Single PC, multiple VM's at the same time

[uzivkovic97]

Hi everyone.
As the title says, Is there any virtualization software I can use to run multiple OS's at the same time on one PC? I use POP OS Linux on daily basis, but I also need Win XP for some ancient software as well as Win 10/11. I'd also want to try Hackintosh just to see what it looks like. 

 

Also, I game on linux so i will be passing my rx 470 through on Linux machine only, the rest of VM's can run on iGPU where I don't care much for performance of Win VM's.

 

Is there a way I can use let's say Proxmox (or sth similar) on my desktop pc, and install multiple vm's and use them directly from that pc? I have 3 monitors and would like to use one OS per monitor. 

I'm pretty new when it comes to Virtual Machines (only used virtualbox). It would be much appreciated if anyone point me into the right direction.

Already tried googling it, but wasn't lucky enough to find answer since English is not my native language.

Thanks everyone in advance.

[Levent]

7 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

I have 3 monitors and would like to use one OS per monitor. 

That wont work, you would need 3 different graphics cards.

[uzivkovic97]

1 minute ago, Levent said:

That wont work, you would need 3 different graphics cards.

Okay, I can buy some cheap gpu's. But is there any software for my problem?

[thevictor390]

You can just run them in VMWare or VirtualBox under your preferred "main" OS, i.e. the one you want to use for gaming. They won't perfectly confine themselves to each monitor but you can fullscreen them.

[uzivkovic97]

9 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

You can just run them in VMWare or VirtualBox under your preferred "main" OS, i.e. the one you want to use for gaming. They won't perfectly confine themselves to each monitor but you can fullscreen them.

I could do that as well, but I was wondering is there any virtualization software that can allow me to use different OS's without having to run my main OS and then fire up virtualbox and then fire up second and third OS.
Also, as far as I'm aware, GPU passthrough is not a thing in VirtualBox.

[TheLANguy]

1 hour ago, uzivkovic97 said:

Is there any virtualization software I can use to run multiple OS's at the same time on one PC? I use POP OS Linux on daily basis, but I also need Win XP for some ancient software as well as Win 10/11. I'd also want to try Hackintosh just to see what it looks like. 

 

Also, I game on linux so i will be passing my rx 470 through on Linux machine only, the rest of VM's can run on iGPU where I don't care much for performance of Win VM's.

 

Is there a way I can use let's say Proxmox (or sth similar) on my desktop pc, and install multiple vm's and use them directly from that pc? I have 3 monitors and would like to use one OS per monitor. 

30 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

Also, as far as I'm aware, GPU passthrough is not a thing in VirtualBox.

 

QEMU/KVM has good passthrough. 

[uzivkovic97]

1 hour ago, TheLANguy said:

 

QEMU/KVM has good passthrough. 

I'll give it a try. 

But... Is there a piece of software like proxmox which can be installed on bare metal?
I'm not sure I'm explaining it well but let's try again.

 

Example:
PC -> Proxmox -> Multiple OS (Win XP, Win 10, Linux and maybe Hackintosh)

And I'd like to use multiple OS on the same machine I installed Proxmox (Or whatever is availible), and not through web browser on different pc.

I'm not sure if I can do the thing above with Proxmox, that's why I'm asking if that's possible with Proxmox or any other software.
I'd also like to try and run PiHole and some other stuff in background on a separate VM without GUI.

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, uzivkovic97 said:

I'll give it a try. 

But... Is there a piece of software like proxmox which can be installed on bare metal?
I'm not sure I'm explaining it well but let's try again.

 

Example:
PC -> Proxmox -> Multiple OS (Win XP, Win 10, Linux and maybe Hackintosh)

And I'd like to use multiple OS on the same machine I installed Proxmox (Or whatever is availible), and not through web browser on different pc.

I'm not sure if I can do the thing above with Proxmox, that's why I'm asking if that's possible with Proxmox or any other software.
I'd also like to try and run PiHole and some other stuff in background on a separate VM without GUI.

Yes, that is what proxmox does.

