Help me transition one complicated Windows Server to VMs

[Mnky313]

So I have this one Windows Server (Hardware is listed below) that does a TON of things, game servers, HFS servers, SMB, mining, more Windows VMs, probably more things.

I am looking for a way to move a lot of these things to different VMs (mainly because HFS needs to be set up manually every time as it uses the registry to save settings and I have 2 instances of HFS running (one for HTTPS and one for HTTP video previews). Also because I would like the ability to reboot windows VMs for updates without taking out everything running on them and the Hyper-V VMs tend to break (especially the port forwarding to virtual NICs).

The hardware is a Poweredge R720 with:
Dual E5-2667v2
120GB RAM
15 1TB SAS HDDS in raid (I think 60)
1 160GB 2.5" SATA SSD
Dual Tesla M40s

My plan was to use Proxmox with VMs for separate things (It ended up being 8 VMs, that parts not really important.) What is important is where to store the VMs. Ideally I want these to be in RAID 1 so in the event of an SSD failure I don't lose all of the info relating to the VMs and Windows installs.

Storage Issue:

Problem is I only have 16 bays which are all in use, thought about moving to a r720XD but it doesn't fit 2 full height 2 slot GPUs.

There are a few solutions I thought of. I just need someone who is more experienced with Proxmox or other solutions that would be better to say if this will work at all....

I could get a 2.5" SATA to dual M.2 enclosure and get 2 SATA M.2 SSDs, this would replace my 120GB SSD in the 16th bay. I would have to buy both the adapter and 2 512GB SATA M.2 drives.

Or I could get cheap PCIe to M.2 carrier boards and 2 NVMe SSDs (I have 3 half heigh PCIe slots open). Problem with this afaik R720 can't boot off of NVMe so Proxmox would be installed on the SATA SSD and just use the NVMe drives as VM storage. This would probably be cheaper because I already have 2 512GB NVMe SSDs in my laptop, I could just get a 256GB one to use in that and steal the 512GB drives (I barely use the OS drives on my machines). Problem is if the SATA SSD fails technically none of the data is gone however the proxmox install would be.

 

I thought about only storing proxmox on the SATA SSD and storing VMs on the RAID however the RAID is NTFS so I assume I would need to format it for proxmox to be able to use it for VM storage, which is a problem as I don't have anywhere to put the 8TB of data that's on the RAID... And proxmox still wouldn't be saved in the event of an SSD failure.

Passing Entire RAID through to VM?

Another problem I might run into is Proxmox's handling of the RAID, it's a hardware RAID on the card built into the R720. Would I be able to pass this in it's entirety through to a Windows VM?

VM Plan

VM1:
Windows 10 LTSC, 2 Threads, 8GB RAM, 32GB Storage
HTTPS HFS
Sync Serice

VM2:
Windows 10 LTSC, 2 Threads, 8GB RAM, 32GB Storage
HTTP HFS
Other long term services

VM3:
Windows Server 2022, 8 Threads, 32GB RAM, 128GB Storage
My Game Servers and other services
SMB

VM4:
NHOS, 2 Threads, 4GB RAM, 16GB Storage, Both Tesla M40s
Mining (for now, when profits die I'll probably use these cards for game streaming VMs or something else)

VM5-8:
Windows 10 LTSC, 4 Threads, 16GB RAM, 64GB Storage
These are used for friends hosting private game servers.

Total:
116GB RAM (4GB Left for Proxmox Host)
30 Threads (2 Left for Proxmox Host)
~464GB allocated for VMs (Leaving ~12GB left on a formatted 512GB drive)

 

I'm open to suggestions on what to use, I have very little experience with Linux but an not opposed to it. I'd prefer to keep the 5 VMs used for games on Windows for games whose dedicated servers only run on Windows. Also HFS does apparently work with Wine on linux so those 2 might be able to be moved to linux instead of windows.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Mnky313
160GB SSD, not 120GB

[Electronics Wizardy]

Since you already got windows serer, Id just use hyper-v. Works well, and about the same feature set as proxmox.

 

5 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

running on them and the Hyper-V VMs tend to break (especially the port forwarding to virtual NICs).

