unraid usage clarifications

[eric10k93]

I just learned about UNRAID.  It sounds awesome if it's what I think it is, but I have some basic questions to decide if it's the right tool for me.

1. I have a Windows 2016 home server, does UNRAID replace Windows as the Host OS and then I can run Windows as a VM within UNRAID?
2. I assume I can run any number of VMs alongside one another (hardware permitting) and they can be Windows, any flavor of *nix, or other OS?  Can I create a partition that is purely a NAS alongside the other OSs?
3. How easy is it to setup a new VM in UNRAID?  Is it similar to setting up a VM in Hyper-V or VirtualBox?  Or does it require me to repartition drives every time I want to set up a new VM?
4. Can I configure how VMs startup individually when the UNRAID host starts? and can I configure individual USB devices to attach to each VM at startup?
5. Can I dual-boot UNRAID alongside my current Windows server 2016 install while I trial the UNRAID OS?  If I choose to use UNRAID, I assume I could wipe the Windows partition and return the free space back to UNRAID?
6. Does UNRAID offer any tools for migrating VMs from another system?

[JonathanM]

1. Yes, hardware permitting.

2. Yes to the VM's, the NAS function utilizes entire drives, not just partitions.

3. Very easy to very complex, depending on which OS and what kind of hardware allocations, virtual or real device. The virtual disk can be just a file, so no partitioning needed.

4. Yes, manually. They can be scheduled with scripts. Assuming the USB devices have unique ID's you can attach them like you say.

5. Yes, as long as you have a spare drive or two that you don't mind erasing for use with the trial. You must not assign any drives to the array that you don't want erased. Unraid loads into RAM from the USB Boot stick, it doesn't use a hard drive for the OS. If after you trial Unraid and decide you like it, if you wish to use the entire drive that windows was originally installed on as an array disk, that is easily doable.

6. No. That being said, Unraid uses standard linux KVM as the VM engine, so any guides for migrating foreign VM's to KVM can be adapted to Unraid.

[eric10k93]

Thanks so much for your help!  I appreciate the clarifications!

[trurl]

On 1/3/2019 at 9:43 PM, jonathanm said:

5. Yes, as long as you have a spare drive or two that you don't mind erasing for use with the trial. You must not assign any drives to the array that you don't want erased. Unraid loads into RAM from the USB Boot stick, it doesn't use a hard drive for the OS. If after you trial Unraid and decide you like it, if you wish to use the entire drive that windows was originally installed on as an array disk, that is easily doable.

Also note that when booted into Windows, Windows won't be able to read any of your Unraid disks since they use a different filesytem.