Trying to make VMWare Workstation Alternative ( Unraid w/ 1PC ).

[Exaco]

Hello guys, I'm trying to run Win 10 VM using UNRAID but for now everything is confusing..

Here's what I did so far:
Added my secondary SSD in the Drive 1 slot ( the only spare drive which I can waste ) parity was unassigned and formated it in the Unraid GUI.
Then I've Enabled/Added VM and downloaded the VirtIO Win drivers .iso.

Now the problem is how do I put Windows.iso in that formated drive "isos" folder so I can select it when I boot Unraid?

P.S. Unraid is on my USB Drive.

[Electronics Wizardy]

There should be a iso share. Can you put windows in that share?

[Exaco]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There should be a iso share. Can you put windows in that share?

I can't open the Share. The SSD ( E: in my case ) is gone when viewing from original/primary Windows.
And in Unraid there's nothing I can do, just a few settings.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Exaco said:

I can't open the Share. The SSD ( E: in my case ) is gone when viewing from original/primary Windows.
And in Unraid there's nothing I can do, just a few settings.

Can you show the unraid settings in a screenshot?

 

DOes it shouw up when you view the network shares on the system?

 

Can you copy the files in cmd?

 

Just saying, i would't use unraid to use as a single windows desktop + nas. Id just run windows on the host, and let windows handle the storage + network shares. windows will do this just fine.hh

[Exaco]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Can you show the unraid settings in a screenshot?

 

DOes it shouw up when you view the network shares on the system?

 

Can you copy the files in cmd?

 

Just saying, i would't use unraid to use as a single windows desktop + nas. Id just run windows on the host, and let windows handle the storage + network shares. windows will do this just fine.hh

Can you show the unraid settings in a screenshot? - Could only take a phone photo of my screen, not sure if unraid os can take screenshots ( I'm not connected to unraid via browser on my Win ).
Can you copy the files in cmd? - Hmm.. probably. Got an answer on unraid forums that I could use Unassigned Devices plugin which would let me manage NTFS drives.

Yeah I know that's not something would want to do, but it's temporary, VMWare sucks in terms of performance so I'm just trying Unraid VM instead.
 

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, Exaco said:

Can you show the unraid settings in a screenshot? - Could only take a phone photo of my screen, not sure if unraid os can take screenshots ( I'm not connected to unraid via browser on my Win ).
Can you copy the files in cmd? - Hmm.. probably. Got an answer on unraid forums that I could use Unassigned Devices plugin which would let me manage NTFS drives.

Yeah I know that's not something would want to do, but it's temporary, VMWare sucks in terms of performance so I'm just trying Unraid VM instead.
 

VMware is a company, what product were you using?

 

Normally hyper-v is the best for vms on windows, so thats what id use to run vms on windows.

 

 

[Exaco]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

VMware is a company, what product were you using?

 

Normally hyper-v is the best for vms on windows, so thats what id use to run vms on windows.

 

 

Workstation Pro 16.

Problem is that GPU Passthrough is a must for me ( 980Ti ) that's why I've tried unRAID.

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, Exaco said:

Workstation Pro 16.

Problem is that GPU Passthrough is a must for me ( 980Ti ) that's why I've tried unRAID.

Id really just run the os you want to use the gpu on the host, and run vms on that os. Is this for playing games?

 

What is your full hardware setup? Are the iommu groups setup right?

 

But Id try copying the iso in the command line, should the the easiest way. 

[Exaco]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id really just run the os you want to use the gpu on the host, and run vms on that os. Is this for playing games?

 

What is your full hardware setup? Are the iommu groups setup right?

 

But Id try copying the iso in the command line, should the the easiest way. 

