24/7 VMware + VR Gaming without a Performance Hit??

[Mackerel Ice Cream]

Hey all. What would it take run 24/7 virtualization while VR gaming without dropping performance? I’m looking to run Windows as my host os just for VR gaming and then run a linux box guest as my daily driver and maybe sandbox environment as well? What’s the best way to tackle this? ESXI, I only want one set of monitors and keyboard and mouse. This Option is out then. VMware Workstation, Is guest os multiple monitor support actually working as if it was the host OS? If not, should buy a low end graphic cards just to pass it through? Would that even do anything?

 

Host: Windows 10: VR Gaming
Guest 1: Linux box: Daily Driver
Guest 2: Windows? Linux? Sandbox/Whatever

 

Hardware: [Which CPU will be able to handle this?]
-CPU: 3900x 12/24 @3.8/4.6 Is this overkill? It looks sexy though.
Host: 6Cores 12 Threads
Guest 1: 4Cores 8Threads
Guest 2: 2Cores 4Threads

 

-CPU: 9700K 8/8 @3.6/4.9 Why not just get a 3900x instead? Is 8 threads even enough?
Host: 4Cores 4Threads
Guest 1: 3Cores 2Threads
Guest 2: 1Cores 2Threads

 

-CPU: 3700x 8/16 @3.6/4.4 Is this suitable?
Host: 4Cores 8Threads
Guest 1: 2Cores 6Threads
Guest 2: 2Cores 2Threads

 

-Ram:
G.Skill Tridient 32GB
Host: 20GB
Guest 1: 8GB
Guest 2: 4GB

 

GPU: Given to Host
GPU2: Do I even need a low GPU for the guest OS?

 

HDD: Real world performance won’t be noticeable with SSDs getting pass through the guest OS, right? One SSD for all guest OSes is enough?

 

Monitor Setup: 4 to 5 monitors

 

What do you think about the hardware I have picked out? What needs to be changed out and with what? What about CPUs? Which one will enough power? GPUs? I will definitely overclock my build as well. Parts will need play along with each other nicely.
 

[kompetenzbolzen]

Windows as a host sounds like ... fun

I would personally switch it around, with a linux host as your daily driver and a vm with a passed through gpu. This setup has been done countless times and is probably less troublesome. If you pass an entire USB controller to the windows VM, the VR headset and lighthouses should work.

You would need a seperate GPU for your host regardless if you want to have acceptable graphical performance in your daily-driver system. Those virtual GPUs are not made for heavy use...

 

If you really want to use windows, I would look at Microsoft HyperV or VMWare Player.

 

The hardware requirements heavily depend on what you want to do other than gaming but I'm sure you can run much before it tanks

[Mackerel Ice Cream]

2 minutes ago, kompetenzbolzen said:

Windows as a host sounds like ... fun

I would personally switch it around, with a linux host as your daily driver and a vm with a passed through gpu. This setup has been done countless times and is probably less troublesome. If you pass an entire USB controller to the windows VM, the VR headset and lighthouses should work.

You would need a seperate GPU for your host regardless if you want to have acceptable graphical performance in your daily-driver system. Those virtual GPUs are not made for heavy use...

 

If you really want to use windows, I would look at Microsoft HyperV or VMWare Player.

 

The hardware requirements heavily depend on what you want to do other than gaming but I'm sure you can run much before it tanks

Thanks for the reply. I thought about doing a pass through, but I only want one set of monitors and keyboard and mouse for both the host and guest. I have three monitors now and I will add two more just for one linux box or one windows box. Is there any way to get around this?

[kompetenzbolzen]

If you aren't doing any latency-critical things on one machine, you could use synergy to share mouse and keyboard between multiple systems, the gaming system as host.

Alternatively you could use a USB switcher or even KVM to switch mouse and kbd between the systems.

A KVM could also be used to switch a monitor from linux to windows. Alternatively you could look at stuff like this: https://github.com/gnif/LookingGlass

[Mackerel Ice Cream]

16 hours ago, kompetenzbolzen said:

If you aren't doing any latency-critical things on one machine, you could use synergy to share mouse and keyboard between multiple systems, the gaming system as host.

Alternatively you could use a USB switcher or even KVM to switch mouse and kbd between the systems.

A KVM could also be used to switch a monitor from linux to windows. Alternatively you could look at stuff like this: https://github.com/gnif/LookingGlass

Are you currently using a KVM between multiple machines? I have had issues in the past with them. Any recommendations? What’s your daily driver and are you using a similar setup windows as a guest?

[kompetenzbolzen]

50 minutes ago, lowao said:

Are you currently using a KVM between multiple machines? I have had issues in the past with them. Any recommendations?

No I don't. I used a second input on my main monitor and moved the mouse and keyboard to the passed through USB controller. I only ever did gaming on my windows VM so it didn't bother me.

As for a good KVM, i heard people say that the level1techs KVM addresses some of the most common issues people have with KVMs. I never tried it though so I don't know

57 minutes ago, lowao said:

What’s your daily driver and are you using a similar setup windows as a guest?

I run Arch Linux as a daily driver and used to have a VM with passed through GPU set up but since I completely ditched Windows I now use the second GPU for more screens.

