Best setup for OMV and virtual machine -- Windows 10 as host, or OMV as host?

dawilder · 13. Februar 2016

Howdy folks, beginner here.

I've been running OMV for about 2 years on its own physical NAS setup. I would now like to use that physical machine to run Windows 10 so I can install a few games.

However, I would still like to keep the HDDs that are currently in RAID, and which hold several TBs of data and movies, strictly for that purpose. Is it possible to run OMV as a VM on Windows 10 with W10 as the host, and have all those HDDs in RAID only be used by OMV (outside the VM within Windows on the OS drive). Or should I try to install W10 as the VM using the Virtualbox plugin on OMV?

I have read elsewhere that running Windows as a VM on another host gives very poor performance for games.

I'd appreciate any wisdom folks have to share. Or point me to an existing thread on this subject. Sorry if if this has been answered elsewhere. I searched but couldn't really find a clear answer or instructions on how to creat such a setup. Thank you!

tekkb · 13. Februar 2016

You should really have a bare metal install for both, a real machine for both. With a vm you will not have very much graphics power, not enough for most games. I think you will not even have enough graphics power for all the functionality of Windows 10 in a vm. With OMV you need very little graphics power. If you are not using all the plugins maybe you should look at getting an ARM devices like a RasPberrry Pi 2. You can run either OS with Virtualbox and have the other as a vm. But I don't think you will be happy with this setup.

dawilder · 13. Februar 2016

Thanks much for the insight. You confirmed my suspicion that it wouldn't work well.

And by so doing, you've given me "permission" to build another computer -- my wife will be so happy:)

Thank you, sir!

By the way, really appreciate what you guys do. Helps tinkerers and wannabe computer guys like me do things ourselves without buying off the shelf stuff.

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