Virtualize or not? And if yes, how?

[SomeWhatLost]

ok thinking out loud here.

That has 2x1200W power supply (and cap out at 4TB drives). Whats your power consumption like? I'm at $0.399/KwH, that thing sounds like the power bill would spike compared to the 25W for Synology at rest/45W at access.

Thats $500 but its used. Plus $130 for unRAID. I'd need 5x4TB at $250/each, so $1250.

To effectively compare, its
$450 - i7 (8 cores vs tthat is 12)
$850 - 1815 Synology
$1200 - 4x6TB at $300/each (technically a little more space, 18TB vs 16TB)

$2500 vs $1880.

DIY pros:
- $600 cheaper
- 4 more cores

Synology pros:
- Likely lower power bill in future as I can use big drives
- New Synology = longer NAS lifespan
- Prebuilt, i'll save (5? 10?) hours building and configuring it.
- Abstract NAS from VM Server = easier to upgrade just horsepower in future

Did I miss any pros of either?

my sas2 backplane & controller is not limited to 4TB...
I am running 6(x2) & 5 & 4 & 2 TB drives... not counting the 2 3TB's for sage recording...
and a couple SSD's for cache & stuff...

total power consumption hovers around 120W, but ~20-30w of that is my crappy Revo SSD...who has already lost a core/bank/whatever... ~20-30w for just ~64GB seems a bit wasteful, one of these days I will replace him with a run of the mill SSD... super fast PCI raid 0 based SSD that is about as reliable as a yugo, but costs as much as a new Vette...
the rest of the power consumption is my Xeon...
but keep in mind, that 120W is TOTAL... it is everything... there is no separate VM box (and separate parasitic loses...)

hey, you are in la la land... just mosey on down to Tesla/SolarCity, and ask if you can borrow some solar panels and battery packs... they are just down there by San Jose/Fremont area... I just drove past them a while ago... nice big plant, you can't miss it...
do wonders for your electric bill...

[SomeWhatLost]

also, just a fwiw, I have nothing against Synology, as far as I know it is a great box, Grumpy Russian co-worker has one, and he com[plains about everything and even he likes it, so it must be good...

just tossing out options...
Unraid does make a nice "1 box to rule them all" solution...
and since mine is in the crawl space, the "in darkness bind them" is also technically true, if somewhat creepy...
spiders seem to like it too if that helps any...

[IVB]

ok sorry, back to basic question as I'm not quite getting my mind around VMs:

To simplify, lets assume:
- 3 VMs in basement (PlayOn, BlueIris, CQC/SQLServer for the sake of this discussion)
- Zero VMs in main floor (Adobe, Plex)

Step 0: Buy & setup Synology (or unRAID or array solution), move media from basement server to that so I can remove the boot disk.

Step 1: P2V my existing main floor server (it has PlayOn & BlueIris) and put that image file on the Synology. Do not bother P2V'ing the basement server, it has nothing I want. Pretty sure I know where the windows 7 CDs are :-)

Step 2: Remove the basement server boot disk as its no longer needed. Setup ESXi on the USB stick.

Step 3: Point ESXi to the Synology, there's some way to say "hey there's the VM file you'll load"

Step 4: Learn how to load the VM created in step 1.

Step 5: I need a 2nd & 3rd VM. How do I create a new VM with my Win7 license? Or in the future if I buy a Win10 license to put on it?

Also, is there any need for a hard disk on that VMWare host to house the VM/whatever? Or does it load load what it needs from the VM image file stored on Synology, and hit the Synology every time a traditional machine would normally hit its own DriveC?

[IVB]

Unraid does make a nice "1 box to rule them all" solution...

honestly i've had a "1 box to rule them all" with the current basement server. What I learned was that nothing is forever, and either disk space needs will grow or CPU needs will grow. Or something will break. I've held on to this machine for 7 years as its a 12 bay case plus the RocketRAID. I upgraded the mobo/cpu 3 years ago but man that sucked as our entire media library and sagetv was down (pre-streaming days).

One thing I'm learning to like about VMs is the portability, or rather, abstraction from machine death or retirement. If I create a separate NAS vs cpu/processor construct, then I can massively upgrade one without having to worry about destabilizing the other. IE, I was seriously concerned about blowing the raid card during that mobo upgrade.

