How difficult would this be

MassiveJim

MassiveJim

MassiveJim

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Joined
22 Feb 2014
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My current NAS storage solution is a custom built NAS using a supermicro motherboard in a rackmount server case.
OS is XigmaNAS (probably still running a NAS4Free build to be fair)
Running from a USB 3 memory stick
main storage is handled by a RAID-z2 array on 6 x 4TB WD Reds


What if I wanted to go virtual with it ?
Is there a way I can switch over to VM Based setup with minimal pain ?
ie without having to backup the entire array and restore it afterwards ?

It would be very handy to be able to run a VM with W10 on it amongst other things, but if this will be a complicated endeavour I will likely just leave it as it is.
 
How are the disks connected?
If it's a PCI-E HBA then you should be able to pass that through to the VM (which is how virtualised ZFS NASes are generally set up).

If not then, you still may be able to pass the disks through directly to the VM (maybe even pass the USB stick through and boot that depending on hypervisor)
 
While it’s possible and an interesting experience (Xigma has ESXi documentation from memory), depending on the usage case, it can make more sense to go the other way, eg run a virtual machine on the NAS, most distro’s support VM/docker in some capacity now.
 
Armageus said:
How are the disks connected?
If it's a PCI-E HBA then you should be able to pass that through to the VM (which is how virtualised ZFS NASes are generally set up).

If not then, you still may be able to pass the disks through directly to the VM (maybe even pass the USB stick through and boot that depending on hypervisor)
Click to expand...
Some are definitely connected via PCI-E HBA, not sure if all of them are though (its been a while since I set it up)


Avalon said:
While it’s possible and an interesting experience (Xigma has ESXi documentation from memory), depending on the usage case, it can make more sense to go the other way, eg run a virtual machine on the NAS, most distro’s support VM/docker in some capacity now.
Click to expand...

Thats interesting, I'll look into the VM capabilities of XigmaNAS when i have some free time, as you say it may be easier this way, although I am sure there is a learning curve to the management side of the host, certainly took some getting used to setting up hyper-V for the first time
 
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