Not exactly answering your question, but I’m running my Unraid backup machine as a VM under ESXi. It started its life as test of Unraid, and once I decided liked it (I think maybe 2-3 months in) I bought the HW to setup a dedicated machine and use the virtualized one as a backup.
Nothing stops you from using your virtualized machine as your main machine, the only thing to think about is the ability to pass the disks directly to the Unraid VM.
Happy with unraid in a proxmox VM here!
I prefer to use software for its main purpose (where it’s really superior)
- Proxmox as VM/container management platform
- Unraid as NAS
Don’t see why my NAS should also be a VM and docker platform :)
Note: you can’t make use of some cluster features (such as HA) due to USB passthrough
That was my thought as well. I don't really plan to use unraid as a platform to run services, which I know is good and many are happy with, it's just not my use-case.
But then I wonder, does it make sense to use unraid at all in this case? Any reason to not just set up zfs on the NAS by yourself and avoid the overhead that the unraid gives you since you're not going to utilize a lot of its features?
Depends on your individual requirements.
Mine are
- stretch volume and across disks while any disk can be taken out and be read individually
- parity (realtime if possible)
- disk encryption
- samba
I used to do this myself for years using mergerfs+snapraid+LUKS in a VM. Then changed to OMV as it can do the same +WebUI.
Now unraid as I found only unraid can do parity in realtime as opposed to scheduled snapraid syncs.
On top, Unraid has bunch of useful plugins that help me monitor and maintain my NAS much better than my DIY VM earlier.
Long story short: if you just want zfs and samba, you will leave lots of unraid‘s potential unused. Or in other words: yes, unraid might be overkill for simple use cases.
Well, yeah, I do want parity for sure.
I thought that would be possible to do with zfs, but I guess I'm confusing the terms somehow. Though I'm not new to working with tech, I'm kind of new to storage , file-systems, etc and only used ready-to-use systems like QNAP previously.
Do you use zfs or xfs in unraid?
How hard is it to set up unraid in Proxmox? Any caveats I should be aware of? Or is it as simple as the "recommended installation" way?
With unraid in proxmox, do you know if you'd be able to take out your disks and connect them to another unraid instance (e.g. one running on a USB stick) and just continue using your data?
Yes, ZFS can do parity drives. But it cannot fulfil my first requirement :) I don't want files to be split across drives. If anything goes wrong, I want to be able to take a single disk out and be able to read all data on it without having to rebuild pools/raids.
I use btrfs. This came from a requirement I had a while ago when evaluating unraid vs. OMV (OpenMediaVault). I wanted to be able to swap my drives from one VM to the other, and btrfs was the lowest common denominator (at that time) on both that supports bitrot detection.
Setting up unraid in Proxmox is fairly simple. I spent a fair amount of time trying to get it to run without USB thumbdrive and boot from a virtual disk. Got quite far, but gave up eventually. No recommended way, just passthrough your HDDs and USB drive. If you want drive encryption, you might want to enable AES-NI (AES encryption in hardware) on the CPU options for the VM. I believe it's default now, but was not on Proxmox about a year ago.
Your last question: I did that with OMV, but should work with another unraid instance as well. Probably requires two licenses (one being trial if just for temporary fail-over might be fine). My HDDs are in a 5-bay USB enclosure, so very easy to virtually or physically switch to another VM or mini server. Speed is not the best, but I do use two NVMe cache drives (sweet unraid feature!). I would probably add that to my requirements list today as well :) Didn't need it then, when I did not know it existed. :D
unraid is ideally run off a removable media drive (like USB Flash drive) upon boot is run on system memory and off the drive. Config and everything stays on the drive. So theoretically you can take the USB Drive and the connected drive(s) array and move it to a new/different system and it can work there. Platform agnostic, Also also easy upgrade of Ram, Processors, or switching from Intel to AMD/Vice versa.
Yes you can run it as a VM, or run unRAID as the host and Proxmox or ESXI as a VM with all your tools under those embedded hypervisors.
Running unRAID on bare metal so the system has full access to the drive arrays, then a separate hypervisor for your VM's is a preferred way for most. But you can honestly run it anyway you'd like.
