Baremetal vs ESXi

[nimbu 0]

Hi Guys,

 

So I currently have a HP G8, running a baremetal install of Xpenology. All appears to work fine and dandy other than running out of space! I have a NL54 and some more disks. For my actual usage I dotn really need CPU grunt

 

I am in the process of rebuilding my NL54 and was planning to go baremetal again. I was wondering if there are any real advantages of going the hypervisor route over baremetal?

 

I already have a dedicated box for ESXi VM's so was wondering is there really any advantages over just consolidation by putting my Xpenology builds onto Hypervisiors?

 

Regards,

 

Nims

[bearcat 44]

Good question, and I might say : +1

as I'm in the same "dilemma" as you, trying to decide if I should use my spare N54L baremetal, or virtual.

[knightshade 0]

I went through the dilemma about a year ago.

 

I ultimately decided to go Bare Metal, and I've been happy with the results.

I recall that there were some limitations when going virtual - and as I was dedicating the hardware for NAS purposes, I didn't see a need for the trade off.

 

It will be interesting to see what others have to ad.

[unmesh 0]

You can't get SMART data on your hard drives if you use ESXi.

[icest0rm 0]

if you go bare metal can you still create some VMs inside XPenology with some packages?

I saw that QNAP sw has Qemu for this, but I think I've read somewhere here that for XPenology there's a package to enable virtualization as for Qnap, am I right?

[elmuziko 0]

ESXi doesn't give you SMART data; plus if you use extra hardware drivers can be very tricky.

 

DSM 6 (currently in Beta) will have virtual machine capabilities out of the box meaning when we get our hands on it some time next year we'll have all the benefits of ESXi and none of the drawbacks.

 

I'm a bare metal > ESXi > back to bare metal convert and have no intention of going back to ESXi even though I could really do with a VM. ESXi was a pain in the arse.

[JBark 5]

If you're running bare metal, you can use this VirtualBox package to run VMs.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3497

 

Just scroll to the end to find the post with the most recent package. Works great, I've been using it for the past couple months to run a Windows VM without issue.

[Hellcat 0]

Just my two-penneth on the subject. Whilst all of us on here must have a reasonable computing knowledge to be dabbling with Xpenology, its fair to say that the ESX route is considerably trickier. I have used both and both configs have been pretty much flawless (ESX probably shades it), but remembering my ESX setup when it comes to upgrade time is tough. I'm about to go back to bare metal again (purely as I'm using too much electricity with my ESXi on an HP workstation) and, although I'll lose my other VM's, I wont miss the complexity of raw drive configurations (but maybe that is my age catching me up). Just be prepared for what you are getting into, that's all I am saying as neither route is wrong.

[nimbu 0]

Thanks guys,

 

I decided to stick with bare metal, as well I know it works!

 

Just got it up earlier today with 2 x 3TB and 1 x 6TB IN SHR1. Need to RMA my second 6TB and then I can start shuttling my stuff across.

[b0fh 1]

DSM 6 (currently in Beta) will have virtual machine capabilities out of the box meaning when we get our hands on it some time next year we'll have all the benefits of ESXi and none of the drawbacks.

 

Huh? I may be reading this too literally, but I highly doubt DSM6 will be able to compete with ESXi. It will probably work well for simple linux installs, but I don't believe it will fit the bill for people who are running more than a VM or two on their network.

[b0fh 1]

DSM 6 (currently in Beta) will have virtual machine capabilities out of the box meaning when we get our hands on it some time next year we'll have all the benefits of ESXi and none of the drawbacks.

 

Huh? I may be reading this too literally, but I highly doubt DSM6 will be able to compete with ESXi. It will probably work well for simple linux installs, but I don't believe it will fit the bill for people who are running more than a VM or two on their network.