I believe I set up the RAID array. Can someone help confirm?

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Unfortunately SolidWorks, the program I wanted to run in Wi10, doesn't work with any hypervisor that might work on my server. ProxMox is the only real solution but I've heard that it's extremely messy for IBM servers, which aren't very friendly as is.

 

Regardless, I still have a new laptop which can run SolidWorks no problem, having the server run it may have just been me being a bit greedy lol. CentOS 7 should cover just about everything else however.

 

Thank you again for all the help!

Solid works should work fine in vm.

 

Proxmox would work fine, how would it be messy? hyper-v, esxi, xen and others would works.

 

A hypervisor would make things like backups and os reinstalls much easier, no reason not to.

[Biomecanoid]

4 hours ago, Mega2 said:

As a bit of background I recently got an IBM/Lenovo x3850 x5 server that came with BIOS already configured and a ServerRAID M5015 controller.

 

The server came with no hard drives, so I bought a 2 TB hard drive (SATA SSD).

 

To summarize, I need to access the raid menu during the boot up process to switch from raid to ahci, as I want to run Linux natively and it only supports ahci. No hypervisor has been/will be installed.

 

In order to set this up, I first have to configure the raid array. For that, I used the video embedded below.

 

After following all of the steps in his video, I got the logical view attached. The one thing that concerns me slightly is the fact that it says "Total free capacity" 82.875 MB." If I want to install a Linux distro, does that mean it's only going to give me 82 MB of space?

 

I guess the only thing out of the ordinary in my set up process was that, at 19:07 in the embedded video, the "select size" cell was empty (the units were, however, set to terabytes automatically). I was able to type in "1.818" and it accepted that. However, everything else in my set up process was the same as his.

 

As a second question, is there anything I have to do after this in order for the drive to show up when setting up my OS? Thank you.

 

 

How many drives do you have ? Raid is for more than one drive, if I am not mistaken you have just one drive.

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 hours ago, Biomecanoid said:

How many drives do you have ? Raid is for more than one drive, if I am not mistaken you have just one drive.

You can make a raid array with a single drive if you just want to use one drive. WIth those raid cards its the only way to have a single drive usable in raid mode.

[Biomecanoid]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can make a raid array with a single drive if you just want to use one drive. WIth those raid cards its the only way to have a single drive usable in raid mode.

There is no benefit to have an array with a single drive. Why do it ?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Biomecanoid said:

There is no benefit to have an array with a single drive. Why do it ?

cause its the only way to have that disk usable to the os. The os will only see raid arrays you have made, not single drives. Some newer raid cards support unused drives in jbod mode, but not this older one.

[Mega2]

17 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Solid works should work fine in vm.

 

Proxmox would work fine, how would it be messy? hyper-v, esxi, xen and others would works.

 

A hypervisor would make things like backups and os reinstalls much easier, no reason not to.

Beyond the difficulty of setting ProxMox up I've heard that it can be pretty inefficient to run larger programs like OpenMC or COMSOL that can use 64 GB (about all I have installed). That's mostly why i tried to avoid the ProxMox route.

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Beyond the difficulty of setting ProxMox up I've heard that it can be pretty inefficient to run larger programs like OpenMC or COMSOL that can use 64 GB (about all I have installed). That's mostly why i tried to avoid the ProxMox route.

Proxmox pretty easy to install, about the same as any other linux distro.

 

Performance impact should be like 5% or less, won't be big.

[Mega2]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Proxmox pretty easy to install, about the same as any other linux distro.

 

Performance impact should be like 5% or less, won't be big.

Sounds good, I'll ask around and see if it would be worth it.

 

In the meantime, how would I go about re-formatting my hard drive to configure it for ProxMox? Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Sounds good, I'll ask around and see if it would be worth it.

 

In the meantime, how would I go about re-formatting my hard drive to configure it for ProxMox? Thanks

proxmox installs just like centos, make a bootable usb, then click next in the installer

[Mega2]

36 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

proxmox installs just like centos, make a bootable usb, then click next in the installer

Thanks, do you know if the ProxMox OS requires two physical cores or two virtual cores? Thanks.

[Electronics Wizardy]

23 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Thanks, do you know if the ProxMox OS requires two physical cores or two virtual cores? Thanks.

It doesn't really need any cores for its self. 

 

You can run it on a host with a single core if you want, but gonna be slow.

[Mega2]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

It doesn't really need any cores for its self. 

 

You can run it on a host with a single core if you want, but gonna be slow.

 

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

It doesn't really need any cores for its self. 

 

You can run it on a host with a single core if you want, but gonna be slow.

Thanks. When I'm setting up ProxMox, should I configure the hard drive differently (since I'll have 2 VMs and ProxMox), or is it ok to leave the configuration as is after deleting the current version of CentOS 7?

[Electronics Wizardy]

11 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

 

Thanks. When I'm setting up ProxMox, should I configure the hard drive differently (since I'll have 2 VMs and ProxMox), or is it ok to leave the configuration as is after deleting the current version of CentOS 7?

Id use zfs for the hdd setup on proxmox. Then you can make virtual disk for all the vms you want later on.

[Mega2]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id use zfs for the hdd setup on proxmox. Then you can make virtual disk for all the vms you want later on.

Sounds good. Should should I delete the virtual disks I set up before altogether before setting up ProxMox?

[Electronics Wizardy]

21 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Sounds good. Should should I delete the virtual disks I set up before altogether before setting up ProxMox?

THe proxmox installer can delete all the partitions on the disk already.