Yes it's for games ( u probably get an idea why I would need to play on VM in first place )

Full Specs:

 

Spoiler

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600 @ 4Ghz OC
GPU: ZOTAC GTX 980Ti 6GB AMP! Omega
RAM: 2x8GB Vengeance LPX 3000Mhz @ 3400Mhz OC
MB: AsRock B450 Gaming K4
SSD ( OS ): Kingston A2000 500GB NVMe ( can't use for unraid )
SSD 2: Kingston A400
HDD: Western Digital WD Green 2TB ( can't use for unraid )
PSU: Corsair TX850M

Not sure about the groups, I just put the A400 SSD in Drive 1 and Formatted+Started the Array.

[Electronics Wizardy]

20 minutes ago, Exaco said:

Yes it's for games ( u probably get an idea why I would need to play on VM in first place )

Full Specs:

Do you have a second gpu?

 

b450 is kinda limiting in terms of pcie layout.

 

Id really suggest you keep windows on the host, and use windows for storage and nas uses aswell. Then you don't have to change anything around to get a vm working for windows.

[Exaco]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you have a second gpu?

 

b450 is kinda limiting in terms of pcie layout.

 

Id really suggest you keep windows on the host, and use windows for storage and nas uses aswell. Then you don't have to change anything around to get a vm working for windows.

Yes but no cable to connect it to display ( it's GTX 260 ).

 

Quote

Id really suggest you keep windows on the host, and use windows for storage and nas uses aswell. Then you don't have to change anything around to get a vm working for windows.

Well, I'm using Windows on my host.
I can't get the unRAID working without setting up the drives and when I setup the drive(s) I still can't copy the windows.iso file in there. I can't even remotely connect to unRAID since it's a single PC ( unRAID isn't installed on any drive, it's basically running on USB Drive, so when I go back to my "host" windows the unRAID isn't running as it doesn't even exist ).

Also unRAID doesn't have any file manager which sucks the most. Tried copying the .iso like you've suggested using CMD but I can't also since the drive has no letter so I suppose only unRAID OS can read it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, Exaco said:

Yes but no cable to connect it to display ( it's GTX 260 ).

 

Well, I'm using Windows on my host.
I can't get the unRAID working without setting up the drives and when I setup the drive(s) I still can't copy the windows.iso file in there. I can't even remotely connect to unRAID since it's a single PC ( unRAID isn't installed on any drive, it's basically running on USB Drive, so when I go back to my "host" windows the unRAID isn't running as it doesn't even exist ).

Also unRAID doesn't have any file manager which sucks the most. Tried copying the .iso like you've suggested using CMD but I can't also since the drive has no letter so I suppose only unRAID OS can read it.

Why do you want unraid anyways, running windows on the host seems like a much better plan for your uses. Just let windows manage the storage and network shares.

 

Unraid doesn't have drive letters, thats a windows thing, unraid is linux

 

Can you access the unraid web page on another pc on the network?

 

If you want to run windows in a vm, you normally need to wipe all te drives and make virtual disks.

[Exaco]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Why do you want unraid anyways, running windows on the host seems like a much better plan for your uses. Just let windows manage the storage and network shares.

 

Unraid doesn't have drive letters, thats a windows thing, unraid is linux

 

Can you access the unraid web page on another pc on the network?

 

If you want to run windows in a vm, you normally need to wipe all te drives and make virtual disks.

Well in future I plan to do 1 PC - 2 OS/Gaming Station setup. But for now it's sort of practice, also I need to bypass HWID/UUID Ban and the only way is VM.

No second PC/Laptop, maybe Android phone could work?

Yeah I know, it's a shame you can't run unRAID using only 1 Drive. Maybe I could try to swap my HDD w/ old HDD and wipe that too so then I would have Drive 1 + Cache drive. But still no idea how I would copy the .iso.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Exaco said:

Well in future I plan to do 1 PC - 2 OS/Gaming Station setup

You can do this all in windows with multiseat software like aster.

 

Can you run your game from a vmware/hyper-v vm? What game is it? 

 

1 minute ago, Exaco said:

Yeah I know, it's a shame you can't run unRAID using only 1 Drive.

