Limbo Virtual Machines

[ion4Rayn]

So i was thinking, if you got a super overkill rig could you run multiple of the same game at the same time by running a virtual machine and in that machine run a game like diablo 3 or something, then running in that machine anther machine and again it playing diablo 3 and so on and so forth, is this possible? and if so could you make a USB and a display port of some kind (VGA, HDMI, etc.) run only on only a specific virtual machine so that you and say 6 friends could be playing diablo 3 or some game at the same time on the same computer? kinda long stretched i know and there wouldn't be much use for something along the lines of this but is it still possible? thanks

[seabass9990]

Specs would be cool so we know how super overkill it is...

[ion4Rayn]

Specs would be cool so we know how super overkill it is...

as overkill as it gets, 2xsli titan z, i7 extreme, 64gb memory @3100, etc, the point isnt how overkill it is the point is if its possible cuz im not planning on doing this im just wondering

[MrBucket101]

You would need to use ESXi w/ hardware passthrough so that each VM gets a dedicated GPU. Otherwise you would be stuck using a virtual gpu w/ 128mb of vram, 3d hardware acceleration might work, but it's kinda shitty.

 

8-core xeon, workstation motherboard (ESXi compatible), and 16GB of RAM. Then I would get 4 low-end graphics cards. The bare minimum to run the game would be my suggestion.

 

You could create 4 virtual machines; each VM would get 2 physical cores and 4GB of memory, along with a dedicated gpu.

Get a 4-port KVM switch and 4 monitors. This way you could control each of the 4 VM's with one keyboard and mouse.

 

The alternative would be to use remote desktop, but that wouldn't look that great.

[Crabtr]

You definitely could do this but it wouldn't be practical at all for gaming, at least not right now. Even if you're using GPU pass-through (which is still very knew, mind you) for every VM there's still going to be a decent amount of overheard which will really hamper the experience of whoever's using it. With a super over-kill system and the right setup I think a lot of the issues would be made very minimal though. This actually sounds like a really fun project to try out. 

[ion4Rayn]

You would need to use ESXi w/ hardware passthrough so that each VM gets a dedicated GPU. Otherwise you would be stuck using a virtual gpu w/ 128mb of vram, 3d hardware acceleration might work, but it's kinda shitty.

 

8-core xeon, workstation motherboard (ESXi compatible), and 16GB of RAM. Then I would get 4 low-end graphics cards. The bare minimum to run the game would be my suggestion.

 

You could create 4 virtual machines; each VM would get 2 physical cores and 4GB of memory, along with a dedicated gpu.

Get a 4-port KVM switch and 4 monitors. This way you could control each of the 4 VM's with one keyboard and mouse.

 

The alternative would be to use remote desktop, but that wouldn't look that great.

so your saying this could work?

[ion4Rayn]

wow... thanks guys, i didnt think it could work what so ever... i just thought i had a long stretched theory, thanks! now i do want to try it... to much money though... oh well

[madcow]

I have a working example of this using KVM that I'm using now although I only have one GPU that I'm passing into a guest. Gaming performance on Windows is good but as mentioned there is a noticeable overhead. Windows support for KVM generally seems to not be quite there. It definitely underperforms compared to Linux guests. ESX may not have this problem.

 

In theory you can add in as many GPUs as the hardware will support and pass each into a guest. You can also assign individual USB devices (input and possibly sound devices) to guests for a full desktop experience.

 

You can use desktop parts as opposed to server parts for KVM but VT-d support on the CPU and motherboard is required.