On 27/08/2013 17:55, Tanstaafl wrote: > On 2013-08-27 9:03 AM, Alan McKinnon <[email protected]> wrote: >> It's a small image (<100M compressed), so just keep a copy handy >> somewhere and reflash. The GUI has a function where you can backup the >> running config, a restore is a simple matter of click restore in the GUI >> >> The USBstick/CF card you boot off will keep a copy of the current image >> and one version back (i.e. the one the current one replaced), so you can >> boot the old system by pressing F2 if the new one fails for some weird >> reason. > > Crazy question... > > Wondering of I could run this in a VM on my ESXi server? > > Purpose would be threefold... > > hosting windows user homes and roaming profiles > > hosting alternate email storage for dovecot (for mail archival) > > hosting email backups (rsync) > > hmm.... maybe I could even make it primary mail storage? > > Have to give this some thought... >
Many people do just that (for testing and evaluation). ESXi lets you present an image file as a boot device so that's sorted. As always with VMs, IO performance is pretty sucky if you present file-based storage to the guest. It's OK to evaluate and learn the commands with, but for production you really want direct access to proper storage devices. Just make sure your backend storage is NOT itself doing RAID - ZFS doesn't play nicely with that. It really wants a JBOD with no firmware interference. -- Alan McKinnon [email protected]
