant unRAID direct access to the disk drives and other hardware. This is typical vernacular when discussing "hardware virtualization".

 

VMware offers a free version of ESXi that you can install. XenServer is also free I believe. Each has their own pros and cons, although I can't speak much about XenServer (I'm a certified VMware Professional and in some respects, an evangelist to the cause

 

If you're going to run unRAID under a Hypervisor, you're probably doing so because you want to run other OSes at the same time. The benefits of using a Hypervisor over let's say VMware Server on top of unRAID (Option #2) is that the Hypervisor is much more efficient at managing various OSes running at the same time on a physical machine. There's also very little memory footprint for the Hypervisor and the kernel (at least in VMware's case) is extremely efficient at memory/cpu management. Memory is most often the bottleneck when it comes to virtualization because each OS needs to have a few gigs reserved for it to run optimally, so keep this into consideration if you're considering option #3.

 

Personally I've been contemplating running ESXi on my Server at home with an unRAID, Windows 2008 R2 and potentially a Ubuntu Server. It can easily be done on a machine with 8GB of RAM and an i3 processor. I just haven't gotten around to really doing an analysis yet. My primary reason for doing so is that I've been modifying unRAID quite a bit to suite my needs and I'm starting to think that it would be best if I just left it alone for managing my media/files and used Ubuntu/Win to run other types of servers (web, streaming, etc.)

 

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks for that info.  I'm downloading VMware ESXi as I write this.

 

Okay, so ESXi will make use of the special instructions provided by Intel's Virtualization Technology, and this is the most efficient and effective way of running multiple OSes simultaneously on a single hardware platform?

 

Presumably, if all but one of the environments are idle, then the one active OS will have access to almost 100% of the processing power?

 

I probably won't interfere with my unRAID server just at the moment but, I've been considering upgrading my other machines because, in particular, DVD ripping with handbrake on my T5200-based ubuntu box will saturate both cores.  Building one machine to host both OSes is attractive, particularly as I'm not a big fan of Microsoft.  So, I'll probably build one new machine, similar to my unRAID server, and experiment with virtualization on that.

 

 

This thread got me really excited about the prospects of running ESXi and then having an unRAID and Windows VM run on top of the VMware hypervisor.... so i did a bit more research and testing and came to the following conclusions.

 

1. ESXi 4.1 now supports USB device passthrough (something that the enterprise community has wanted for ages mainly for USB dongle and key support).  So the theory is pop the unRAID USB stick in, create a VM with the USB stick, and boot directly too unRAID via USB as we always have.  Unfortunately I cannot find a way to make this work.  I got the USB (unRAID) device mapped fine, but when you go to boot to it in a VM, there does not appear to be an option to boot to USB in the Virtual Machine BIOS    If anyone knows how to get this to work, I'm all ears.  The only option I see here is to put unRAID on a drive and boot it that way - I know I saw a thread somewhere that shows how to do this.

 

2. I was hoping to use the Raw Disk Mapping (RDM) feature of ESXi to simply upgrade my existing unRAID server, then map those dives to a VM and have everything pick up as I left off.  Unfortunately this is not the way RDM works.  You must have an iSCSI or Fibre Channel SAN target to send RDM command through.  Strike 2, bummer   I believe Microsoft's Hyper-V might be an option for this though as I have seen several Windows Home Servers being run this way...  I'll have to research further, but I know Hyper-V does not work for USB booting either.

 

3.  The only way I can see ESXi being used today is with large (disk size) Virtual Disk files.  This would certainly be interesting and probably work fine, but I'm not overly comfortable with it.  Any tiny bit of corruption could render the whole file useless and lead to lost data.

 

I had high hopes this morning, but most have been dashed.  I would be very interested to hear from anyone that has tried using ESXi and what your successes were like.  In the mean-time I'll continue to research Hyper-V and see if that is even an option.

 

 

 

 

 

This thread got me really excited about the prospects of running ESXi and then having an unRAID and Windows VM run on top of the VMware hypervisor.... so i did a bit more research and testing and came to the following conclusions.

 

1. ESXi 4.1 now supports USB device passthrough (something that the enterprise community has wanted for ages mainly for USB dongle and key support).  So the theory is pop the unRAID USB stick in, create a VM with the USB stick, and boot directly too unRAID via USB as we always have.  Unfortunately I cannot find a way to make this work.  I got the USB (unRAID) device mapped fine, but when you go to boot to it in a VM, there does not appear to be an option to boot to USB in the Virtual Machine BIOS    If anyone knows how to get this to work, I'm all ears.  The only option I see here is to put unRAID on a drive and boot it that way - I know I saw a thread somewhere that shows how to do this.

 

I didn't get a straight boot to work, but I have the VM automount a USB boot ISO to the CD device (I used PLoP Boot Manager but there are others).  When the machine restarts I do have to manually use the Console to select the key.

 

3.  The only way I can see ESXi being used today is with large (disk size) Virtual Disk files.  This would certainly be interesting and probably work fine, but I'm not overly comfortable with it.  Any tiny bit of corruption could render the whole file useless and lead to lost data.

 

I did it with 20GB disk files but I only set it up to test unRAID 5.0-beta 2.  The issue I see is that parity checks fluctuate rapidly in terms of speed, varying from around 11 MB/sec to 24 MB/sec tops in an environment that theoretically could provide 60MB/sec or more (direct attached SATA storage with individual VMDKs on individual spindles).  But I had no requirements about stability and/or performance here... just wanted to check out the new unRAID 5 interface.

 

I believe Microsoft's Hyper-V might be an option for this though as I have seen several Windows Home Servers being run this way...  I'll have to research further, but I know Hyper-V does not work for USB booting either.

 

Maybe you want this http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Main_Page give try. It supports booting from usb although you have to set this up manually.