For a 25% premium i'm tempted to just write the check to Synology and be done with it.

[jkmonroe]

Step 5: I need a 2nd & 3rd VM. How do I create a new VM with my Win7 license? Or in the future if I buy a Win10 license to put on it?

Also, is there any need for a hard disk on that VMWare host to house the VM/whatever? Or does it load load what it needs from the VM image file stored on Synology, and hit the Synology every time a traditional machine would normally hit its own DriveC?

you can literally copy the existing VMDK file and paste it into a new folder, then boot it up. you would change the MAC address in vSphere, and once it boots assign it a new IP address and new name. Then uninstall whatever programs you no longer want.

What I did way back when was made a single base VM, just Windows with no other software installed, and keep a copy of that file so when I need a new machine I can just copy/paste.

if you use iSCSI, then no, there is really no need for any local hard drives at all.

again, get away from the concept of drives. the OS will 'stream' from the Synology to the host for hardware processing.

[jkmonroe]

the thing about a '1 box to rule them all' is the box becomes the holy grail - you keep it running at all costs.

by abstracting out your datastore to something like the Synology, the host hardware is plug-and-play. Want to build a new host machine with the latest technology? Do it, attach the Synology datastore and boot your machines. No need to deal with moving data and drives and reconfiguring your machines from scratch.

and with Synology, when the time comes to upgrade from an 8-bay to a 12-bay rackmount, you can literally move the drives with all of the data intact.

[IVB]

you can literally copy the existing VMDK file and paste it into a new folder, then boot it up. you would change the MAC address in vSphere, and once it boots assign it a new IP address and new name. Then uninstall whatever programs you no longer want.

What I did way back when was made a single base VM, just Windows with no other software installed, and keep a copy of that file so when I need a new machine I can just copy/paste.

if you use iSCSI, then no, there is really no need for any local hard drives at all.

again, get away from the concept of drives. the OS will 'stream' from the Synology to the host for hardware processing.

ah, is that why you recommended an 800GB iSCSI size on the Synology? To give the VMHost room to add stuff?

[jkmonroe]

basically, yes. plus you can do on-the-fly drive expansion if you have the space available to you on the LUN.

[IVB]

So I just realized something: If I install the VMWare viewer on my laptops, I can create a larger VM and effectively turn my "old/slow laptop" into a "faster" laptop since its just a viewer into the server. Is that right?

In which case, I really don't want to dump the $450 on upgrading an old mobo, i'll limp along as long as possible then go get a dual (or quad) xeon whenever funds are available, and go with "dumb client" laptops from now on.

[SomeWhatLost]

honestly i've had a "1 box to rule them all" with the current basement server. What I learned was that nothing is forever, and either disk space needs will grow or CPU needs will grow. Or something will break. I've held on to this machine for 7 years as its a 12 bay case plus the RocketRAID. I upgraded the mobo/cpu 3 years ago but man that sucked as our entire media library and sagetv was down (pre-streaming days).

One thing I'm learning to like about VMs is the portability, or rather, abstraction from machine death or retirement. If I create a separate NAS vs cpu/processor construct, then I can massively upgrade one without having to worry about destabilizing the other. IE, I was seriously concerned about blowing the raid card during that mobo upgrade.

For a 25% premium i'm tempted to just write the check to Synology and be done with it.

unraid doesn't use raid or raid cards, so no chance of blowing them...
I can move all/some of my drives (adapter is irrelevant) along with the usb thumb drive off to another PC/Server and be up and running in as much time as it takes me to move them... unraid is very hardware agnostic...
as far as upgrading storage, that's easy, I have like 18 free bays, just slide a empty disk in....
as for upgrading CPU, I already have a Xeon, what more could you want?
but yea, just move my thumb drive over to a new motherboard with 1 or more new CPU's as long as it has enough HDD ports (or the ability to add more) I am good to go... all unraid cares about is the HDD serial number, as to if it is plugged into the motherboard or to a sas controller/expander or some other add on card does not matter at all... all that unraid cares about is that it can see/talk to the HDD's... makes life so much simpler than your old RAID setup...
fwiw, I still vaguely remember suggesting unraid back then too... you would have been so much better off if you followed my advice back then :tounge