Is Virtualizing Unraid a Hassle?

[sir_storealot]

Hi all!

 

I am building a new homelab server, mainly for running some VMs I need (house automation, research projects, sat recording etc.), but you can bet I will use this shiny little metal baby for storage as well!

 

As my primary use case will be VM hosting, I plan to use ProxMox or ESXI (currently leaning towards ProxMox as its FOSS), and then need to chose between unraid and openmediavault/turnkey fileserver/etc..

 

I would not mind paying for a stable and polished SW like unraid, but honestly this whole mandatory USB-Stick thing is putting me off a bit, and it seems that virtualizing the SW is not supported (why on earth...).

 

How much of a hassle is it to get this all running in a stable and reliable way? I could read in some threads that ppl are not able to get the USB stick to boot properly on startup etc... Any experience you can share here regarding easy of use and stability? Are there any recommendations/opinions whether to go to via ESXI or via ProxMox?

 

Thank you for any contributions and help!

[doron]

I've been running Unraid under ESXi for quite a few years now. It's been rock solid with no extraordinary issues.

The main "hassle" is the fact that it's not officially supported. This can be painful at times - when there's an issue, you are asked to recreate it on iron or it will be categorized as "a virtualization issue".

 

The USB stick thing is not a problem, just something to be mindful of. You can either boot your VM from a CD image (Plop) that then loads the OS from the stick, or boot from a virtual HDD, or (if you have ESXi 7) boot directly from the stick. Either way I've not had any issues there.

[sir_storealot]

I see, thank you very much!

 

Do you have any recommendation whether to use ProxMox or ESXI as a hypervisor for unraid? What is more convenient for configuration, USB/SATA passthru etc.?

 

Also, I will be running headless (not video/keyboard), but from what I have read both hypervisors should support this and allow easy remote upgrades etc., do you perhaps have any experience there that you could share?

 

Thanks!

[uldise]

45 minutes ago, sir_storealot said:

Do you have any recommendation whether to use ProxMox or ESXI as a hypervisor for unraid?

i was a very long time ESXi user, but migrated to Proxmox this year. for me Proxmox is more flexible cos it's a pure Debian Linux. Yes, that mean a more tinkering at very rare situations, but then it just works. i'm passthru HBA/bultin SATA controller only, so far no problems with that.

 

48 minutes ago, sir_storealot said:

do you perhaps have any experience there that you could share?

in Proxmox you just connect to console via SSH, and then administer it as pure Linux box..

[doron]

53 minutes ago, sir_storealot said:

Do you have any recommendation whether to use ProxMox or ESXI as a hypervisor for unraid? What is more convenient for configuration, USB/SATA passthru etc.?

Unfortunately I don't have actual experience with Proxmox. I do use ESXi and it has been rock solid for me.

 

53 minutes ago, sir_storealot said:

Also, I will be running headless (not video/keyboard), but from what I have read both hypervisors should support this and allow easy remote upgrades etc., do you perhaps have any experience there that you could share?

I use ESXi headless. No issues. I access all VMs, plus ESXi itself, via SSH. When needed, I use my mobo's IPMI capability to have a virtual KVM into the actual box - this is particularly helpful on initial hypervisor installations and / or troubleshooting.