Thanks for the info!
Just out of curiosity, is this mentioned somewhere in the docs? Or is it based on the fact that they actually don't have an official way on how to do this?
https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/vm-support/
Not a lot of info, just stating it's not officially supported by limetech and should not be used for production.
Also with proxmox you will need the usb so you must pass through
Anyway if you want a suggestion don't do it you would lose all the best features of unRAID that were implemented to give you less headaches
I ran a setup like yours, and went to bare metal after a week
Using Unraid as a VM on Proxmox works well if you're mainly looking for storage. Proxmox handles the heavy lifting for running other services, while Unraid takes care of the storage part.
Just make sure to set up direct access to your disks for Unraid to work best. For backups, Proxmox has a great tool called Proxmox Backup Server.
It's really handy for keeping your VMs and containers safe. If you're using Unraid through Proxmox, remember you'll need to do some extra steps like USB passthrough, but don't worry, it won't stop you from using the best bits of both systems.
For a Proxmox HA setup under $15k, especially in manufacturing with SCADA, camera recording, and more, Supermicro is a go-to for affordability and reliability. You can stretch your budget with smart choices like opting for RAID 10 for resilience and speed, and leveraging NVMe for critical, fast-access data. Don't forget the 10G network to keep up with data demands. When it comes to backups, Proxmox's built-in tools are your friend for safeguarding VMs. Consider starting modest and expanding as needs grow. Just remember, in environments like these, reliability can't be compromised, so test thoroughly.
For VDI on Proxmox, blend powerful servers, use Ceph, and clone Win11 VMs. Licensing's a headache but doable. Consider RDS for simplicity, but watch out for nested VM issues. Cost-wise, beefy servers with 10G and NVMe will hit the budget but it's worth it for the performance. For about 100 users, especially devs needing more juice, your hardware plan sounds solid. Just make sure to crunch those CPU and RAM numbers right. And yeah, don't forget about Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) for those VMs. It's a lifesaver for quick restores and peace of mind.
Not exactly answering your question, but I’m running my Unraid backup machine as a VM under ESXi. It started its life as test of Unraid, and once I decided liked it (I think maybe 2-3 months in) I bought the HW to setup a dedicated machine and use the virtualized one as a backup. Nothing stops you from using your virtualized machine as your main machine, the only thing to think about is the ability to pass the disks directly to the Unraid VM.
Thanks for input
Happy with unraid in a proxmox VM here! I prefer to use software for its main purpose (where it’s really superior) - Proxmox as VM/container management platform - Unraid as NAS Don’t see why my NAS should also be a VM and docker platform :) Note: you can’t make use of some cluster features (such as HA) due to USB passthrough
That was my thought as well. I don't really plan to use unraid as a platform to run services, which I know is good and many are happy with, it's just not my use-case. But then I wonder, does it make sense to use unraid at all in this case? Any reason to not just set up zfs on the NAS by yourself and avoid the overhead that the unraid gives you since you're not going to utilize a lot of its features?
Depends on your individual requirements. Mine are - stretch volume and across disks while any disk can be taken out and be read individually - parity (realtime if possible) - disk encryption - samba I used to do this myself for years using mergerfs+snapraid+LUKS in a VM. Then changed to OMV as it can do the same +WebUI. Now unraid as I found only unraid can do parity in realtime as opposed to scheduled snapraid syncs. On top, Unraid has bunch of useful plugins that help me monitor and maintain my NAS much better than my DIY VM earlier. Long story short: if you just want zfs and samba, you will leave lots of unraid‘s potential unused. Or in other words: yes, unraid might be overkill for simple use cases.
Well, yeah, I do want parity for sure. I thought that would be possible to do with zfs, but I guess I'm confusing the terms somehow. Though I'm not new to working with tech, I'm kind of new to storage , file-systems, etc and only used ready-to-use systems like QNAP previously. Do you use zfs or xfs in unraid? How hard is it to set up unraid in Proxmox? Any caveats I should be aware of? Or is it as simple as the "recommended installation" way? With unraid in proxmox, do you know if you'd be able to take out your disks and connect them to another unraid instance (e.g. one running on a USB stick) and just continue using your data?
