VM flavor on my new server/NAS

[itGeeks 187]

Thanks for the replies, I am starting to get a picture of what I can/can't do. I thought about win 10 with hyper-v as I will have spare licenses if I consolidate servers.  I might try it as a trial and see how it goes.  I have no experience with MS server OS except whs2011, which has been good but underdeveloped.

 

I bought a xeon 1220 v3 so I will have 4 cores to play with. I can't see the need for more than 3vm's.

 

As I do not have day to day experience with servers or CLI, I don't like powershell.  What tends to happen is I set things up using a gui, and later when it needs tweaking I can usually remember what I did from the visual interface.  If I learnt a lot of powershell stuff I would only forget it all and then have to start again a couple of months later when an update somewhere crashes the system and I spend days unable to watch any videos because one of several OS's on a machine is unhappy. 

 

As for xpenology, it was a little tricky to set up, especially on a ml10v2.  I was used to the N54L which just worked out of the box and had a bios much like a normal pc.  The ML10v2 has a much more advanced bios and boot up setup, and incorporates raid bios as well, so if the default settings are not what you need, especially raid settings, you need to work out bios settings.  I was not used to setting up a server type OS.  Basically I needed to read a little on the xpenology websites so get a feel for it. 

 

it wasn't clear to me at first but here is what I muddled through using files from pages like xpenology.me.

You need to download the DSM files for the server, noting the version. It needs to be loaded on a dos bootable usb stick which stays in the server.  You boot from the usb drive and it installs the files.

 

Then you need to download and run Synology DSM files (same version as above) on a pc (in my case windows) networked to the server. Then last you need to download and run the Synology assistant on your pc, which finds and connects to the server through your browser.  Once this has happened I imagine it is like a normal synology device.  However be aware that you need to turn updates off, as auto updating can break things.  If there are updates you need, it is best to let others install them and report back on what gets broken.  From what I can tell 5.2-5644 is last good stable update.  Apart from that everything seems to work well. You are not given a Synology ID so if you rely on that it can be tricky. It seems possible to create one with some messing around.

I was also not able to get SABNZBD+ working on Synology either.  Mainly file permissions and networking issues, but probably fixable.

 

It looks like the next step is win10 hyper v and an install of xpenology on top.

That CPU looks like a nice option, The passmark score is 6534 and going by the Plex recommended specs of needing a passmark score of 2000 for every 1080p stream needing real-time trans-coding that should give you 3 three 1080p streams with trans-coding. I do think you maybe misunderstanding the fiscal vs logical cores for the Windows Hyper-V setup like I did, U are correct that CPU has 4 cores but that's fiscal but the logical cores looks like its 8, Hyper-V will allow you to assign all the logical cares for the VM so in this case 8, The recommend is to use all the 8 cores on all VM's regardless of how many VM's you setup. Where you have to be carfull is you cant do the same thing with memory meaning if you only have 16GB of memory you cant allocate all 16GB of memory to each VM like you can with cores. You can say I give this VM 8GB of memory but the next VM can only have 8GB of memory as that's all that's left. Please have a look at the link below where I sourced help from this community for help on setting up my very 1st Hyper-V server using Windows 10.

http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11058-hyper-v-allocating-cores/   

 

Hope this info helps...

[itGeeks 187]

Yes, you can manage a Hyper-V core server from a Windows 10 client.

Thank you for clearing this up for me, Based on ShadowPeo I thought powershell was mandatory to manage.

Sorry yes, RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) should work. Didn't even think about them as I have been forcing myself to use powershell. Just about have it to the point where the powershell scripts I have been working will install, rename, domain join and complete the "standard" configuration for my servers with minimal iteration (besides telling it to run, it wants to know the machine name, domain and requested IP address)

Its OK and its fine, I am allergic to Linux and anything having to do with command-line programming, I am a GUI man at heart.

[ShadowPeo 81]

Its OK and its fine, I am allergic to Linux and anything having to do with command-line programming, I am a GUI man at heart.

 

I used to be like that, but the more I have come to use it, the more I like the command line, even on my "desktop" client these days I spend quite an amount of time in command line

[jmwills 284]

Thank you for clearing this up for me, Based on ShadowPeo I thought powershell was mandatory to manage.

Its OK and its fine, I am allergic to Linux and anything having to do with command-line programming, I am a GUI man at heart.

Well, what PowerShell does on this is to bring up a limited GUI.  You need to play with it to get a sense of the experience.  Personally, I don't like it but I hear that Server 2016 is all PowerShell or very limited GUIs.

[ShadowPeo 81]

I hear that Server 2016 is all PowerShell or very limited GUIs.

 

This is what spurred me on to learn powershell, well at least in part. The Standard Server TP4 had a GUI interface that I was playing with, but did not get much further than that, have not looked at TP5 yet. What I do like about what I have heard (Microsoft Webinar) is that you can install and uninstall the GUI at will, so install it via powershell, complete the tasks, then remove it best of both worlds I think. But this from what I understand is not on the Nano or Hyper-V servers (not that it matters to me as we have an unlimited instance licence for all server versions, KMS activation and all that).

 

What I am more interested in is the containerisation of the new system, can I virtualize my services rather than my servers and still maintain failover clustering? If I can I can free up so many resources its not funny we utilise a single VM instance, to take care of a single task, so our print services and print management/cost control software are bundled into a single server, if that server fails only the printing is offline, not the file shares or RAS etc, but this means I have to utilize CPU cycles, RAM and storage (that would equate to hundreds of gigs if not a TB or more) of storage space. If I could get this space reduced I could then get to put SSD's into the storage arrays for faster services, not to mention at least in theory the faster failover and recovery as I am not having to boot multiple whole OS's, potential IP address savings inside the scope and many other things

Edited June 22, 2016 by ShadowPeo

[jmwills 284]

I had to learn PowerShell when Exchange 2007 was rolled out, now it's about all I use with SharePoint.  You can do amazing things with it and you can get in a boat load of trouble really fast.  Always test, test, test.

[ShadowPeo 81]

I had to learn PowerShell when Exchange 2007 was rolled out, now it's about all I use with SharePoint.  You can do amazing things with it and you can get in a boat load of trouble really fast.  Always test, test, test.

 

Very much so, I have VM's on my laptop that I simple build, snapshot, test, rollback quick, clean and easy. Admittedly I utilise VMWare on my laptop rather than Hyper-V but that's irrelevant as I am not interacting with the Hypervisor itself

Edited June 22, 2016 by ShadowPeo