What do you mean break? Hyper-v is pretty solid

 

 

You got backups of all of this right?

 

5 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

Passing Entire RAID through to VM?

Another problem I might run into is Proxmox's handling of the RAID, it's a hardware RAID on the card built into the R720. Would I be able to pass this in it's entirety through to a Windows VM?

Let the host manage the storage, then use virtual disks in the vms.

 

5 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

116GB RAM (4GB Left for Proxmox Host)
30 Threads (2 Left for Proxmox Host)
~464GB allocated for VMs (Leaving ~12GB left on a formatted 512GB drive)

 

Just saying, Id overprovision a lot more here. You don't need to setup threads likethis. Just give each vm 4 threads min to make things faster. You can also overprovision storage a good amount too, as most vms won't use their full virtual disks.

 

5 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

Problem is I only have 16 bays which are all in use, t

What drives are in these bays? What are you booting from now?

 

Id boot proxmox from 2 usb sticks in raid 1, then let the raid card manage the raid for the rest of the vms.

 

5 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

which is a problem as I don't have anywhere to put the 8TB of data that's on the RAID... And proxmox still wouldn't be saved in the event of an SSD failure.

Get some backups here.

 

5 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

Problem with this afaik R720 can't boot off of NVMe so Proxmox would be installed on the SATA SSD and just use the NVMe drives as VM storage. This would probably be cheaper because I already have 2 512GB NVMe SSDs in my laptop, I could just get a 256GB one to use in that and steal the 512GB drives (I barely use the OS drives on my machines). Problem is if the SATA SSD fails technically none of the data is gone however the proxmox install would be.

Id boot proxmox from 2 usb sticks in raid 1, then setup those nvme drives with zfs in a mirror/raid 1, then use those nvme drives for vm storage.

[Mnky313]

Quote

 

What do you mean break? Hyper-v is pretty solid

You got backups of all of this right?

 

The virtual NIC port forwarding, I pass ports through to the VMs and usually I need to reset the virtual switch in order to get them to work again. Haven't had any issues recently.

Uhhh, not of the Hyper-V VMs, the information on them isn't super important. If it is it's backed up by whoever is using the VM.
 

Quote

Just saying, Id overprovision a lot more here. You don't need to setup threads likethis. Just give each vm 4 threads min to make things faster. You can also overprovision storage a good amount too, as most vms won't use their full virtual disks.

Yeah, I don't imagine a lot of the VMs even using what they are allocated but I just set out the amount of storage that should be definitely enough for the VM.
 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What drives are in these bays? What are you booting from now?

 

Id boot proxmox from 2 usb sticks in raid 1, then let the raid card manage the raid for the rest of the vms.

15 1TB SAS drives and 1 160GB SSD are in the 16 Bays.
I boot off of the SSD, the HDDs are the RAID array I was talking about.

 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Get some backups here.

A lot of the shit on the RAID is not that important, it's stuff like leaks and videos that are previewed in discord of just game clips, etc.

Anything that is important is backed up elseware as well as being on the RAID.
 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id boot proxmox from 2 usb sticks in raid 1, then setup those nvme drives with zfs in a mirror/raid 1, then use those nvme drives for vm storage.

Can I do that? The R720 should have 2 internal USB ports, If I can do that I might just skip the SSDs all together and store the VMs on the RAID. Though it would probably be better for performance to use SSDs.

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, Mnky313 said:

The virtual NIC port forwarding, I pass ports through to the VMs and usually I need to reset the virtual switch in order to get them to work again. Haven't had any issues recently.

Are these vms on a virtual switch? They should show up on your local network like any other system

 

Id just try to fix that issue and use hyper-v here. Hyper-v is a pretty darn powerfull solution

 

7 minutes ago, Mnky313 said:

Can I do that? The R720 should have 2 internal USB ports, If I can do that I might just skip the SSDs all together and store the VMs on the RAID. Though it would probably be better for performance to use SSDs.

Yup proxmox can do that. 

 

If you don't really care about performance that much you can store it all on the raid here.

 

Yea HDDs will suck for vms. Id probably just replace that 160gb ssd with a 1tb drive. Then back it up with PBS.