Do I still need my ESXi Setup in addition to unraid!? Curious what people are doing


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Hi all,

 

I set up UNRAID about 9 months ago. It was a painful process for me to get my head around the architecture and setup process. But now boy am I glad I made the move!

 

I have my UNRAID server running at home with the basics, storage of all NAS data + a couple of dockers (I must admit Dockers have blown me away)

 

I still have my old ESXi Server on HP Microserver G7 I think which is mainly running my Domain Controller and thats about it.

Originally I had my ESXI server VM's on my QNAP NAS via NFS but decided to just go with local SSD.

 

So my question is as follows! is anyone else still running ESXi + UNRAID? Why are you doing this?

 

I'm thinking about a couple of options moving forward

1. Should I build another UNRAID Server and put my VM's on it like my domain controller (Benefit of local copy of data)

2. Should I Build a ESX-i / Hyper-V Server and put my VM's on it and use it as a secondary storage location 

3. Is there something else I should consider? 

 

with family and kids these days my approach is to simplify the architecture in my home and overhead with managing multiple platforms.

 

love to hear peoples journey on this :)

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  • 1 month later...

I run Unraid as a guest to ESXi still.  I've been running it this way for years so before unraid had kvm.  I was hesitant to switch because I used to have issues with Unraid locking up during large file transfers and becoming totally unresponsive and was worried that would affect the VMs as well.  Also the idea of Unraid needing to be up kind of bothered me.  They've resolved the unresponsive UI issue and I think there's actually more flexibility with KVM/Unraid as far as device pass thru.  My next upgrade I'll probably try it with KVM just to see but won't be surprised if I go back to this way.

 

If I were you I wouldn't build a secondary server, maybe just rely on cloud backup if you're concerned with the data.  Google drive unlimited is only $10 a month which is probably at least what a new server would cost in power every month.  Just add another DC to Unraid and see how it performs, if it works well shutdown the old one.

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I run unraid on one of my servers where I have all my nas data, docker containers and some linux vms. 

Second server running hyper-v for educational purposes + my windows vms. 

 

Depending on your needs and setup, It is not necessary with second server. If I didnt use the second server for educational purposes for my job, I would probably just use the unraid server. 

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I guess it really depends on why you are using ESXi in the first place. Did you build the ESXi server out of curiosity or was it for learning. If for learning, are you still learning and if so, perhaps it still have value. ESXi is used for real world deployments in the business world, unRAID is not so much. The knowledge you gain from ESXi can be to some degree more useful in IT jobs etc, certainly learning linux and unRAID can be useful also. If your goal is to make thing simple and ESXi has no value, then sure, get rid of it.

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