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Itchy feet :-)


psykix

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Soo.. I have a Gen8 running ok using Server 2012 Essentials R2.

 

I've upgraded the cpu to a Xeon 1265LV2 and the RAM to 16Gb.

 

I have the OS on a SSD in the ODD bay, and I have the 4 drives in the bays as a big Drivepool with no redundancy (I'm happy with that, as the files are replaceable) and with scanner running.

 

I'm thinking that 2012 R2 is overkill for what I need (I don't connect any clients to the domain) - it's basically just used as a storage server for Plex, it runs Plex Server, and some other basic apps.

 

Sooo.. I'm thinking of switching to ESXi on a MicroSD and running my current stuff on a Windows 10 VM. This will allow me to create VM's to mess about with when I want Linux or whatever in the future with ease.

 

So my question is, are there any considerations I need to address to move the pool to ESXi? Or do I just present the pool to the Windows 10 VM as is?

 

Will there be any licensing issue?

 

Cheers..

 

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For licensing, if your'e reinstalling, you'll want to deactivate the licenses prior to moving everything over.  Otherwise, you should be fine, and prompted to "transfer" the license as it's different hardware.

 

 

Aside from that, yeah, you'd want to just pass the disks through, and DrivePool won't have any issues with that.

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For licensing, if your'e reinstalling, you'll want to deactivate the licenses prior to moving everything over.  Otherwise, you should be fine, and prompted to "transfer" the license as it's different hardware.

 

 

Aside from that, yeah, you'd want to just pass the disks through, and DrivePool won't have any issues with that.

 

You should have mentioned in my other thread!  LOL

 

"Deactivate the License first" DOH!

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For licensing, if your'e reinstalling, you'll want to deactivate the licenses prior to moving everything over.  Otherwise, you should be fine, and prompted to "transfer" the license as it's different hardware.

 

 

Aside from that, yeah, you'd want to just pass the disks through, and DrivePool won't have any issues with that.

 

I've asked this question in Homeserver forums but decided there would be no harm in repeating myself here!

 

I have 4x4Tb drives, with about 5Tb free. They are all in a DrivePool. No duplication (and I'm happy with that!)

 

Running Server 2012 R2 Essentials atm, but would prefer to ditch that and go Windows 10 on a esxi VM.

 

From doing some reading, it seems I could use RDM to present the drives to the VM? I know that is not ideal, but I don't have enough temporary storage to copy the data elsewhere and then use the drives to create a VMware data store.

 

My other worry is permissions. Will I be able to read the NTFS drives in a Windows 10 VM? Or will I be locked out of them by NTFS permissions?

 

And my final thought was to stay as I am (Server 2012 R2 Essentials) and run Hyper-V on top and run a Windows 10 and pfSense VM within that instead.

 

Cheers!

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ESXi with RDM passthrough of the controller is the best option:

And here is how you do so:

http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/131-how-to-get-smart-data-passed-on-from-esxi-51-host/

 

HyperV can pass through the disks as well (you need to set them as "offline" to be able to do so), but it doesn't pass on SMART data. 

 

 

As for permissions, it really depends on what they're set as.

Worst case, you can always reset the permissions (take ownership, setting "Administrators" as the owner, and change the permissions,  using the "replace child entry" checkbox for both). 

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Ok, I think I am gonna go the ESXi 6 route.

 

Do I uninstall Drivepool first or just deactivate the license? (It's currently running on Server 2012 R2 Essentials and I am going to ditch that and just use Windows 10 since it is basically just a Plex Media Server)

 

Cheers!

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I can answer one of my questions myself!

 

I just deactivated the license, presented the drives using RDM within VMware and all the data is there.

 

However.. noob moment, I have misplaced the email with my activation key in it! I've sent a contact form request, hopefully you'll read it fairly quickly!

 

Cheers!

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For the license, I've already handled that in a ticket.  But yes, you only need to deactivate it.   It then puts the system in an unlicensed state.  

 

And the data drives can be moved to another system at any time. Once you have a licensed copy of DrivePool running on it (or a trial), it will recognize and re-pool the disks.

 

 

 

As for the SMART data, I'm not surprised by that. Normally that's the case.

And I was unaware of the performance hit. Sorry to hear about that.

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