Any issues w/ running HS3Pro on a VM?

[tallguydirk]

My existing multipurpose PC:

• mobo- ASRock Z77 Pro3
• cpu- i5 3570k
• gpu- HIS 6570 Silence 2GB DDR3 PCI-E DVI/HDMI/VGA
• RAM- 16GB
• RAID card- 3Ware 9650SE-24M8 24-port
  • 10TB Raid 5 only using 12 disks right now
• OS disk- 320gb SSD
• Win7-64 running the following:
  • Plex (serving anywhere from 0-3 local or remote clients at once, include often transcoding)
  • BlueIris w/ 5 Hikvision 1080p cams @ 20fps
  • HS3Pro

Other than some driver issues it's been running solid for over 3 years. The problem is I'm out of storage space for my ever growing media collection. My plan is to get rid of the hardware RAID in favor of running the latest unRAID, that way I can add another 12 drives for storage. unRAID supports Docker containers which I may use for Plex Media Server, and it also can support VMs. I was going to run BlueIris, Plex Home Theater, and HS3Pro on a win7 VM...or maybe split them up and have them each on their own VM depending on how well things work. I have never actually created or used a VM so that part will be a learning experience but I'm pretty tech savvy so I think I'll be fine.



Does anyone see any issues with this plan? Are there any known issues with running HS3 on a VM? Anything that I should be thinking about going into this to get it all set up right? Anyone else doing this and using unRAID as the hypervisor?



Will I be able to just carry my existing HS3Pro config over to the new installation?

[TeleFragger]

Looks good to me. I am going to have to look at unRaid....

I use StableBit DrivePool and LOVE IT. Best $20 i ever spent.

need to expand your pool... throw a drive in and add it to the pool. so you have a different size drive? no big deal... will allow you to add it and use the full thing anyway...

also you can go into the SW and say.. I want 1 copy of this, 7 copies of this, etc... but it will only do max drives you have. I run 5...

it also houses plex share


im waiting for server 2016 to come out as a prod release.. going to buy new drives and start from scratch and get EVERYTHING to run same as what i have but upgraded...

another thing about SB DrivePool is if machine is down you can remove a drive and access files via hidden share...

[randy]

While not all VMs are the same, I have been running HS3 on a Hyper-v Windows VM under Server2012r2 since I started with it in January 2014. The VM has been fine, albeit a little slower than on a physical machine. This was mitigated somewhat by moving the VM image to an SSD. With Hyper-v Serial and USB connections are really not an option, other VM solutions have varying support for serial connections. I have used only IP connections since the start.

Since VMs are relatively easy to replicate, I use separate VMs for my video security and HS, with the host operating system taking care of file sharing. My media is spread across a number of Synology NAS boxes that support WOL to keep the energy footprint low - currently under 70 watts total for server and standby on the media storage.

[TeleFragger]

nice... and thanks for the point of serial/usb in hyper-v. When 2k16e comes out I was hoping to run HS in a vm but guess ill be running it straight up on the OS

[jlrichar]

USB and serial work OK with ESXI. Server, in VM or not, will have some limitations for multimedia plugins. I get around that by running those on two win 7 machines (one VM, the other physical) that I had setup for other purposes. Server is great for HS due to its far superior uptime compared to desktop OS.

[tallguydirk]

I haven't tried it yet, but apparently with unRAID you can assign specific PCI and USB devices to specific VMs. http://lime-technology.com/forum/ind...?topic=38689.0

[randy]

There are ways to get serial ports with Hyper-v, the most satisfactory method is IP to serial devices.

You also can pipe a couple of com ports to the host machine, but I have had mixed success doing so. It is clumsy at best and sometimes unreliable.

[TeleFragger]

fwiw
i have ran HS in vmware workstation and vmware esxi both with success on usb and serial ports

[reidfo]

My existing multipurpose PC:
unRAID supports Docker containers which I may use for Plex Media Server, and it also can support VMs. I was going to run BlueIris, Plex Home Theater, and HS3Pro on a win7 VM...or maybe split them up and have them each on their own VM depending on how well things work. I have never actually created or used a VM so that part will be a learning experience but I'm pretty tech savvy so I think I'll be fine.