 

However, unless you have enterprise hardware with lots of pcie lanes, you are not going to be using multiple gpu's in a system.

[uzivkovic97]

48 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Yes, that is what proxmox does.

 

However, unless you have enterprise hardware with lots of pcie lanes, you are not going to be using multiple gpu's in a system.

I haven't seen any guide on how to do that with Proxmox. I know its possible with Unraid, however I don't feel like buying it right now.

When it comes to hardware, there is a one used workstation near me which is for sale and I'll probably buy it if I manage to solve software problem (which hypervisor to use) because I'd like to plug monitors into the tower and pc and mouse and use them that way (I'll figure out how to configure it) and not to access them from web browser on different machine or sth like that.

 

Specs for machine I'm looking to buy are:

Threadripper 3970x
ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha
64GB (4x16) Some Kingston 3200MT/s CL 16
RTX 3090
2x2TB P4500
Antec Platinum 1200W

(There is a custom water cooling loop for the CPU and GPU with all EK parts)

I think I can achieve 3 working VMs with this hardware (I'd swap 3090 for some AMD gpu cuz of Linux) and will add 2 more gpus which can work in x16 and x8 for Windows VMs I think.

[Blue4130]

12 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

I haven't seen any guide on how to do that with Proxmox. I know its possible with Unraid, however I don't feel like buying it right now.

When it comes to hardware, there is a one used workstation near me which is for sale and I'll probably buy it if I manage to solve software problem (which hypervisor to use) because I'd like to plug monitors into the tower and pc and mouse and use them that way (I'll figure out how to configure it) and not to access them from web browser on different machine or sth like that.

 

Specs for machine I'm looking to buy are:

Threadripper 3970x
ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha
64GB (4x16) Some Kingston 3200MT/s CL 16
RTX 3090
2x2TB P4500
Antec Platinum 1200W

(There is a custom water cooling loop for the CPU and GPU with all EK parts)

I think I can achieve 3 working VMs with this hardware (I'd swap 3090 for some AMD gpu cuz of Linux) and will add 2 more gpus which can work in x16 and x8 for Windows VMs I think.

Unless I am not understanding you, that is proxmox VE's sole reason for being, to host VMs

[uzivkovic97]

2 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Unless I am not understanding you, that is proxmox VE's sole reason for being, to host VMs

I know I sound really stupid but that's because of me not knowing how to put sentence together in English 
I'll do my best to try and explain now.

Let's say I installed Proxmox on Above mentioned TR Workstation and after that I installed Linux and Win 10. 
So, I connect 2 monitors to two different GPUs in the Workstation and assign one for each VM. 
My question is (If Proxmox is used) how the heck I start Linux and Win10 VMs and get a display output on both monitors?

I haven't seen anyone do such a thing with Proxmox.

I've seen Linus built "2 gaming rigs 1 tower" but that build (and the rest of his VM builds I've seen) was with Unraid.

I want to try with free software (Such as Proxmox) and thinker around a little bit to get more familiar with Virtualization and then if needed I would buy Unraid  and set it properly.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, uzivkovic97 said:

 

Also, I game on linux so i will be passing my rx 470 through on Linux machine only, the rest of VM's can run on iGPU where I don't care much for performance of Win VM's.

 

You can only paravirtualize a shared hardware resource. Generally though, forget about running games in a VM.

 

Assuming you can get the OS and the game to run, you will still run into problems with relative mouse positions. The way around this is to physically isolate one USB hub to each virtual machine, so you can have a mouse/joystick for each screen.

 

But at the same time, I don't think this is worth the effort. At some point you have to recognize that running a Windows 95/98/XP VM to run games is a foolish exercise and should only be resorted to if you can't get WINE/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/releases to function.

 

Hackintosh, likewise is a bit of a pain in the butt and not worth the effort. You can virtualize it, but getting software to run inside it in an GPU accelerated way is exceedingly difficult.

 

Basically you should not use Virtulization for playing games if you can avoid it. Even playing android games using HAXM is often excessively disappointing, as usually you end up with glitchy rendering and poor performance for things that are more complicated than a PS1 title.

