Virtualizing Windows Home Server

[SlimShady]

While trying to come up with a solution for my HTPC needs in my living room, I wondered if it would be possible to run Windows Home Server in a virtualized environment (probably virtualbox) while running Boxee as a frontend on the HTPC at the same time. I wanted to do it this way in order to prevent having to run two separate machines in the living room - one for boxee (or just buying a boxee box) and one for WHS. I also thought about going the NAS route for storage instead of WHS, but WHS just sounds more fun. I like the idea of being able to throw in however many drives of whatever size I want and still have backup if a drive goes.

My idea was that the machine would use Win7 as a host and then run WHS vritualized at startup. My questions/concerns are this -

- How would WHS handle storage (via several additional 1-2TB physical drives) in the virtualized enivronment? Does each physical disc get created as a virtual drive in the VM?

- What happens if something goes with with the drive the VM is housed on? Does that kill the drives in WHS?

- Will Boxee be able grab the media that is being shared from the WHS virtual drives?

I am almost to the point where I may just purchase a PC to run WHS on it, but I like the one PC idea if it is feasible. I am open to any suggestions. Thanks guys.

 

[haileris]

There's another thread on virtualizing WHS, but using Hyper-V. Can virtualbox map to offline drives - that would be my way forward (and essentially how Hyper-V would do it)

I'm not familiar with WHS (or Boxee for that matter!) but it would be a poor system if the loss of the WHS system drive resulted in a total data loss. Obviously irrespective of that statement you should try to backup the WHS VHD often - set aside some space on another disk in the host system and use the now-not-so-wonderful Windows Backup to back it up to the other disk (should be able to snapshot it).

One point I will make is that a large number of disks can get quite loud and quite hot. This is why I prefer a 2 PC approach, one in the living room with components selected for silent running and the other somewhere else hopefully ventilated and out of the way with shed-loads of fans.

Probably didnt help much

2. You are mixing a front end app (Boxee I guess) with a back end app. Again, not famliar with either so hopefully someone here can confirm the kind of machine spec required.

 

[muzzle79]

or you could run boxee on the WHS.

Although I wouldn't recommend that. WHS is solid, i've had one for 2+ years.
WHS in a vm environment isn't the greatest Idea, i've seen it done though. I consider it like firewalls, you can run a test in a VM, but the best performance is from a dedicated solution.

BTW if you have any spare parts WHS isn't too picky on requirements. There are plenty of people here on the forums running it on low end Atom setups.

Also you may want to check out the wegotserved forums.

 

[Dangman]

Unfortunately, Virtualbox doesn't support direct pass-through of the hard drives. Whichbasically means that it's more or less useless for virtualizing WHS. Here's a nother thread on virtualizing WHS:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1557774

Basically, your plan for one box isn't possible.

 

[SpaceHonkey]

People make out virtualization to be harder than it actually is. Download a free copy of VMware Player and try it for yourself. You'll answer all your questions in as long as it takes to install WHS in the VM.

 

[mikey976]

im running server 2008 r2 std i got from dreamspark, running hyper-v
I am running WHS on a 120gb vhd and then have 2x1tb and 2x1.5tb drives passed through to the vm
i have it using 1gb ram and 1 core

server specs are
q6600 @ stock on modded corsair H50
8gb gskill ddr800 ram
Gigabyte p35-ds3r - 8 onboard sata ports
supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 HBA (8 sata ports)

hope this helps

 

[haileris]

People make out virtualization to be harder than it actually is. Download a free copy of VMware Player and try it for yourself. You'll answer all your questions in as long as it takes to install WHS in the VM.

Maybe I am missing something but VMware player allows you to run existing VM's - not to create them?

Not sure anyone is trying to make it sound "hard" at all, but if you have a bunch of unique data you don't want to lose, then it pays to work out exactly what you want to do before you build it? PPPPP and all that.

 

[gimp]

People make out virtualization to be harder than it actually is. Download a free copy of VMware Player and try it for yourself. You'll answer all your questions in as long as it takes to install WHS in the VM.

VMWare Server is free, and will allow you to create a VM.

VMWare player is only for using already created VMs; not for creating new ones.

 

[nessus]

im running server 2008 r2 std i got from dreamspark, running hyper-v
I am running WHS on a 120gb vhd and then have 2x1tb and 2x1.5tb drives passed through to the vm
i have it using 1gb ram and 1 core

server specs are
q6600 @ stock on modded corsair H50
8gb gskill ddr800 ram
Gigabyte p35-ds3r - 8 onboard sata ports
supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 HBA (8 sata ports)

hope this helps

I'm doing something similar to this (Athlon 2 x4 3.0 GHz host, 8 GB of RAM) on a 2k8r2 Hyper-V host.

I have 1 1TB VHD as the OS and first storage partition (I originally was using a 1 TB direct mapped drive as the drive with the first OS and data partition), another 1 TB VHD for a second data partition (I upgraded from a 1 TB drive to a 2 TB drive), 3 direct mapped 2 TB drives, and an additional 1.5 TB direct mapped drive.

I've assigned 1202 MB of RAM (I've added Firefly to stream audio files to my wife's Macs, uTorrent, and a couple of other services) and 1 core. I get about 60 MB/s on sustained copies of large media files and backups of the family media PCs and workstations. Does what I need just fine and I've moved it across a couple of different hosts over time without rebuilding it. Its been together for about 3 years.

I also have 4 other VMs running off of an additional 1 TB drive doing a wide variety of things.

 

[SpaceHonkey]

VMWare player is only for using already created VMs; not for creating new ones.

The new version of VMware Player can create VMs. And you don't have to use the god-awful web interface of VMware Server (which btw if you download ESXi, you can use the VIClient to manage VMware Server).

I understand that you want to do it right the first time, but 20 minutes of experimenting with making a VM is about all you're going to need to learn what will and won't work. You didn't mention doing any sort of P2V so I assumed you're working with fresh data not having to migrate it over or in place. For that you can use VMware Converter.

 

[nitrobass24]

Regardless VMware Player or Server or Workstation for that matter will not do disk pass-through on Win7/server2008.

 

[Vader]

I run the Vail Preview using Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V and passthrough disks. I have no issues at all. Performance is great, etc, it is a Home Server after-all. I stream Blue Ray MKV's handles all my PC backups with ease..etc. The only thing I can't do is Snapshots becuase of using passthrough disks but i'm not too concerned about that really for my home server.

 

[oplin]

I'm doing same thing as Vader with WHS Vail, and I think it works awesome. You can't use a tuner card afaik but that doesn't bother me. Performance is great. Hyper-V is missing a few key features and not a ton of software appliances work out of the box in hyper-v which is frustrating but vail works great.

 

[nitrobass24]

You can use Network based tuners like HDHomeRun and after a firmware update the Ceton Cable Card Tuner will work too.