I would highly suggest splitting your applications into separate VMs. One of the benefits of virtualization is that for the most part additional VMs are "nearly free." Separate apps and you ensure they don't interfere with each other, overwrite files, etc. You can also upgrade/replace individual apps without worrying about the others.

Does anyone see any issues with this plan? Are there any known issues with running HS3 on a VM? Anything that I should be thinking about going into this to get it all set up right? Anyone else doing this and using unRAID as the hypervisor?

I haven't used unRAID, but if it's a real VM you should be fine. Docker *might* work, but I haven't ever tried that either. Your biggest challenge with VMs will be hardware connectivity. Some hypervisors support USB and serial pass-through but many don't. Personally I don't do any hardware passthrough and just ensure everything I connect to is accessible over the network.

Will I be able to just carry my existing HS3Pro config over to the new installation?

Yes. Just install HS3 onto the new box (same version as you have already installed). Then just copy your HS3 directory from old box to new VM.

[FastFreddi]

I run HS3 within a Docker container on Synology and it works fine. I'm sure it could be adapted to any platform. The only issue which I think I will be able to work around with the release of Docker 1.12 is that it is not using an IP within my subnet so only forwarded ports with the creation of the container are supported. Have a look http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...ghlight=docker

[wkearney99]

Bear in mind that VMs do not have realtime performance guarantees. One could argue that home automation doesn't "need" realtime performance. Just know that you're not guaranteed to get the same kind of timing when running in a VM, especially if the hypervisor is pushed past the underlying hardware's performance limits.

Just keep it mind.

Me, I find running appliance/infrastructure features like this on their own dedicated hardware goes a long way toward maintaining high reliability. As in, the house doesn't crash when the VM host is offline. It's tempting to want to consolidate a lot of things, but keep the old saying in mind "don't put all your eggs in one basket". With home automation controls you don't want to irritate everyone else in the house because the VM server needed updates...

[Pete]

Today running automation on separate hardware. OS's are Windows Server / Ubuntu Linux

Testing automation on VM's. (use a couple of boxes as pure VM testing boxes).

Current Homeseer 3 Pro is running on Ubuntu 14.04 / 64bit / 16Gb of ram on an iSeries based motherboard. I am using the new dot m type of SATA which is about 1/4 the size of the old mSATA SSD drives.

Box #2 was Zee-2 (Homeseer 3 lite) running on a RPi2 with a Z-Wave GPIO / RTC shim running just fine.

Switched RPi2 (box #2) it to an Xi3 / Xi5A running Ubuntu 16.04 64 bit / 2Gb of RAM on an AMD dual core processor with an mSATA 32Gb card (which I like better than a microSD card) It is about twice the size of an RP2. Left the Z-Wave GPIO card / RTC card in the original RPi2 and remoting the Z-Wave connection to the Xi5A via the network. Works fine such that the old Zee-2 is now really a bit similar to the HS ZNet device.

Also testing the Pine64A/2GB RPi like board. More options and it is faster than the RPi2 (that board is running Ubuntu 16.04 64bit which I like better than Wheezy/Jessie for automation.). That is me and my opinion though.

The above noted still needing Wintel here. So running Oracle Virtual box / MS Server for my MS SAPI speech fonts and have been testing Wintel only Plugins chatting to the main mothership running in Ubuntu Linux. It is working. In addition I have connected a Quatech serial server / Digi USB hub / Digi Edgeport to the Oracle VB instance and it works well. Such that here can run both the base Automation and the VB stuff and both talk just fine to my hardware controllers.

Using three autonomous NAS boxes (4-5-8 drive). Two are using proprietary embedded Linux and one is a home brew running with a standard mITX motherboard / LSI SAS9220-8i SATA card plus 6 SATA ports on the motherboard using FreeNAS today. They are all single purpose NAS boxes. I did recently shut down the 4th NAS box which was 4 drives / 1U / dual PS Wintel server embedded based.

Relating to "don't put all your eggs in one basket"; I am using UPB, X10, Z-Wave and Zigbee for my automation. Working well these days. All environmental sensors; temperature, humidity, PIR's, door switches, driveway sensors, et al are hard wired to the OmniPro 2 which works with the Homeseer 3 HAI plugin these days. Thermostat / Omnistat 2 is serially connected to the OmniPro2 panel. (not in to battery wireless gizmo automation dependencies - that is me).