Is it worth putting a home NAS on a virtual machine?

Question

NAS

Good day everyone. In general, I want to build a new server for my home. It will have ubuntu, samba ball (photos, distro movies), torrent, DLNA, ivideon server, unifi controller. Raid adapter ASR-2405, 2 mirrors for 2TB and 1TB. There is a simple computer, 16GB of RAM, 1151 i3 sockets. So I'm thinking of just putting the system on a live one, or sticking ESXI on a computer and raising a virtual machine under a media server in it? And if you put a server on a virtual machine, then use a virtual disk for file storage, or throw a physical one into the virtual machine?

Answer 1

Oh, well, this is a dialectical question, you can install a virtual machine on a NAS, and a NAS on a virtual machine)
It will be fashionable and modern to install ESXi and install a separate OS for each service in it, it will be as reliable and fault-tolerant as possible, and most importantly flexible, you can add something else without risking breaking existing services. At the same time, losses for virtualization are extremely small (when using modern hardware)
BUT! The dual-core antediluvian i3 is not about that at all, you need at least 8 threads, not TWO (I personally have a similar config running on a 12-core zeon and a Chinese mobo)
On the other hand, looking at what expensive "proprietary" NAS do (all sorts of bottom-mounted celerons or single-core arms), then i3 looks like a real heavyweight, and of course it will pull out the task, but you can’t say anything about flexibility and expandability

then use a virtual disk for file storage, or throw a physical one into the virtual machine?

ESXi by design is sharpened for the use of external storage, the option with virtual disks is "for the poor" in the event of a hypervisor crash, it will not be possible to extract information from them by copy-pasting, you will have to remove, mount, etc., etc. The correct solution for such a system is to throw the entire ride controller inside the VM (you will have to pay for this with a part of the functionality, but this is not essential)

Answer 2

depends on the chosen NAS solution,
look at openmediavault - it's good, if you can plug in an ivideon server, a unifi controller nearby, you will get a very convenient solution.
Recently I solved a similar problem in the proxmox + openmediavault bundle (virtualization was more important for me and I ended up throwing out openmediavault: D and made zfs, nfs, smb on the host, and dlna, torrents - separately on the virtual machine through the network share from the host work)