How to Optimize a Home Lab VM Server for Gaming?

Yolky-List · March 28

Hello everyone,

I'm currently in the process of setting up a home lab VM server tailored for gaming purposes. My plan involves pooling together some of the primary PC components with a close friend to build this lab. Essentially, we aim to configure two instances and allocate both my friend's GPU and mine to these instances. By doing so, we intend to access the VMs remotely via Parsec, enabling us to game from any location with a stable internet connection (meeting Parsec's minimal requirements, naturally).

Now, onto my questions:

If budget constraints were non-existent, which hypervisor would you recommend for optimal gaming performance in this scenario? and what would win second place if money was an issue?
Considering that my server will be operational round-the-clock, would it be more prudent to utilize my current high end consumer-level CPU or invest in one of those enterprise-grade CPUs designed to handle heavy workloads and prolonged usage?

Looking forward to your insights and recommendations. Thanks in advance!

Eigenvektor · March 28

Before you go all out and spend money on anything, I would try gaming on your PC through Parsec from an external location first. If your ISP blocks it, or performance isn't convincing without a VM in the mix, you can probably save your money.

Which hypervisor you use isn't going to matter too much. The primary concern is that it needs to support GPU passthrough and it needs to do so for at least two GPUs. A hypervisor that runs on bare metal (e.g. ESXi) might have a slight performance advantage, so would be my go to in this scenario. You can probably achieve the same with a Linux machine running KVM.

A consumer level CPU will work as well as a server CPU, the primary concerns are cooling, enough cores and enough PCIe lanes for two GPUs. If you want a CPU capable of effectively powering two gaming machines at the same time, you'll want one with at least 16, or better yet 20 cores minimum (20 P-cores that is, in case you're thinking of Intel). You'll also need a motherboard with slots for two GPUs.

You'll want to assign between 6 to 8 cores to each VM and leave the rest for the hypervisor. You'll also want at minimum 64 GB of RAM. Ideally you'd want to assign 32 GB to each VM, but have enough left over for the hypervisor itself, so probably more like 80 GB+.

Even with that, there's no guarantee that the VMs aren't going to negatively impact one another if both are running a full gaming workload and competing for shared resources (such as memory, disk and/or network bandwidth)