Unraid USB Controller Passthrough - VM hot swap USB

For the longest time, I have been running VMs on my Unraid server and had the need to passthrough USB devices. I will be the first to admit that I have too many computers and a shrink might classify it as an addition. Coupled with my quest for a clutter-free desk, I have been faced with the issue of swapping USB devices like a keyboard and mouse, from one machine to another Unraid virtual machine (vm). ...

March 3, 2021 · 3 min · Tom

How to pass through a drive to a UNRAID VM

I recently migrated my ‘physical’ Windows 10 desktop to a ‘virtual’ machine running under UNRAID (libvert). This is a quick guide on how I was able to use my existing installation on a SSD and pass it through to a VM. Why passthrough a drive to a VM? In some cases, it might be beneficial to start from scratch when creating a Windows 10 VM on UNRAID, creating a new virtual disk and having a fresh install. I chose to take an alternative path because I was contempt with my Windows install as it was. I had my Steam/Epic Games library downloaded onto one of the two disks already in the system and a number of applications installed and configured just the way I like them. ...

December 12, 2020 · 3 min · Tom

Backup Nextcloud with RCLONE

I’ve made previous posts about backing cloud services with RCLONE – Backup Google Photos with Rclone – and this post will detail how to backup a self-hosted cloud service, Nextcloud. Get started with Nextcloud There are a lot of benefits to running your own private ‘cloud’ storage system, but for me, my top concern is privacy and Nextcloud gives me the ability to take accountability for my own data. With this in mind, I am conscious of my Nextcloud server going offline or suffering data loss, so I want a way to create 1 or more backups of my datacentre hosted, Nextcloud data on my home NAS. ...

February 27, 2020 · 2 min · Tom

Convert an ESXi VM to UNRAID KVM with qume-img convert

Here’s a quick guide on how to convert ESXi VMs to and UNRAID KVM virtual machine – it’s a simple process but a minefield to navigate on searches and forums. I currently have a windows 10 VM running on an ESXi server (vmdk) which I want to migrate to my UNRAID server which uses KVM to host VMs. The vmdk file is unfortunately thick provisioned, so I have had to do some disk juggling, due to my limited amount of available of space on my array. ...

February 3, 2020 · 3 min · Tom