[uzivkovic97]

16 minutes ago, Kisai said:

You can only paravirtualize a shared hardware resource. Generally though, forget about running games in a VM.

 

Assuming you can get the OS and the game to run, you will still run into problems with relative mouse positions. The way around this is to physically isolate one USB hub to each virtual machine, so you can have a mouse/joystick for each screen.

 

But at the same time, I don't think this is worth the effort. At some point you have to recognize that running a Windows 95/98/XP VM to run games is a foolish exercise and should only be resorted to if you can't get WINE/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/releases to function.

 

Hackintosh, likewise is a bit of a pain in the butt and not worth the effort. You can virtualize it, but getting software to run inside it in an GPU accelerated way is exceedingly difficult.

 

Basically you should not use Virtulization for playing games if you can avoid it. Even playing android games using HAXM is often excessively disappointing, as usually you end up with glitchy rendering and poor performance for things that are more complicated than a PS1 title.

When it comes to games, I only play Overwatch 2 ocassionally, so I'm not that concerned if it'll run smooth or not. If yes, great, if no, I guess I won't be playing it. 
I guess I could buy PCI USB extension card which could be used for linux and ''gaming''.

I need Win XP to run some really old software related to my work, not to play games.
 

As for Hackintosh, I'd only like to try it and see how it works because I've never had chance to try any Mac OS based Laptop/Desktop. I don't really care about it much.

To sumarize my needs, I need:
- Win XP for only 1 piece of software that I use everyday and that's it.
- Win 10 for MS Office only (Word and Excel) because I can't get used to open source alternatives
- Pop OS Linux is my daily driver for surfing the web and playing OW 2
- Hackintosh can run or not, I don't really care, just want to see if I can get it to work good enough just to try it out.

This project I want to do is more for learning purposes because I want to learn more about Virtualization and what all can be done with it. 
I'm currently running Win XP on some old IBM ThinkPad and Pop OS on my main desktop with Win 10 VM inside. It doesn't bother me but I want to upgrade my main PC so I thought I'll probably upgrade to TR 3970x and try to use its potential fully, suited to my needs of course.

[Kisai]

18 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

When it comes to games, I only play Overwatch 2 ocassionally, so I'm not that concerned if it'll run smooth or not. If yes, great, if no, I guess I won't be playing it. 
I guess I could buy PCI USB extension card which could be used for linux and ''gaming''.

 

Basically if you want to play games inside a VM, you need to have a separate "USB" mouse and joystick to avoid the host OS translating it. The Keyboard will usually be fine.

 

18 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

I need Win XP to run some really old software related to my work, not to play games.
 

If you're only using it for application, then I would see about trying to make it work under Windows 10/11's compatibility mode first. Or with WINE. If it only works under XP because of driver BS, then you'll need the separate USB expansion card to isolate it.

 

18 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

As for Hackintosh, I'd only like to try it and see how it works because I've never had chance to try any Mac OS based Laptop/Desktop. I don't really care about it much.

Trust me when I say this, Hackintosh on bare metal, works fine to a point, under a virtual machine it tends to work in unsatisfactory ways due to needing a real GPU, the same reason Vista/7 needs a GPU. The desktop compositing demands it. A paravirtualized GPU will have such extremely impaired performance that it will not be a pleasant experience.

 

In general, if you just want to learn about it, go nuts, but you will not enjoy it. It either has to be a full PC, or a Mac-on-Mac experience, in which the latter virtualizes Windows and Linux.

 

Now, "can I use the same KVM across all my devices"

 

Yes. It also tends to be terrible for games. So what I used to do when I was playing with the Hackintosh (in between the actual MacMini's), I think the program I used at the time was called "Synergy", which basically acts as a IP KVM. That is one way around the relative mouse cursor problem as well. So your VM might output on the iGPU plugged into a monitor, but you use the KVM software to actually make it seamless between the two screens that are acting as two computers. This also of course works when it's two physical computers.