[Mega2]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

THe proxmox installer can delete all the partitions on the disk already.

Sounds good.

 

As a minor side note a lot of my work will be done remotely involving the server (i.e. I've be using it to run simulations from school). Is there a free way for me to log directly into the desired OS remotely?

 

I don't have an enterprise license and on account of the cost wouldn't likely be able to afford one.

[Electronics Wizardy]

14 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Sounds good.

 

As a minor side note a lot of my work will be done remotely involving the server (i.e. I've be using it to run simulations from school). Is there a free way for me to log directly into the desired OS remotely?

 

I don't have an enterprise license and on account of the cost wouldn't likely be able to afford one.

Paid proxmox just gives you support, doesn't affect any features.

 

Best option is to setup a vpn, but you can setup portforwards for services you need like ssh.

[Mega2]

14 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Paid proxmox just gives you support, doesn't affect any features.

 

Best option is to setup a vpn, but you can setup portforwards for services you need like ssh.

Thanks. Would the OpenVPN option allow me to directly interact with the server's GUI?

 

Ideally, I'd want to remotely switch between the VMs and interact with screens such as those of Blender and SolidWorks where I wouldn't be able to see what's on the screen just by using an SSH.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Thanks. Would the OpenVPN option allow me to directly interact with the server's GUI?

 

Ideally, I'd want to remotely switch between the VMs and interact with screens such as those of Blender and SolidWorks where I wouldn't be able to see what's on the screen just by using an SSH.

Proxmox has a web interface, so you can use the system like your in front of it from that interface.

 

But solidworks and blender are gonna suck performance wise as you don't have gpu accerlation on that box.

 

Also Can I have the pic of the server. Im just curious.

[Mega2]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Proxmox has a web interface, so you can use the system like your in front of it from that interface.

 

But solidworks and blender are gonna suck performance wise as you don't have gpu accerlation on that box.

 

Also Can I have the pic of the server. Im just curious.

Sounds good, thanks. Here's the server I plan on using: https://lenovopress.com/tips0817-system-x3850-x5

 

I will also use an Nvidia Grid K1 grpahics card that should have GPU acceleration installed. GPU passthrough will also be enabled.

 

On a separate note, would the ProxMox web interface allow me to see the WinServer VM and interact with programs such as SolidWorks? thank you again.

 

Edit: SolidWorks would require me to be able to open a GUI.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Mega2 said:

Sounds good, thanks. Here's the server I plan on using: https://lenovopress.com/tips0817-system-x3850-x5

 

I will also use an Nvidia Grid K1 grpahics card that should have GPU acceleration installed. GPU passthrough will also be enabled.

 

On a separate note, would the ProxMox web interface allow me to see the WinServer VM and interact with programs such as SolidWorks? thank you again.

If you have gpu passthough, normally you don't want to use proxmox(or it just won't work). You want to use something like rdp to access the vm

 

Id just install proxmox on the hardware and give it a shot, pretty simple to install and mess around with.

[Mega2]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you have gpu passthough, normally you don't want to use proxmox(or it just won't work). You want to use something like rdp to access the vm

 

Id just install proxmox on the hardware and give it a shot, pretty simple to install and mess around with.

I've been looking at alternatives that might allow me to use SolidWorks in the same window as my CentOS program (only for ease of use purposes) and came across VMWare. With VMWare I'd only really need to make 1 virtual machine (for the WinServer), so there'd be no cost attached.

To clarify, VMWare would be installed in the CentOs machine, that way I don't have to restart my computer to switch machines and can easily move files between WinServer and CentOS 7 should there be a need.

The GPU acceleration and passthrough would be enabled in order to get SolidWorks running in that VM.

Would this be a good way to move forward as opposed to using a ProxMox hypervisor?

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

I've been looking at alternatives that might allow me to use SolidWorks in the same window as my CentOS program (only for ease of use purposes) and came across VMWare. With VMWare I'd only really need to make 1 virtual machine (for the WinServer), so there'd be no cost attached.

To clarify, VMWare would be installed in the CentOs machine, that way I don't have to restart my computer to switch machines and can easily move files between WinServer and CentOS 7 should there be a need.

The GPU acceleration and passthrough would be enabled in order to get SolidWorks running in that VM.

Would this be a good way to move forward as opposed to using a ProxMox hypervisor?

Id still use proxmox here. You can remote into both vms at once if you want to use them side by side. The experience would be basically the same as using vmware workstation, but with better performance. 

 

Also you don't get video output from the vm when doing gpu passthough normally, so you would still need to remote desktop into the vms.

 

Id run a hypervisor on the host, and don't run anything else on the host sytem.

 

 

[Mega2]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id still use proxmox here. You can remote into both vms at once if you want to use them side by side. The experience would be basically the same as using vmware workstation, but with better performance. 

 

Also you don't get video output from the vm when doing gpu passthough normally, so you would still need to remote desktop into the vms.

 

Id run a hypervisor on the host, and don't run anything else on the host sytem.

 

 

Thanks. Do I need to use a GPU passthrough with something like SolidWorks for either ProxMox or VMWare?

[Electronics Wizardy]

31 minutes ago, Mega2 said:

Thanks. Do I need to use a GPU passthrough with something like SolidWorks for either ProxMox or VMWare?

You probably don't need to use gpu passthough for it to launch, but gpu performance will suck if it doesn't have access to a real gpu.

 

Id seutp proxmox on the host. Give the sold works vm a gpu, and give everything virtual gpus.

 

Just give proxmox a shot.