Semi-Advanced Home Server Question

OrangePeel

Junior Member
Jan 30, 2012
6
0
0
Hi all,

I have been working on certs of late. I had a home server with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise running (through Technet) and liked it, but I've also been wanting to get some VMWare experience. The motherboard on my home server died the other day. Now I'll be upgrading my server, obviously, and I thought this might be a good time to do VMWare ESXi.

I have a few goals for this server. I would like to run Untangle on here (another reason for wanting to go VMWare), Server 2008 Ent., and maybe Windows Home Server.

Would you guys do all of this on one machine?

My plan is to use WHS largely as a source of pooling HDDs for storage and choosing what data is duplicated. I would also like to set it up as a DVR from an HDHomeRunPrime and for streaming out data to various other devices. I've also considered Unraid, but that would be a separate machine. I'm not 100% sure that I want to do that, although I'm still considering it.

VMWare would be running the 3 main installs mentioned, but maybe also a few other VMs for testing/playing/Cisco labbing (I've got a physical rack for my CCNA/CCNP... gonna need machines to ping from/to :) ).

Untangle is fairly obvious. I'll be using it as a general firewall/router (with dedicated NICs) and will probably use OpenVPN through it as well, if not as another VM.

Any thoughts on this? My main thought is keeping everything in one physical machine would be more efficient overall and obviously would also take up less space (living in a 1 bedroom apartment for now).

Thanks,

Brandon
 

Tbirdkid

Diamond Member
Apr 16, 2002
3,758
4
81
I just exactly this, but i came to the realization that I didnt need windows home server. I used Win 7 Ultimate for my file sharing/upnp work. I had a basic desktop sitting around with a dual core processor, and 6 gb of ram, so i just built it out as an esxi 5 machine and its hosting server 2008 as the dc/dns, web, and file server as a vm. It has all my music/videos/pictures on it. Then i built a win7 ultimate machine and got mc up on it and mapped drives to my server 2008 box. Created 2 back end drives on each server and im replicating it and the vms to an external USB 2.0 hard drive.

Now, my xbox has access to all my media, and, i have a full on domain setup at the house with replication, and utilization of the resources correctly instead of just having several boxes around and each doing 1 thing.

Also, it was alot of fun. Now, I have quite a bit of experience with storage, and virtualization technologies, hyperv, and vmware. So please dont take the config light at heart. There is a reason that there is a huge market for it.
 

OrangePeel

Junior Member
Jan 30, 2012
6
0
0
Thank you for the reply.

My want for WHS and/or Unraid would be for Drive Pooling. :) I personally can't just drop $1k on drives all at once and I need a solution that I can use what I have now (some 1TB and 500GB drives) and add and change out as I go. I'm leaning toward Unraid for that (especially with a cache drive on the paid-for versions), but we'll see.

How did you replicate your VMs to an external HDD? That is something we do at work, but we had to buy some fairly expensive backup software to do so.

Thanks again for the reply.

Brandon
 

Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
veeam is not that expensive. iirc you can get nfr copies if you sign up for their partner program.

esxi requires solid storage. You can't use junk storage like hyper-v. trust me you will meet fail quickly if you try to skimp on quality storage with esxi. I had to use a bbwc controller with raid-10 and until i had 6 RE4-2TB (7200rpm) i had troubles with timeouts under stress. Probably why SATA and raid-5/6 are banned from the esx essentials VSA (unsupported).
 

Lifted

Diamond Member
Nov 30, 2004
5,748
2
0
veeam is not that expensive. iirc you can get nfr copies if you sign up for their partner program.

esxi requires solid storage. You can't use junk storage like hyper-v. trust me you will meet fail quickly if you try to skimp on quality storage with esxi. I had to use a bbwc controller with raid-10 and until i had 6 RE4-2TB (7200rpm) i had troubles with timeouts under stress. Probably why SATA and raid-5/6 are banned from the esx essentials VSA (unsupported).

Veeam for a home server is overkill, in the neighborhood of $600 or $700 per CPU socket. If you just want to learn it a bit you can try to get a trial license for a limited time if you can't get your hands on the free version in some partner program. It also won't backup an unlicensed ESXi host, as per the VMware license requirements.
 

OrangePeel

Junior Member
Jan 30, 2012
6
0
0
Thanks for the replies, guys.

I am probably just going to leave my home server as-is (Hyper-V) and setup a separate Unraid or WHS server. Reason being, I just snagged a nice SuperMicro case with power supply and 6 hot swap drives on eBay for $20.50. :D I'm cool with being limited to 6 drives for now. Time to download WHS from Technet and Unraid. :)

Brandon
 

arch113

Senior member
Mar 3, 2005
227
31
91
Last I heard they have removed drive pooling from the latest version of WHS.

Thank you for the reply.

My want for WHS and/or Unraid would be for Drive Pooling. :) I personally can't just drop $1k on drives all at once and I need a solution that I can use what I have now (some 1TB and 500GB drives) and add and change out as I go. I'm leaning toward Unraid for that (especially with a cache drive on the paid-for versions), but we'll see.

How did you replicate your VMs to an external HDD? That is something we do at work, but we had to buy some fairly expensive backup software to do so.

Thanks again for the reply.

Brandon
 

OrangePeel

Junior Member
Jan 30, 2012
6
0
0
That is correct, but there are plugins to bring it back.

I'm going to go with Unraid anyway, though. :)

Brandon
 

arch113

Senior member
Mar 3, 2005
227
31
91
Im still running the older version that had built in disk pooling (Technet), I want to upgrade, but haven't done it yet....

That is correct, but there are plugins to bring it back.

I'm going to go with Unraid anyway, though. :)

Brandon
 

OrangePeel

Junior Member
Jan 30, 2012
6
0
0
Nice. I thought about doing that(I also have Technet), but I think I like Unraid a bit better. I may still do WHS2011 as a VM in HyperV, though, but for uses other than data storage obviously. I'd really like to do RAID 5 on a Perc6, but I hate the thought of not being able to rebuild or add easily. We'll see. Right now my wife and I are gearing up to buy a new house, so this won't be implemented until after that, anyway. I've got a good 6 to 9 months to get all of this together. :)

Brandon