Cache a VM share or iSCSI mount?

[rayfoss]

Is it possible to run CentOS in a VM, mount a CentOS SMB share on unRaid and then share the share using SMB? effectively taking advantage of the cache drives in unRaid while still using CentOS for an exotic backend?

 

Or is ti a better idea to run unRaid in a VM with a fast virtual drive as a cache?

 

It might be obscenely fast and easy to manage. For the record I'm getting around 550MB/s read and write with our current solution

[trurl]

1 minute ago, rayfoss said:

For the record I'm getting around 550MB/s read and write with our current solution

The first thing you need to understand is that unRAID is NOT RAID. There is NO striping. This has some advantages, but obviously speed will not be one of them.

[rayfoss]

@trurl  Oh yes, I am well aware. I brought it up to make it clear I'm looking for ludicrous speed... which my setup + an unraid cache would provide. The question is how to go about that. I'm leaning towards running unRaid in a VM, that is not a typo.

[trurl]

Running unRAID in a VM has been done but you probably won't get nearly as many friendly forum users to help you out with that. Of course, unRAID supports running other OS in a VM so many have not found it necessary to run unRAID as a VM.

 

How are you getting ludicrous speed with your existing solution? 10GB ethernet? Or do you mean locally on the machine?

 

What are you looking for unRAID to do that your current solution does not?

[rayfoss]

The number is locally, but the server does have 2 10GBase-T ports that we use.

 

Quote

What are you looking for unRAID to do that your current solution does not?

 

I want to have my cake and eat it too. Unraid has an awesome SMB caching capability that I'd like to take advantage of, while giving drive management to CentOS.

 

The issue with the CentOS-to-UnraidVM-to-Client solution is I'll need to manually resize the unRaid VM hard drive as the array grows.

 

The issue with the unRaid-to-CentOSVM-to-unRaidSMBMount?-to-Client solution is, well I don't know if that's possible, or how convoluted that setup would be. Unless sharing random mounts and mounting SMB is supported out of the box.

 

It seems CentOS-to-UnraidVM-to-Client is the way to go.

[trurl]

7 minutes ago, rayfoss said:

The issue with the CentOS-to-UnraidVM-to-Client solution is I'll need to manually resize the unRaid VM hard drive as the array grows.

I don't really have any experience with unRAID as a VM which is why I said you might not get much help with that approach.

 

What do you mean by the unRAID VM hard drive? The unRAID OS doesn't really install to any disk, it boots from flash and runs in RAM. The disks in unRAID are strictly for storage.

[rayfoss]

When I create the unRaid VM, I'll have to create a VM hard drive file for unRaid to see as a storage drive. If I add drives to my CentOS array, I'll have to resize the VM hard drive.

 

I'll let you know how that goes. Seriously, the unRaid SMB caching is a bit magical.

[JonathanM]

2 hours ago, rayfoss said:

Seriously, the unRaid SMB caching is a bit magical.

I must be missing something. What features or characteristics exactly are you speaking about?