Beefy VM or Small Size Server

[cengjingcaihua]

Coming from the unRAID world, I own a Supermicro X10DRi with dual E5-2680v4 (2x 14 cores) and 256GB ECC DDR4 memory. I have experienced bitrot and file corruptions recently with xfs and decided to move all my data to TrueNAS ZFS. I also have a spare Dell PowerEdge T20 with a Pentium G3220 and 32GB ECC DDR3. I have around 5 TB of family photos, personal documents and software collections plus 2TB plex media content in 6 years. And I don't expect it to double in the next 5 years. I now have 4 drives: 3x 8TB and 1x 14TB. I am planning to use a raidz pool on the 3x 8T and backup data weekly to the 14TB drive on unRAID using rsync. I still want to use unRAID to manage my VMs and dockers.

Here is my thought on the pros. Any advice on whether I should run TrueNAS Core as a VM in unRAID or just bare metal on the T20?

VM:

• I can isolate one CPU so that host/VM/docker cannot use it and pin all 14 cores to TrueNAS and give it 128GB of RAM.
• I have 6x 3.5" and 2x 2.5" drive bays and plenty of PCIe lanes for expandability
• Potentially lower power consumption since I am only runing one host and T20 idles at 50W

Bare metal:

• File server stays on even when unRAID is down/off
• Possiblely more reliable than running TrueNAS in a VM?

 

[jgreco]

TrueNAS Core as a VM in unRAID

As probably the main person who does support for virtualizing TrueNAS, I have literally never heard of anyone successfully running TrueNAS as a VM in unRAID. Be sure that you've fully reviewed the virtualization documentation.

"Absolutely must virtualize FreeNAS!" ... a guide to not completely losing your data.

[---- 2018/02/27: This is still as relevant as ever. As PCIe-Passthru has matured, fewer problems are reported. I've updated some specific things known to be problematic ----] [---- 2014/12/24: Note, there is another post discussing how to deploy a small FreeNAS VM instance for basic file...

www.truenas.com

This is especially relevant if you're expecting TrueNAS to protect your data. Only a properly designed setup will protect your data, and haphazard virtualization strategies are unlikely to qualify.

 

[Ericloewe]

I also have a hard time seeing the value of an unRAID host with a TrueNAS VM. What do they use, KVM? KVM's decent, but somewhat finicky.

You can go the VM route and virtualize both TrueNAS and unRAID in the same hypervisor, which gets you all the benefits you list for the VM case, with far less uncertainty. Sure, it might feel weird to run VMs inside of VMs, but that's the world we live in.

 

[cengjingcaihua]

This is especially relevant if you're expecting TrueNAS to protect your data. Only a properly designed setup will protect your data, and haphazard virtualization strategies are unlikely to qualify.

Thank you. I've setup TrueNAS Core 13-U3 on the T20 and so far so good.

Sure, it might feel weird to run VMs inside of VMs, but that's the world we live in.

unRAID uses KVM. I think unRAID can be classified as type 1 hypervisor.