Help, I can’t see the wood for the trees. Anything beyond running a VM locally on my desktop is new territory for me. I think I may need to expand from that, though have no idea what.
I would appreciate any and all advice. My main question is: surely there is a better way to do what I currently do?
I run a couple of VMWare based Windows VMs locally on my desktop. I think I would like to add a NAS to my home network. If I’m doing that, do I go further and actually build a home server, which could then host the VMs instead? (home servers is a new, and still very scary concept to me)
I currently have a single windows PC (AMD 5900x, 64 gb ram, 3080ti, 3x 2tb ssds gen4 (one of the ssds dedicated to the VMs), gigabyte Aorus Master x570).
Use cases are:
host system to run several windows guest vms through VMware workstation 17 pro. Each guest is a fully functional windows environment
guest vms mainly run office applications, some light database work
host system is also used for gaming
Ideally, I’d graduate to running discrete tasks in separate VMs, also on the personal side (separate VMs for gaming/personal admin…, though again, is that more hassle than it’s worth?). I have tried running gaming through a guest VM on my local machine but the results were poor.
My thanks in advance. Even just guidance in what I should go and read.
There are a myriad of options, as you pointed out. I would suggest you think about:
Are there services that you need running 24/7? Or are you just planning to use the VMs when you are actually on your computer? Low power server works great for the former, VMWare guests are good for the latter. Keep in mind that servers are commonly on all the time, using up electricity and generating heat and noise but that can be minimized by hardware selection and placement.
What will you be using the NAS for? Backups? File sharing among several computers? Remote dedicated disks for specific VMs?
How much time/money do you want to dedicate to the task? If you love tinkering around, setting up configurations and performing hardware and software maintenance, home servers can be fun. If not, perhaps a plug-and-play NAS solution like Synology or QNAP might work better for you.
Hey @axavio thank you so much for the questions and prompts.
The VMs I run only need to be accessible when I’m actually at my desk. Any VM based data that needs to be remotely accessible is already linked to cloud based storage solutions.
The NAS would certainly be used for remote dedicated disks for specific VMs, serve as a local back up system.
At the moment, we don’t have shared storage as a family. Not entirely sure I’d need a media server at this time, though could see the use of it for the family in the medium to long term.
As for the last point, I’m happy to invest, both in hardware and in acquiring new skills. However, as I currently don’t have any absolutely necessity for server style systems, as you mention an off the shelf SSD NAS (assume a flash? NAS would be required for responsive VMs?) would be a better first step.
There is a niggle though, the conflict between needing, the sensible approach, and wanting things to tinker with and swear at when they don’t work.
The easiest answer is: no NAS, home server, extra hardware is necessary. The majority of people are currently well served with a selection of cloud services. It sounds like you’re currently in that boat.
Most folks on this forum invest time and money into a NAS setup to accomplish one or more items on the following non-comprehensive list
acquire new IT skills (aka hobby system admin). It sound like at this point this is something you’d rather avoid
simply learn more about how certain technology works. This can be done for a couple of bucks using cloud compute services - there are many around AWS is the biggest. OTOH, some people rather learn on their own devices.
improve privacy. Many online services today are funded by collecting information about their users and selling that data (in aggregated or not-so-aggregated form). There are a bunch of contributors here that try to minimize the amount of data shared about them. That can be accomplished by running a set of services locally using non-chatty software. Obviously, this requires local hw and the skills to setup and maintain such services.
extend existing setup. Once you operate a number of VMs the hw resources required extend the capabilities of the current system. VMs even consume non-trivial amounts of storage space when turned off. At some point even the beefiest computer will run out of ways to extend capacity (compute, storage, whatever)
Actually, if your use of virtual machines is mostly temporary in nature and data is shared in cloud services, this is a very efficient setup. Nothing wrong here.
The question here is: why? cost savings? performance (faster access to data)? privacy? …? There is obviously no wrong answer. But I think understanding one’s own motivation helps a lot with justifying investments (time and money) for your own benefit and maybe to other parties (SO, family).
An answer to the “why” question will also help determining the scope of your endeavor.
I think I can say that anyone using computers has probably lost data in their life time.
A NAS that holds valuable data is pretty vulnerable. Such a setup requires a reliable backup (3-2-1 rule). Maybe not on day one, but shortly thereafter.
OTOH a digital playground probably does not.
Another aspect of self hosting are on-going costs. One is the power consumed by the devices running, another may be incremental costs as components of your setup get upgraded or need to be replaced due to failure.
Several people on this forum have gone down the rabbit hole of self hosting only to discover that all the cool tech that is now running at home is consuming a non-trivial amount of power and as a result require more than a coffee-budget to pay for (I certainly am guilty).
You can find lots of info about any of the above mentioned aspects of self-hosting on this forum, on the level1 youtube channels (which may have guided you to this forum).
Let’s try to get more specific for better guidance.
Hey @jode, thank you very much for the thought provoking response. I must admit that my thinking has been rather fluffy on this subject and this discussion is very helpful in cutting through some of that.
As you, rightly, surmise, the VMs I use for work purposes work, run and stored locally on my desktop. However, that would leave me with the status quo. Satisfying financially, but a missed opportunity to learn more about virtualisation and the possibilities of what one might do with a more complex home network.
I would very much like to offload the data, and in future maybe also the entire process to another machine. Ideally, that machine could be placed in the basement or another suitable location, and then accessed via the local network, reducing the need for my current beefy desktop to be present in my home office. Now, there might be intermediate stages to this. Keeping my current desktop in my home office but separating that from being responsible for running the work related VMs, maybe?
It is, probably, a project in danger of being frivolous.
My current setup works, as was pointed out previously. It is broadly stable, bar an odd hiccup where audio/video in the guest VMs stutters horribly depending on what headphones I’m using, and VMware continues to have issues with passing through USB3 peripherals as well as hardware graphic acceleration. Immensely frustrating at times, but mostly functional.
Always-on NAS, primarily hosting VM data, for work purposes.
→ Relatively fast network (10g or faster) required
→ Low power setup ok in the short term, but with the option for upgrade in the future
→ Future (end-) stage could/should run on hw capable of functioning as VM host.
From the software side I think this is the time to start looking into (open source?) tech that easily allows migrating VMs (e.g. proxmox). Also, depending on your workloads, software that treats workloads as services that can be orchestrated across hardware (Kubernetes, e.g. TrueNAS Scale).
Imagine having a NAS that hosts your apps, but can migrate them or distribute loads onto additional machines (e.g. beefy Desktop) as they come online. Home cloud. Maybe that’s a step too far, at least in the short term.
Pretty much sums up that the lines between NAS and “Home Server” are becoming ever more blurry and don’t need to break the bank to play around with some cool tech.
