Gaming Server (VM's)

[AustinB]

Hello LTT!

 

Firstly I would like to apologize if this is the completely wrong section kinda thought that Servers would be under networking.

 

So my Question is, If I'm running VM's to desktops and the main server has GPU(s). Will the desktops be able to utilize the GPU power while playing games?

 

 

Thanks

[Vitalius]

Hello LTT!

 

Firstly I would like to apologize if this is the completely wrong section kinda thought that Servers would be under networking.

 

So my Question is, If I'm running VM's to desktops and the main server has GPU(s). Will the desktops be able to utilize the GPU power while playing games?

 

 

Thanks

It entirely depends on what kind of virtualization software you are running.

If it's VirtualBox, the answer is no.

If it's Hyper-V, the answer is "kinda".

If it's ESXi or Linux virtualization, the answer is probably yes.

[sirtoby]

XEN can do PCI passthrough, but it only runs on Linux, BSD and Solaris. It is free (and open source? not shure about that).
@ Vitalius : Do you know how you do it in Hyper-V? Everybody says that it is kind of possible, but nobody wants to tell me why and how

[Atlantisman]

You can do this with ESXi, but the card will only bind to a single VM. You cannot use it across the board.

[Anthony_95]

If you are using ESXI you can, but your CPU and MOTHERBOARD must support vt-d to perform a passthrough. And this has a memory limitation that only let you to allocate 2GB of RAM maximum. In XEN is pretty must the same.  

[Vitalius]

XEN can do PCI passthrough, but it only runs on Linux, BSD and Solaris. It is free (and open source? not shure about that).

@ Vitalius : Do you know how you do it in Hyper-V? Everybody says that it is kind of possible, but nobody wants to tell me why and how

Sadly, no. I only know it's kinda possible. "kinda" meaning "it works, but it's not worth it". 

[madcow]

You could try it on ESXi:

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multi-headed-VMWare-Gaming-Setup-564/

 

This supports more hardware (such as geforce) but you need to work harder:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768&p=1

[sirtoby]

This supports more hardware (such as geforce) but you need to work harder:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=162768&p=1

 

Holy crap, that's epic! I know, what I'm going to do this weekend 

 

EDIT: Why Intel, why? Every Ivy Bridge i5 has support for VT-d. Except the 3570K. What were they thinking of?

[Vitalius]

Holy crap, that's epic! I know, what I'm going to do this weekend 

 

EDIT: Why Intel, why? Every Ivy Bridge i5 has support for VT-d. Except the 3570K. What were they thinking of?

I know that feel all too well bro.

[legopc]

eh i dont know a whole lot about this but you might wanna look into to i/o passthrough