A lot of questions of virtualization.

[John_303]

Hey, I am on the verge of making a computer that can 1. Run two Virtual Machines at the same time. and 2. One will be Mac, one will be Windows 10. This project is going to be quite costly, and I need help on a few things before I get to buying parts and potentially losing money. These are the parts that I am going to use for this machine (hopefully they're all easy to understand what they're used for), its a little on the budget side, but thats because I dont want to spend all of my money, It would be great if it was <2500 USD. The way this machine is going to work is my host system Linux Manjaro is going to run MacOS and Windows10. I wish they could all be on at the same time, but I figured out that its better to just turn one (guest) on and the other (guest) off when using them. My first of many questions is

1. How do I safely make one graphics card exclusive to a specific vm? I don't want to screw anything up by trying to use a graphics card on both VMS. So how will I keep them exclusive? Will the host just yoink my stronger graphics cards? because im thinking of either getting a really crappy one (or the integrated one) for the host to run on and I dont know if it will work or not.
2. Will I need to get better components? Because I'm not sure if what Im going to get is capable for this amount of vm weirdness. 
3. How do I pass two graphics cards through to two different Vms? I haven't seen anything myself from scouring the web, and I really need help when it comes to that.
4. Do I need more cores? I heard cores are very important to vms but i think a Ryzen 7 3700x is good, im thinking of switching it to an intel i7 9700k or maybe upgrading, I still dont know.
5. Do I need a better motherboard and case? Ive been pretty much guessing if one goes with the other, because im not an experienced builder by any means.
6. The Mac VM is going to be for Photo/Video editing and the Windows VM is going to be for gaming. How will I evenly allocate certain things to each system without forgetting anything? For example, on the Mac, Heavy rendering and the windows will be doing doing not too hardcore gaming, just things like minecraft, csgo, rocket league. Do I need better parts to get the best experience on each?
7. General question, What is a headless host? what does that do? will it help?
8. Final question. Ive been thinking you need things like 3 mice and 3 keyboards for each vm, is that true? I dont know if there's a way to just have one and move it between each vm or at least two and cycle the second pair between Mac and windows.

[Electronics Wizardy]

I normally suggest just getting 2 systems, or getting a mac and running a vm or dualbooting it. Much easier to work with and less weird issues

 

1. you select the exact vm you give a vm, you give give it to both. There are some issues with shutting down a vm and giving the gpu to anther, amd gpus had a issue with this

 

2. What do you need to do wht the vms?

 

3. Just setup 2 vms, give them differnt pcie devices.

 

4. What do you need to do in the vms, you can do this all on one core, but its gonna be slow.

 

6. You can have them share resources as your proably not gonna be using both at the same time.

 

7. Headless host means no moniotor. You want a 3rd gpu for the linux box if you give it its own monitor.

 

8. KVM switch is your friend if you want to easily switch.

 

 

Id still just get a mac here, and dual boot windows for games, but most of those games you listed will run on linux or osx aswell.

[Snowarch]

headless means using a virtual gpu, no ports. or an adapter to cary. like the p106 would be concidered a headless 1060. 

 

anything can host a vm, but not exactly well.

 

you do not need a mice/kb per vm. depending on the guest vm itll capture the mouse (so only the vm can use it) or you can scroll in and out seamlessly. if it captures depending on what vm soultion you use, youll have set keys to uncapture attached to the vm manager. virtual box is a pretty simple gui virtual machine manager if you wanna just get your feet wet.

 

full gpu pass through is a pain, but yes you'll need 2 gpus for it. one good, and one (can be a weak one) to pass it through to the guest. youll need comand line for that.

 

as for the "do i need to upgrade for this" part, well that depends on some things. do you want this vm to be for gaming or really strong? then youll need spare resources. if you just wanna get your feet wet for now, if you have even a quad core, youll be fine but expect it really slow. 

 

 

edit: didnt see your spec choice. nice,more than enough  but z390 is intel processors only. i think b450 is amd but not sure if that peocessor.

 

i ran a vm on a quadcore celeron before so it is possible easily.

[Snowarch]

@Electronics Wizardy based on the op's questions, hes pretty new to vms.  kvm takes a bit of linux knolage, and commands to make it even comparable to virtual box if gpu passthrough isn't set up yet. also theres a risk of losing host desktop while doing the passthrough, so may want to start with a virtual box, also he didn't say if using windows or linux.

[Nick7]

By your requirements - you need dual boot, not virtualization.

It's much simpler, and it'll work much better.