Hello!
I'm NightLunya, new on LTT forums.
So, I'm currently studying a way to renew some hardware in my current NPO.
Basically, I'm holding a small NPO with goes in manga/anime exhibitions with games and we hold booths there.
If you wonder what kind of games we are running: we display Touhou Project games (and fangames about this universe)
Currently, we bought several used laptops to let public playing the games freely, but we bought used one like 5 years ago. Time goes on, some start to fail but the newer games are just now asking for more ressources, which those PC can't hold anymore (and or just start to break because of their old age)
So, we've started to look at 3 solutions:
- Trying to set a partnership with a manufacturer as sponsor and use our booths to show their products as well (I might post another topic here to ask your advices about how to deal with sponsorship, as I would be excited to work this way instead)
- Renew with used laptops, but newer gen (our current way, but we only replace the broken one to maintain our minimum quota)
- Using our old laptops as "thin client" and setup a centralized server for VM gaming.
This is the 3rd solution we're going to talk about here.
Whatever the solution to take, we run in a very low budget and although our booth is recognized/allowed by the game dev, as it's all into "doujin" spirit, we don't have sponsorship funds about it. So this is something we can't miss at the moment.
Also we live in a country which taking older computer parts in the shops or recycle parcs is stricltly forbidden, unless you are a charity NPO like Oxfam etc.... which is not our case. And the large offices which renew their IT infrastructure doesn't either give away, or if they so, it's to the organism which then redistributes to the charity stuff, etc. So, getting older hardware for free is not really possible (and you know, offices doesn't usually have computer with dedicated GPU, most of the case)
Anyway, so one of the 3 solutions is to setup a gaming VM server.
Now, here's my theory.
I've heard that sharing GPU into several VM isn't possible except using specific cards using SR-IOV technology (basically only a few AMD FirePro does have it, or the Radeon Pro Duo, which is way out of reach) or paying a license and use Nvidia Tesla graphic cards (not even Quadro support this, I think, and as you expect, out of reach either).
An alternative way might be to use PCIe passthrought but i'm not sure if it's applicable on VM.
- If so, how does it works and could it be used to set one GPU on several VMs?
So, we finally found that the only viable solution (for now) is using 1 graphic card by VM.
First, this:
- Using Bi-GPU graphic cards (like R9 285 X2 or Nvidia equivalent): is it able to set only one of the two GPU by VM?
As I heard, splitting GPU resources isn't possible due to PCIe allocation (unless SR-IOV). As the Bi-GPU still on one PCIe, I don't know if this limitation still applies. My goal is to have as many VM as possible (our ideal goal is 16, but our minimum is 8]. Not many peoples still care that much about those GPU nowadays so I guess it's possible to get ones for cheap enough nowadays.
Also, as you might noticed, we are focused on budget and VM. Actually no physical input except network will be plugged in the server (or only basic stuff for monitoring)
As the games requires more ressources but still are low specs required, we won't need a super high hardware requirement (The laptop are basically Vista-era, some are Vista-capable. But it's all entry-tier 10 years old PC at least, half of them are running in integrated board, the other have low-entry dedicated graphics)
I've seen about LTT's video about using Mining graphic card, with modded drivers, being allowed to game with passing through the Integrated GPU of the processor. But in our case, this would be used in a VM instead. As those will be used in VM, I don't care about the missing I/O panel.
So
- Is it possible to use mining, I/O less GPU (which are very cheap compared to standard ones) to use as dedicated GPU, usable in gaming, in VM, with the modded drivers?
The P106-100 is clearly enough for our needs (the current used GPU used ingame are usually Geforce GT210 era or something like that, so a GTX 1060-equivalent is clearly good enough) and maybe I'll contribute to give them a proper second life and avoid e-waste
If yes, then my plan is to basically setup a server with dual socket CPU, set up like 2x8 CPU core /2x16 CPU thread (like old Ivy Bridge or Haswell CPU servers, those are still capable and cheap enough), set up like 48 or 64 GB of RAM and then use all the PCIe x16 lines available (I've seen motherboard with 7 or 8 PCIe x16) and setup a GPU in each of them. The VM will be set with 2 cores/4 threads, 3 or 4 GB of RAM and the dedicated graphic cards, which will be plenty enough.
The server will be in LAN, no Internet (or only for update stuff), so we can setup a Gigabit (or 10 Gbps?) router. We plan to setup 8 VM minimum.
- Minimum requirements for the laptop to be used as thin client ? (because if our old laptops aren't enough to handle this, then there is almost no point to make this project)
- Which storage will I need ? Will SSD mandatory or can we run with HDD in (soft)RAID ? (we expect to use not more than 128 Go per VM)
- Which bandwitch will I need to transfer all data needed to be used in VM (display won't exceed 720p or 900p at 60fps) ? (I expect the motherboard to have 4 integrated Gigabit Ethernet, will it be enough?)
I heard that even a Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) would be enough per client, as everything except input and display will be managed on the server. But I expect a Gigabit will be mandatory.
- Recommended hypervisor OS ? (Windows OS will be used for the VM)
Oh and in overall:
- Is this project totally stupid ? If yes, what are your alternatives ?
- Did I missed critical problem about delay, realistic project, or am I just thinking wrong about it ?
If in case we plan to launch the project, I'll make sure to take lots of pictures or even videos and throw at you
Thank you very much.
Uhhh.... interesting. But can you be more specitic about it? If you can provide some links about those Youtubers (at least a few ones) tried, maybe the hardware used and/or what they mentionned about being garbage at the end? I mean, following the LTT's setup he made several years ago looks very working and it looks like the closest I'd like to setup. Of course, the hardware price setup there is huge but following what could we used now in secondhand, and also we don't focus on that much performance. But I admit I might be careful on the budget side.