Hyper-V or Individual Physical Machines

[abefroman]

I could really use some guidance as I'm very new to VMs. 

 

I'm in the process of building a home server that will serve the following functions: File Stroage (parity), Plex Server, & Media Streaming.  Originally, I was going to install FreeNAS, but since I'm a student, I had access to DreamSpark and got a copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials for free.  I previously used WHS, so I thought I'd be more comfortable with WS2012.  I have about 8 TB of total stroage and 2x 120GB SSD in Raid1 for OS.  Im rocking a Xeon E3-1246v3B processor with a Supermicro X10SL-7 (previously had an Intel S12000RPL board that had fan speed issues and was returned) motherboard that has 16GB of Crucial ECC RAM.

 

I also have 3 other spare systems that I was planning to use for other reasons: pfsense, isoloated usenet download system, and a spare.  2 of the 3 are old 2005ish Supermicro servers w/ dual Xeon processors (single core).  The other system is a non-server based low-end PC that someone gave me. 

 

So, my question is - instead of running all these other systems, could I instead install Hyper-V server 2012 and create a VM for the following functions:

1. VM for Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials for Data Storage
2. VM for Windows 7/8 for isolated Usenet downloads
3. VM for Windows 7/8 for Plex server
4. VM for pfsenese - I doubt this is even possible and question if it makes sense, but thought I'd throw it out there. 
5. Additional VMs for testing purposes (Linux, FreeBSD, etc)

 

I think my hardware is good enough to run the VMs (might need to bump ram to 32 GB though).  Is it unwise to lump these activities together onto 1 system?  Is having a storage server as a VM bad news?  Will an infected (virus/malware) VM spread to other VMs? 

 

Also, if I understand it correctly, once I get a VM dialed in w/ the OS install and apps, I can save the VM as is and revert back to that state or replicate that VM as needed - right? 

 

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

 

-Abe

[thekeemo]

@looney

[r3bify]

Maybe run two of the machines? 

 

Run one with W2012 on it and use Hyper-v to run Windows vm's for the functions you need. 

Run another one with XenServer or ESXi (they have a free version) and run your linux vm's on that (Hyper-V doesn't play all that nicely with linux. You can get it to work, but there is some dicking around you have to do.)

I recommend like.. a CentOS vm for your Plex server.

 

You could even technically run Xen or ESXi on one machine and make a W2012 vm and put hyper-v on it still, but you would have more of a performance hit.

[Guest]

It's been few years since I've used Hyper-V (back in Windows Server 2008 SP2), but I'll try to answer to the best of my knowledge. I've been using VMware for the past 6 years now.

 

I would run pfsense on hardware. To me, it would just makes more sense. You could use your old Supermicro dual-Xeon for that. I pretty much think these servers are overkill for your needs regarding routing/firewalls, but since you already own them it makes sense

 

If you catch a virus/malware that spreads over network and the infected VM is part of the network (not isolated/DMZ), then it will spread. VM or not, it will be able to use the network. If you want your Windows 7/8 Usenet to be part of a DMZ (isolated), then configure a separate VLAN in your pfsense that is only talking to Internet and not your other subnet/VLAN. Then, in your VM, you use that network. Unless you are able to trunk multiple VLANs between your pfsense box and your Hyper-V server, you will need a separate NIC on your server and on your pfsense for your DMZ. You should be able to trunk with enterprise-grade NIC drivers.

 

I would try to run the Usenet server in a VM. Using snapshots, it will be easier to revert back if you get something nasty. You can do snapshots of all your VMs and keep them as history. Useful to revert back changes or when you're doing a big upgrade (Service Packs for instance). Snapshots are actually my daily backups for my entire VM infrastructure at work. I'm using Veeam backups to create daily/incremental snapshots of all our 50+ virtual servers. That way, we can revert back few days in case there's a config issue somewhere. Snapshots are very useful.

 

About that Plex server...I would use hardware if you want to use transcoding. Plex is very good at transcoding but this requires horsepower (CPU). In fact, if I ever get a Plex setup one day over my XBMC setup, it would be for transcoding. XBMC is perfect for everything else in my scenario.

 

So my setup of your setup (?) would be :

 

1 x Physical Server Windows 2012 for Storage and Hyper-V

1 x Virtual machine running in an isolated VLAN/DMZ for Usenet downloads

Any other virtual machine for testing

1 x Physical pfsense box

1 x Physical server for Plex server for transcoding

 

In that scenario, I don't think I would need more than 16GB of RAM, unless there is a lot of testing vms involved at the same time.

 

I hope this helps !