Preferred virtualization under W10? (Solution: VMware works great)


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I'd like to set up a temporary Unraid VM under Windows 10 for some testing. What is currently the preferred VM tool for general stability and disk performance?

 

I guess Hyper-V and VMware are out of the question since they do not have true USB pass-through?

 

I will only be testing general server and Docker functionality; i.e. no VM's etc.

 

Edited by _jonte
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1 hour ago, _jonte said:

As in more of "sharing" the device than actually passing it through fully. I'd be happy to be wrong though..

I don't think the USB id-key can be identified if shared.

i'm running unRAID as VM in ESXi.. no probs with USB. you don't need pass-trough a whole USB controller, just a one device to one VM.

i have not tried unRAID as VM in VMWare Workstation(you need some Type2 hyper-visor to run it under Windows10 ), but you can try it out..

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1 hour ago, uldise said:

i'm running unRAID as VM in ESXi.. no probs with USB. you don't need pass-trough a whole USB controller, just a one device to one VM.

i have not tried unRAID as VM in VMWare Workstation(you need some Type2 hyper-visor to run it under Windows10 ), but you can try it out..

I've just been trying it out in VMware Workstation for a while, but there's way to pass though a specific USB device as you can in ESXi. Thus no USB key ID.

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15 hours ago, _jonte said:

I've just been trying it out in VMware Workstation for a while, but there's way to pass though a specific USB device as you can in ESXi. Thus no USB key ID.

That's not true - i just tried to make new unRAID VM under VmWare Workstation on Ubuntu as host. unRAID boots up ok with plopkexec, and then i successfully registered a trial version - this would not be possible with flash GUID missing..

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25 minutes ago, uldise said:

That's not true - i just tried to make new unRAID VM under VmWare Workstation on Ubuntu as host. unRAID boots up ok with plopkexec, and then i successfully registered a trial version - this would not be possible with flash GUID missing..

Yeah, I also got it working last night. Don't know why I didn't before, but I tried three different USB sticks and lots of different settings before it just worked.

Don't know what plopkexec is?

 

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3 minutes ago, uldise said:

plopKExec is iso image to boot from USB much faster. just download iso, attach to VM, and boot from it - it then finds unRAID USB, and boots it much faster.

Do you mean you run the VM from the USB stick, not an image file?

I made an image file  with Unraid system, and just passthrough the USB stick for the ID.

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21 minutes ago, _jonte said:

Do you mean you run the VM from the USB stick, not an image file?

I made an image file  with Unraid system, and just passthrough the USB stick for the ID.

yes, there is no need for image file at all.. just boot from plopKExec iso, it then finds unRAID USB and continue boot from it..

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3 hours ago, uldise said:

yes, there is no need for image file at all.. just boot from plopKExec iso, it then finds unRAID USB and continue boot from it..

That does seem like a much better way of doing it.

I just tried setting this up and plopkexec boots the USB drive, only now Unraid can't find any network device, says: "Device "eth0" does not exist"

Tried adding ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet" to the .vmx, (from this thread https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/50810-trying-unraid-inside-vmware-workstation-eth0-problems/) but it did not make any difference.

How did you set this up? Are there any settings in Plopkexec I'm missing?

 

Edited by _jonte
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On 4/18/2017 at 5:06 PM, uldise said:

No, network is not related to plopKExec at all..

i'm using bridged network, see picture,

 

 

Tried removing all other virtualization software and reinstalling VMware, it just worked with no eth0 error after that. Thanks for you assistance!

 

Only odd thing is I can't access the VM/server at all from Windows (on the same computer). Not the web interface, samba shares, dockers, nothing.

Everything works perfect from my laptop though.

Any clue to this?

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25 minutes ago, _jonte said:

Only odd thing is I can't access the VM/server at all from Windows (on the same computer). Not the web interface, samba shares, dockers, nothing.

Everything works perfect from my laptop though.

Any clue to this?

Don't know, sounds odd.. I just tried myself again, can access web interface form Host machine, and from another Win10 VM too..

Edit: look at my unRAID network settings, i disabled some things..

 

Trial_network_settings.png

Edited by uldise
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Finally got it to work. Of course it was the simplest thing that I checked last. Turns out Windows was using a virtual network adapter left from hyper-v (that should have been uninstalled),  instead of the standard Ethernet adapter. After resetting Windows network configuration I can access Unraid from the host computer.

 

If anyone keep loosing connection to passed through disks, follow the instructions here: https://communities.vmware.com/message/1753640#1753640

Quote

"To use the whole physical disk under Server 2008 and Windows7, the most easy way is to put the disk offline. To do that start diskpart.exe and select your disk, then enter "offline disk", then "attribute disk clear readonly", then "rescan". That's how simple (and safe) it can be!"

 

Many thanks @uldise

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Can VM workstation pass through raw disks to unraid?  Any downsides?  I used to have unraid and a windows VM running under esxi but just rebuilt the box so that unraid is the hypervisor, and I have what will be my main PC as a VM with a GTX1070 on a SSD cache drive.  The problem is, that I seem to have to restart the array quite frequently, and my Windows VM has to go down each time as well as managing the whole thing from a laptop that sort of defeats the purpose of an all in one box.

Thanks

Joe

Edited by Joe
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/27/2017 at 8:44 AM, itimpi said:

I am not sure that VMWare Workstation allows you to pass through raw disks that are greater than 2TB.   That certainly used to be a limitation but I have not checked if it is still the case with the latest version.

I can't check since my largest disk is 2TB. 

But according to this 8TB should be supported; if I read it correctly.

http://pubs.vmware.com/workstation-12/index.jsp#com.vmware.ws.using.doc/GUID-0E980DDB-5050-4109-A9BC-596572ED722D.html

 

Quote
Disk Size Compatibility

The size of a virtual disk is limited to 8 TBs. However, your hardware version, bus type, and controller type also impact the size of your virtual disks.

Workstation Hardware Version

Bus Type

Controller Type

Maximum Disk Size

10, 11, 12

IDE

ATAPI

8192 GB (8TB)

10, 11, 12

SCSI

BusLogic

2040 GB (2TB)

10, 11, 12

SCSI

LSI Logic

8192 GB (8TB)

10, 11, 12

SCSI

LSI Logic SAS

8192 GB (8TB)

10, 11, 12

SATA

AHCI

8192 GB (8TB)

9, 8, 7, 6.5

All

All

2040 GB (2TB)

6.0, 5

All

All

950 GB

 

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On 4/27/2017 at 6:54 AM, Joe said:

Can VM workstation pass through raw disks to unraid?  Any downsides?  I used to have unraid and a windows VM running under esxi but just rebuilt the box so that unraid is the hypervisor, and I have what will be my main PC as a VM with a GTX1070 on a SSD cache drive.  The problem is, that I seem to have to restart the array quite frequently, and my Windows VM has to go down each time as well as managing the whole thing from a laptop that sort of defeats the purpose of an all in one box.

Thanks

Joe

So far it works well to have Unraid on top of Windows. Can't see any major downsides (except loosing virtualization).

I will probably make this permanent soon if I don't encounter any problems.

No problem passing through raw disks, though still have them as ntfs unassigned devices. Will add them to array soon, just waiting for another disk. 

Disk speeds aren't very good for some reason. I only get about 30-50 MB/s between disks. 

I mainly use Unraid for storage, as a fileserver, and some dockers atm. 

Let me know if you want me to test something.

Edited by _jonte
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