The process is very straight forward (As long as your GPU supports UEFI and your MoBo has sensible IOMMU groups). I followed this guide on the arch-wiki and it pretty much just worked.

If you use a nVidia GPU, you will have to do some light trickery because nVidia is ... not nice...

 

[Mackerel Ice Cream]

36 minutes ago, kompetenzbolzen said:

No I don't. I used a second input on my main monitor and moved the mouse and keyboard to the passed through USB controller. I only ever did gaming on my windows VM so it didn't bother me.

As for a good KVM, i heard people say that the level1techs KVM addresses some of the most common issues people have with KVMs. I never tried it though so I don't know

I run Arch Linux as a daily driver and used to have a VM with passed through GPU set up but since I completely ditched Windows I now use the second GPU for more screens.

The process is very straight forward (As long as your GPU supports UEFI and your MoBo has sensible IOMMU groups). I followed this guide on the arch-wiki and it pretty much just worked.

If you use a nVidia GPU, you will have to do some light trickery because nVidia is ... not nice...

 

I'll look into the KVM video that you provided. Thanks!

What are your opinions on the listed hardware within OP? I'm trying to decide on which CPU to get for 24/7 virtualizing 2x guest OS. Do you think the 3900x is overkill?

[kompetenzbolzen]

23 hours ago, lowao said:

What are your opinions on the listed hardware within OP? I'm trying to decide on which CPU to get for 24/7 virtualizing 2x guest OS. Do you think the 3900x is overkill?

I ran my setup on an i7-5820k with 6C/12T @4.4GHz and it was fine, so the 3900x is probably a bit too much. That said, headroom never hurts and if you decide to add some more VMs later or do some compute heavy stuff while gaming more cores don't hurt. And I wouldn't go intel.

32GB of RAM sounds reasonable (keep in mind tho that RAM isn't as easily shared as compute time)

As for storage, that heavily depends on your SSDs' speed. I would just try it with one at first and add another one later if you need dat bandwidth.

I'm sorry for the vague answers but every workload is different. You will have to do some napkin-math and figure out what exactly you need based on what you want to do. Remember that not enough Compute power is not as punishing as running out of RAM!

[Mackerel Ice Cream]

9 hours ago, kompetenzbolzen said:

I ran my setup on an i7-5820k with 6C/12T @4.4GHz and it was fine, so the 3900x is probably a bit too much. That said, headroom never hurts and if you decide to add some more VMs later or do some compute heavy stuff while gaming more cores don't hurt. And I wouldn't go intel.

32GB of RAM sounds reasonable (keep in mind tho that RAM isn't as easily shared as compute time)

As for storage, that heavily depends on your SSDs' speed. I would just try it with one at first and add another one later if you need dat bandwidth.

I'm sorry for the vague answers but every workload is different. You will have to do some napkin-math and figure out what exactly you need based on what you want to do. Remember that not enough Compute power is not as punishing as running out of RAM!

I wish 9900k had more cores and threads. I would go with 9900k in a heartbeat, because I love the results that the 9900k's benchmarks is getting in gaming. However 24/7 virtualization is a high priority for this build and that is corrupting my final decision.   

 

Your reply is an incredible resource for me, because I'm probably failing with my horrible google-fu over here but I can't find too much information on running a linux guest os as a daily driver. I agree with you regarding the overkill part, but I do plan on throwing as much as possible at that CPU just to see how it handles it. Evil smirk ensures. Would you mind expanding on how RAM isn't as easily shared as compute power/time? From your personal experience with a daily driver guest os, did you notice issues with scrolling through webpages or video playback?

[kompetenzbolzen]

23 hours ago, lowao said:

Would you mind expanding on how RAM isn't as easily shared as compute power/time?

Dynamic RAM allocation for VMs is only semi-possible. You will want to reserve at least some, at best all memory used for your vm because overprovisioning is risky. Compute resources are scheduled. If there are too many tasks, it will just take longer. An out of memory could bring down your VM if the system usage is too high and not enough is reserved for the guest. Your OP suggests that you want to just reserve everything, which is the safest way, but that's just something to keep in mind nonetheless.

 

23 hours ago, lowao said:

 From your personal experience with a daily driver guest os, did you notice issues with scrolling through webpages or video playback?

I used the host as my daily driver. The windows VM felt pretty snappy tho. I never explicitly tried video streaming or browsing but with dedicated graphics hardware and enough cpu horsepower I would presume it to be fine

[Mackerel Ice Cream]

15 hours ago, kompetenzbolzen said:

Dynamic RAM allocation for VMs is only semi-possible. You will want to reserve at least some, at best all memory used for your vm because overprovisioning is risky. Compute resources are scheduled. If there are too many tasks, it will just take longer. An out of memory could bring down your VM if the system usage is too high and not enough is reserved for the guest. Your OP suggests that you want to just reserve everything, which is the safest way, but that's just something to keep in mind nonetheless.

 

I used the host as my daily driver. The windows VM felt pretty snappy tho. I never explicitly tried video streaming or browsing but with dedicated graphics hardware and enough cpu horsepower I would presume it to be fine

Thank you for your replies and information. I appreciate it!

[kompetenzbolzen]

32 minutes ago, lowao said:

Thank you for your replies and information. I appreciate it!

No Problem. Let me know what you end up doing