 

Basically, if you aren't trying to play games in the VM, resort to RDP/VNC type of remote access to the device if it doesn't have a real GPU , because it's going to be taking "screen shots" to act as a remote desktop anyway.

 

[uzivkovic97]

54 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Basically if you want to play games inside a VM, you need to have a separate "USB" mouse and joystick to avoid the host OS translating it. The Keyboard will usually be fine.

 

If you're only using it for application, then I would see about trying to make it work under Windows 10/11's compatibility mode first. Or with WINE. If it only works under XP because of driver BS, then you'll need the separate USB expansion card to isolate it.

 

Trust me when I say this, Hackintosh on bare metal, works fine to a point, under a virtual machine it tends to work in unsatisfactory ways due to needing a real GPU, the same reason Vista/7 needs a GPU. The desktop compositing demands it. A paravirtualized GPU will have such extremely impaired performance that it will not be a pleasant experience.

 

In general, if you just want to learn about it, go nuts, but you will not enjoy it. It either has to be a full PC, or a Mac-on-Mac experience, in which the latter virtualizes Windows and Linux.

 

Now, "can I use the same KVM across all my devices"

 

Yes. It also tends to be terrible for games. So what I used to do when I was playing with the Hackintosh (in between the actual MacMini's), I think the program I used at the time was called "Synergy", which basically acts as a IP KVM. That is one way around the relative mouse cursor problem as well. So your VM might output on the iGPU plugged into a monitor, but you use the KVM software to actually make it seamless between the two screens that are acting as two computers. This also of course works when it's two physical computers.

 

Basically, if you aren't trying to play games in the VM, resort to RDP/VNC type of remote access to the device if it doesn't have a real GPU , because it's going to be taking "screen shots" to act as a remote desktop anyway.

 

I'm aware of most of the problems u mentioned, but I still haven't got an answer.
In Linus' video "2 gaming rigs 1 tower" he uses Unraid to make that happen. Is there any other free Hypervisor except from Unraid that can make the same thing happen?
I know only of Proxmox but I'm not sure if Proxmox can do the same because I haven't found any video of it.

I don't want to buy Unraid at the moment because I first want to try it out on some free software to learn a little bit first and see how everything works. 

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, uzivkovic97 said:

I'm aware of most of the problems u mentioned, but I still haven't got an answer.
In Linus' video "2 gaming rigs 1 tower" he uses Unraid to make that happen. Is there any other free Hypervisor except from Unraid that can make the same thing happen?
I know only of Proxmox but I'm not sure if Proxmox can do the same because I haven't found any video of it.

I don't want to buy Unraid at the moment because I first want to try it out on some free software to learn a little bit first and see how everything works. 

As I said, YES proxmox can do it. It's free, just try it out.

[uzivkovic97]

2 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

As I said, YES proxmox can do it. It's free, just try it out.

I'll give it a try. I only hope I can manage to get video output on the same machine Proxmox/VMs are installed (I haven't seen any video of people doing such a thing)

[Blue4130]

47 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

I'll give it a try. I only hope I can manage to get video output on the same machine Proxmox/VMs are installed (I haven't seen any video of people doing such a thing)

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/vms-output-to-attached-monitor.75117/

 

First google search and a proxmox staff leads one to believe that it is possible.

 

https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/physical-gpu-passthrough-to-vm-seems-to-be-working-but-guests-output-only-to-virtio-gpu/16146/4

 

And another one.

[uzivkovic97]

32 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/vms-output-to-attached-monitor.75117/

 

First google search and a proxmox staff leads one to believe that it is possible.

 

https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/t/physical-gpu-passthrough-to-vm-seems-to-be-working-but-guests-output-only-to-virtio-gpu/16146/4

 

And another one.

Thank you very much for helping me.

 

I guess I haven't found anything on google myself simply because I didn't know how to put the sentence together in English to get such results.

 

I'll give Proxmox a try on my current PC with one VM just to confirm and if everything goes good, I'll proceed to buy above mentioned Workstation and try to set everything up.

 

Thank you one more time.

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, uzivkovic97 said:

Thank you very much for helping me.

