So a good little while ago I had asked on here for some advise about hardware specs for a dedicated Plex server and got some great help with it but for reasons that I can't remember I never actually went with unRAID, I went with Windows LTSB and used Hyper-V to host several Linux VMs which worked out really well for me at the time.

 

Since then though I've expanded quite a bit and realized that I hate having to depend on proprietary software to manage my server, namely Hyper-V manager and or having to RDP into it to manage it. I now know that I'd much prefer to have something accessible by IP through a simple web browser or ssh.

 

I currently have five VMs running on Hyper-V, one has Pi-Hole loaded on it which I'll be moving to an actual raspberry pi this weekend, I then have a VM for pfSense which I use to force one specific VM's internet through a VPN. The remaining three VMs are all running plain Linux and I run docker on all three for various things like Sonarr, Radarr, qBittorrent, Deluge, Plex, letsencrypt, etc..

 

So basically I'm just dropping by to say hi, again I guess lol, and I'd also like to know if anyone thinks I'd have a problem emulating any of the previously mentioned things within unRAID, obviously all the docker containers are a simple thing to setup again but for example I do have qBittorrent on it's own VM which I then use pfSense as I mentioned to route all its traffic through a VPN.

 

I know there are some containers that binhex makes that have some built-in VPN solutions but I'd prefer to route through pfSense in case I want more than one application or machine to go through that VPN, saves time for me not having to setup multiple VPN clients.

 

Would it be possible to setup pfSense and have it with two vNICs and then assign one of those vNICs to a container or would I need to set qBittorrent up in its own VM again?

 

Also I've heard that docker compose is available through the nerd tools plugin but that there is also something that lime tech has made called dockerman, could anyone give/link me a good explanation as to the differences? I've mainly used docker compose and really like the things it allows me to do with predefining volume locations as well as any order of startup if one container depends on another.

 

If there's anything you think I should know or think I might like to know/use etc. feel free to shout about it.

 

I've put my current server specs below if anyone is curious.

 

CPU: Dual Xeon L5640 @ 2.26 GHz

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7TESM LGA 1366 

Memory: 160GB ECC

Case: Rosewell 4U RSV-L4500

Power Supply: Seasonic Focus Plus 850W 80+ Gold

HDD Storage: 30TB usable with one parity drive (2x 8TB, 1x 4TB, 7x 3TB)

SSD Storage: 2x 250GB

Edited July 26, 20187 yr by SphericalRedundancy

50 minutes ago, SphericalRedundancy said:

Would it be possible to setup pfSense and have it with two vNICs and then assign one of those vNICs to a container or would I need to set qBittorrent up in its own VM again?

 

 

Welcome to unRAID.  I run a pfsense VM that I've assigned two physical NICs to.  With docker containers you can assign them to VLANs - so just create a VLAN within pfsense, add it to unraid and then put your containter in that VLAN.  Process should be the same for vNICs. 

 

e.g. Here's my setup for deluge where VL55_VPN/br0.55 is the one you want to look at:

 

 

 

Note br0.55 assigned to deluge - you need to have the advanced editing page open to see this field and to assign IP if desired:

 

 

If you do this, any other docker that wants to communicate with a docker with an assigned IP address also needs to have an assigned IP address - read up on macvlan on the forum if you need the ins and outs.

If you have a few spare HDDs, you really should setup unRAID on your system (take out / disconnect all the HDD of your working system and swap in the spares)

unRAID runs on a RAM disk , so nothing is permanent except obviously the formatting of the array.

The trial will let you see if the system works for you or not

You'll be able to test the VLAN / VPN sulotions if they work for you (caveat: trials and pfSense VMs as the main router don't exactly work together due to the trial requiring internet access to start the array) and when you are happy and have purchased unRAID (of course you will by then), you can slowly migrate the existing data off the working system and add the drives into the array.

3 hours ago, ken-ji said:

caveat: trials and pfSense VMs as the main router don't exactly work together due to the trial requiring internet access to start the array

That won't be a problem in my case pfsense isn't my main router, I have a ubiquiti edgerouter x for that. I only use the pfsense to redirect traffic through the VPN.