Assistance with OS choice for N54L with 8gb ram

[np123]

Hi everyone,

 

I did post in the OS forum but that should be deleted as it was in the wrong place I think (mods?)

 

I know these kind of threads are subjective and a bit tedious but hear me out please, I'll keep it brief!

 

I used to run W8.1 headless on my server, but  with the impending Windows 10 changes I thought I would experiment a bit first and see what the various different options out there were. I have the Gen 7 with 8GB ram and several HDD installed.

 

I looked at Freenas, but the RAM requirements really put me off – 8gb minimum! And then I would want to run a couple of VMs on top of it, so not best suited.

I looked at Openmediavault but then decided against that too.

 

I settled on a choice between Debian with a GUI to remote connect to, and Windows 10 when it comes out. I have 2 licenses for windows so I will either run:

 

Debian base – with W10 as a VM on top (x2). Use one for Media serving and the other as a desktop to remote on to for Word etc.

Windows 10 base – with 1 W10 VM on top.

 

The attraction to windows is Stablebit drive pool etc, seems useful, but the downside is the need for an AV and antispyware app which is resource hog.

 

Anyone have any insight they could share with me?

 

Many thanks

 

[johnas]

You can run Debian with OMV on top. Install Debian 7 first, then OMV. See here

http://forums.openmediavault.org/index.php/Thread/5302-Howto-install-OpenMediaVault-on-Debian-7-x-Wheezy/

 

OMV can run Docker as well has Virtualbox plugin for full vms.

 

You will be fine with 8gb ram in Freenas.

 

You might also want to try out Unraid 6.

 

Either one of these three will run great on you n54l.

 

There's also Xpenology.

Edited July 28, 2015 by johnas

[nrf]

surprisingly the n54l is well suited to VM usage. Too bad it is tricky to get 16gb into it. Of all my machines, my microservers are the only ones that meet the specs for 2012R2's hyper-v capability.

[np123]

You can run Debian with OMV on top. Install Debian 7 first, then OMV. See here

http://forums.openmediavault.org/index.php/Thread/5302-Howto-install-OpenMediaVault-on-Debian-7-x-Wheezy/

 

OMV can run Docker as well has Virtualbox plugin for full vms.

 

You will be fine with 8gb ram in Freenas.

 

You might also want to try out Unraid 6.

 

Either one of these three will run great on you n54l.

 

There's also Xpenology.

 

Thanks for the tips, thats really useful. I looked at Unraid but didnt feel right for me as I have 4 drives not 3 and i didnt want to pay just yet.

 

Good that Freenas would be ok - only consideration is running 2 windows 10 vms on top of it with 1-2gb of ram would hamper that a bit.

 

Might look at OMV on top of debian then, if only to partition my drive how I want.

 

surprisingly the n54l is well suited to VM usage. Too bad it is tricky to get 16gb into it. Of all my machines, my microservers are the only ones that meet the specs for 2012R2's hyper-v capability.

 

Thats good to know. I need to Virtualise 2 or 3 guests so thats handy.

[TLN]

-My NL40 works with 16Gb just fine.

-See no reason to put VM into Debian, better use ESXi/Hyper-V

-FreeNAS will fork just with with 4 gigs and 2 gigs. And even less I believe.

-Openmediavault=Debian, and pretty useful thing.

-No need in Graphics on FreeNAS/OMV/Debian if this is used for server.

-I don't think that running two Win10 and UNIX(FreeNAS/Deibian) same time is good idea.

[np123]

-My NL40 works with 16Gb just fine.

-See no reason to put VM into Debian, better use ESXi/Hyper-V

-FreeNAS will fork just with with 4 gigs and 2 gigs. And even less I believe.

-Openmediavault=Debian, and pretty useful thing.

-No need in Graphics on FreeNAS/OMV/Debian if this is used for server.

-I don't think that running two Win10 and UNIX(FreeNAS/Deibian) same time is good idea.

I tried to avoid esxi just because of the limitations on the free Web management tool. I'm connecting from a chromebook so either ssh or Web configuration is best. Failing that a desktop to remote on to and use that.

 

On the last bit, why would you advise against it? Just resources?

Oh and I want to have the virtual machines have direct disk access to store all files, so I thought vms with smb or nfs shares were best rather than a hyper v base?

[TLN]

Last bit: yep I'm afraid it will not be quite comfortable to run two Windows instances and some Linux same time. Never tried this though. But running several Linux VM is just fine.

 

If you ever plan to run windows you can install vSphere Client there. You got ideas about running a windows inside a Linux OS, so that's pretty much the same.

[np123]

Last bit: yep I'm afraid it will not be quite comfortable to run two Windows instances and some Linux same time. Never tried this though. But running several Linux VM is just fine.

 

If you ever plan to run windows you can install vSphere Client there. You got ideas about running a windows inside a Linux OS, so that's pretty much the same.

 

Ok great, thanks. So I've narrowed it down to 2 setups - I bought a NAS to act as the storage/backup setup so its now an OS choice for a media server:

 

Windows 10 with Stablebit Drivepool.

 

Debian 8 with linux raid 1 across 2 disks.

 

Which would people suggest?

[TLN]

NAS means Microserver? Or you have another NAS besides HP?

 

Win10 is new(released today lol) OS. It wasn't meant as server OS. Theres might be no drivers for some devices(I doubt tough) if you gonna use bare metal.

See where this points?

 

If I were you - I'd run a ESXi with OMV(which is debian actually) So you can test Win10, or any other OS.