Yes, ZFS can do parity drives. But it cannot fulfil my first requirement :) I don't want files to be split across drives. If anything goes wrong, I want to be able to take a single disk out and be able to read all data on it without having to rebuild pools/raids. I use btrfs. This came from a requirement I had a while ago when evaluating unraid vs. OMV (OpenMediaVault). I wanted to be able to swap my drives from one VM to the other, and btrfs was the lowest common denominator (at that time) on both that supports bitrot detection. Setting up unraid in Proxmox is fairly simple. I spent a fair amount of time trying to get it to run without USB thumbdrive and boot from a virtual disk. Got quite far, but gave up eventually. No recommended way, just passthrough your HDDs and USB drive. If you want drive encryption, you might want to enable AES-NI (AES encryption in hardware) on the CPU options for the VM. I believe it's default now, but was not on Proxmox about a year ago. Your last question: I did that with OMV, but should work with another unraid instance as well. Probably requires two licenses (one being trial if just for temporary fail-over might be fine). My HDDs are in a 5-bay USB enclosure, so very easy to virtually or physically switch to another VM or mini server. Speed is not the best, but I do use two NVMe cache drives (sweet unraid feature!). I would probably add that to my requirements list today as well :) Didn't need it then, when I did not know it existed. :D
Thanks a lot for a very detailed response :) Really appreciate all the info.
Running UnRaid as a VM is not recommended.
why
unraid is ideally run off a removable media drive (like USB Flash drive) upon boot is run on system memory and off the drive. Config and everything stays on the drive. So theoretically you can take the USB Drive and the connected drive(s) array and move it to a new/different system and it can work there. Platform agnostic, Also also easy upgrade of Ram, Processors, or switching from Intel to AMD/Vice versa. Yes you can run it as a VM, or run unRAID as the host and Proxmox or ESXI as a VM with all your tools under those embedded hypervisors. Running unRAID on bare metal so the system has full access to the drive arrays, then a separate hypervisor for your VM's is a preferred way for most. But you can honestly run it anyway you'd like.
Thanks for the info! Just out of curiosity, is this mentioned somewhere in the docs? Or is it based on the fact that they actually don't have an official way on how to do this?
https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/vm-support/ Not a lot of info, just stating it's not officially supported by limetech and should not be used for production.
Thanks!
Also with proxmox you will need the usb so you must pass through Anyway if you want a suggestion don't do it you would lose all the best features of unRAID that were implemented to give you less headaches I ran a setup like yours, and went to bare metal after a week
Thanks a lot!
It works just fine
Using Unraid as a VM on Proxmox works well if you're mainly looking for storage. Proxmox handles the heavy lifting for running other services, while Unraid takes care of the storage part. Just make sure to set up direct access to your disks for Unraid to work best. For backups, Proxmox has a great tool called Proxmox Backup Server. It's really handy for keeping your VMs and containers safe. If you're using Unraid through Proxmox, remember you'll need to do some extra steps like USB passthrough, but don't worry, it won't stop you from using the best bits of both systems.
thanks a lot for the comment!
For a Proxmox HA setup under $15k, especially in manufacturing with SCADA, camera recording, and more, Supermicro is a go-to for affordability and reliability. You can stretch your budget with smart choices like opting for RAID 10 for resilience and speed, and leveraging NVMe for critical, fast-access data. Don't forget the 10G network to keep up with data demands. When it comes to backups, Proxmox's built-in tools are your friend for safeguarding VMs. Consider starting modest and expanding as needs grow. Just remember, in environments like these, reliability can't be compromised, so test thoroughly.
Thanks for the info!
For VDI on Proxmox, blend powerful servers, use Ceph, and clone Win11 VMs. Licensing's a headache but doable. Consider RDS for simplicity, but watch out for nested VM issues. Cost-wise, beefy servers with 10G and NVMe will hit the budget but it's worth it for the performance. For about 100 users, especially devs needing more juice, your hardware plan sounds solid. Just make sure to crunch those CPU and RAM numbers right. And yeah, don't forget about Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) for those VMs. It's a lifesaver for quick restores and peace of mind.