Next week i am deploying a Server in the DC behind a firewall.

I am looking at running Unraid within ESXi.

Looking at the methods to boot i will plug in an Unraid USB into the inbuilt USB Header.

Booting from PLOP. I can't see any issues with this method it looks fine.

 

I cannot find any info however on the Data Disk side of things.

I was planning to create a 1TB VMDK on the Dell Managed Raid Storage within ESXi.

Assigning this 1TB VMDK to the Unraid VM, will it show up as Disk1 to be assigned to Unraid?

If i needed to increase the VMDK size later to say 2TB is Unraid going to be ok with that?

 

I see a lot of people passing through controllers etc, but i am happy to let the Dell Server maintain the 14 Disk Array in Raid 6 on its own.

I am mostly using Unraid for the Docker Functions and running some of the Dockers i have at home on my Unraid Server also here.

 

I really love the way Unraid is simply to maintain and upgrade over a linux server, i am just looking at using the Service side of Unraid pretty much in a VM form.

Either this is going to just work and thats why there is no info, or this isn't something many people are doing at all and it won't work.

Any help is appreciated.

 

Any vmdk passed through to the VM will appear as a disk drive to Unraid.    Whether you make it disk1 within Unraid is up to you but it would make sense if it is the first drive passed through.

 

You cannot increase the size of the vmdk without Unraid thinking it is a new drive.    However why would you want to do this?   You can always pass through another vmdk that Unraid would think was another drive and then assign that as disk2 at the Unraid level.

Thank you for explaining that.

So i was thinking if i filled the VMDK i can expand it given i have 5TB of Array Storage.

But i guess i just drop in a second VMDK or make sure i pick the correct size at the start.