You can use a single drive just fine. You don't need a parity or cache drive.

 

Also why not just install desktop linux like fedora, then do the vm from there, should work better here.

 

But this seems like a mess to get around a ban, I woudln't try to get around the ban, and just play other games.

[Exaco]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can do this all in windows with multiseat software like aster.

 

Can you run your game from a vmware/hyper-v vm? What game is it? 

 

You can use a single drive just fine. You don't need a parity or cache drive.

 

Also why not just install desktop linux like fedora, then do the vm from there, should work better here.

 

But this seems like a mess to get around a ban, I woudln't try to get around the ban, and just play other games.

Yeah I can run it on VMWare but w/ like 1-5fps, it's FiveM Roleplay ( GTA V ).

Well I don't want to make a mess from my main daily "driver" OS. Also I don't get how Linux would help me run the VM better if I'm still going to boot unRAID from USB drive and it's gonna be exact same shit? Unless you mean to get rid of unRAID completely.

But yeah.. If I could somehow get that .iso file in there that would solve most of the issues imho.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Exaco said:

Yeah I can run it on VMWare but w/ like 1-5fps, it's FiveM Roleplay ( GTA V ).

Well I don't want to make a mess from my main daily "driver" OS. Also I don't get how Linux would help me run the VM better if I'm still going to boot unRAID from USB drive and it's gonna be exact same shit? Unless you mean to get rid of unRAID completely.

But yeah.. If I could somehow get that .iso file in there that would solve most of the issues imho.

try using hyper-v partitioning, should allow reasonble gpu performance.

 

Id get a separate drive for this, have a drive for windows, and one for linux.

 

Id probably stop using unraid here, and just use anouther linux distro like fedora.

[Jarsky]

1 hour ago, Exaco said:

Yeah I can run it on VMWare but w/ like 1-5fps, it's FiveM Roleplay ( GTA V ).

Think you need VMDirectPath I/O for it to work properly, which is a ESXi function. 

 

1 hour ago, Exaco said:

Well I don't want to make a mess from my main daily "driver" OS. Also I don't get how Linux would help me run the VM better if I'm still going to boot unRAID from USB drive and it's gonna be exact same shit? Unless you mean to get rid of unRAID completely.

UnRAID is just a Linux distro, theres no reason to move away from it if you can make it work under UnRAID, which generally is easier. 

Especially with the enhancements to the VFIO binding under UnRAID 6.9.x

 

1 hour ago, Exaco said:

But yeah.. If I could somehow get that .iso file in there that would solve most of the issues imho.

 

UnRAID is designed as a NAS. Just boot it up, create a share, and transfer it from another machine on the network. 

 

Under Settings > VM Manager, you define your default ISO location and VM storage paths. 

 

I then make a share called "ISO", and then in Settings > SMB Share Settings I make an SMB entry to make it accessible over the network

 

 

I can then just drop my ISO's in this folder

 

[Exaco]

Thank you guys!


I've managed to setup everything ( mainly using unRAID terminal and basic copy commands after I've found some of the directories in VM setup ), now the last problem is when I select my GTX 980Ti and I boot the OS, my screen simply goes black, I guess it's because I need second GPU.

The IOMMU groups was fine out of the box, GPU isolated etc.

[r3ap3r439]

8 hours ago, Exaco said:

Hello guys, I'm trying to run Win 10 VM using UNRAID but for now everything is confusing..

Here's what I did so far:
Added my secondary SSD in the Drive 1 slot ( the only spare drive which I can waste ) parity was unassigned and formated it in the Unraid GUI.
Then I've Enabled/Added VM and downloaded the VirtIO Win drivers .iso.

Now the problem is how do I put Windows.iso in that formated drive "isos" folder so I can select it when I boot Unraid?

P.S. Unraid is on my USB Drive.

I had this problem playing with unraid on my server a few days ago. In the share settings under SMB I had to set export to yes and that allowed my share to be seen on the network. Hope this helps!