 

I guess I haven't found anything on google myself simply because I didn't know how to put the sentence together in English to get such results.

 

I'll give Proxmox a try on my current PC with one VM just to confirm and if everything goes good, I'll proceed to buy above mentioned Workstation and try to set everything up.

 

Thank you one more time.

Hope it all works out. Update the post with your results.

[igormp]

16 hours ago, uzivkovic97 said:

PC -> Proxmox -> Multiple OS (Win XP, Win 10, Linux and maybe Hackintosh)

Any reason not have your actual daily OS as the host system instead?

PC -> Host Linux OS with KVM (the one you also use to play games and do your daily stuff) -> Multiple VMs on top (Win XP, Win 10, Hackintosh).

 

This way you wouldn't need to mess with GPU passthrough at all (since your main OS has it and you can just play games in there), and the other operating systems would still be virtualized the same as if they were in proxmox (proxmox is just debian+kvm with a web interface).

 

[uzivkovic97]

5 minutes ago, igormp said:

Any reason not have your actual daily OS as the host system instead?

PC -> Host Linux OS with KVM (the one you also use to play games and do your daily stuff) -> Multiple VMs on top (Win XP, Win 10, Hackintosh).

 

This way you wouldn't need to mess with GPU passthrough at all (since your main OS has it and you can just play games in there), and the other operating systems would still be virtualized the same as if they were in proxmox (proxmox is just debian+kvm with a web interface).

 

There is no particular reason, it's just I will be upgrading my rig and would like to utilize it 100%. And this would be also oportunity for me to learn how to use Hypervisor type 1 such as Proxmox and Unraid, install PiHole as well to run on a completely separate VM, and just to thinker with it in general. Maybe try TrueNAS as well cuz I haven't had chance to try it before, etc.
Also, after configuring VMs in Proxmox, I won't be using them through web browser, but rather just plug monitor in each GPU for each VM and use it that way.

I've been using Win 10 in VM on top of Linux and it's working great, just want to try new stuff.

[igormp]

6 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

it's just I will be upgrading my rig and would like to utilize it 100%.

IMO your new workstations sounds way overkill for what you're trying to do, but I'm not sure of the specifics of your software in each OS, so that's on you anyway.

7 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

And this would be also oportunity for me to learn how to use Hypervisor type 1 such as Proxmox and Unraid, install PiHole as well to run on a completely separate VM, and just to thinker with it in general. Maybe try TrueNAS as well cuz I haven't had chance to try it before, etc.

PopOS! with KVM can also be considered a type 1 hypervisor haha

It's not really much different from proxmox other than proxmox having everything bundled beforehand with that nice web ui. You can also run pihole and truenas in the same way.

10 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

Also, after configuring VMs in Proxmox, I won't be using them through web browser, but rather just plug monitor in each GPU for each VM and use it that way.

You can just open Spice windows for each OS with libvirt, no web browser and the emulated GPU performance is fine for basic browser tasks on win 10 from my experience. Or you can also do full GPU passthrough without issues.

11 minutes ago, uzivkovic97 said:

I've been using Win 10 in VM on top of Linux and it's working great, just want to try new stuff.

Oh, if all you want is to mess around and learn, then godspeed and have fun!

[Blue4130]

13 hours ago, uzivkovic97 said:

There is no particular reason, it's just I will be upgrading my rig and would like to utilize it 100%. And this would be also oportunity for me to learn how to use Hypervisor type 1 such as Proxmox and Unraid, install PiHole as well to run on a completely separate VM, and just to thinker with it in general. Maybe try TrueNAS as well cuz I haven't had chance to try it before, etc.
Also, after configuring VMs in Proxmox, I won't be using them through web browser, but rather just plug monitor in each GPU for each VM and use it that way.

I've been using Win 10 in VM on top of Linux and it's working great, just want to try new stuff.

 

Craft computing JUST posted what you want.

[uzivkovic97]

14 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

 

Craft computing JUST posted what you want.

Awesome, this is exactly what I was looking for

Thank you very much.