virtual machine gaming PC

[DatAssKyle]

hey everyone, so i was thinking about building a new gaming PC, but the issues is, lots of people use my PC for other things besides gaming, so i was thinking about building a 1Gbps home network, and then having a server running virtual machines that people can remote into using raspberry pi's or low power AMD 5350. what are your guys though on this?

 

I was also thinking about doing this but only for general use so i could still have a gaming rig but have the ability to remote into the virtual machines to do course work, and projects.

 

also if i was to do this, i would likely run a NAS as well so i can get the files for any user without any issues

 

thanks for any help, and if your have anything to add to the post please share  

[BrightCandle]

If you intend to run a number of Windows virtual machines you will need quite a bit of RAM and also the Windows licences but a server that can run a lot of light users isn't all that expensive in the grand scheme of things, it is cheaper than building each of them a machine for themselves. But unless you already have the monitors/keyboards/mice don't underestimate the peripheral costs of moving people to their own machines even if most of what they do is remote.

 

The problem with virtual machines generally is the latency, even on a 1gbps network you find the GUI has to have a lot of its features turned off like menu animations. These animations hide the latency of the operating system remarkably well, but they consume far too much bandwidth with remote desktop and other remoting technology. That bandwidth use causes latency, the compression causes latency and you also have to remove the latency hiding. Ergo using a virtual machine remotely is slower and quite laggy. That isn't to say its necessarily worse than using a Raspberry Pi 2 locally but its not exactly desktop like.

 

I don't think the day has come yet when you can game in a virtual machine, the technology just isn't there yet. But just because you are building a gaming PC doesn't mean you can't use it for other things when its not being used for playing games, its still a PC.

[kosmic]

It sound like you are thinking of a basic terminal server and thin client setup

My question is why?

Are you planing to run the VM s on your "gaming PC"

you say lots of people use your pc for stuff other then gaming, is that really a problem? Do you not want people to use your computer? Its a pc not a console it can multi task.

[surtursrevenge]

I have a simmilar Setup running and it works very well .

I have a server running all windows 7 workstations and a fileserver.

 

I use the free Version of Citrix 5.9 for presenting the vitrual machines to the users.

Also i use the free included Xen Server as an Hypervisor.

 

I dont recommend Microsoft Terminal Server, because everyone is sharing the same machine an the RDP performance is realy low.

Citrix is an optimized Protocol. You also can connect with http from the internet to your virtual desktops.

 

But keep in mind, that watching videos an a virtual desktop will barely function and all video processing has to be done by the servers CPU.

 

What you will basically need :

 

A Server running XEN 

 

A virtual Windows 7 / Server 2008R2 running the Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller.

A Samba / Cifs file Server (linux or windows)

 

Some virtual winows 7 installations (Workstations to connect to)


fell free to ask if you have any further questions or if i forgot something

[DatAssKyle]

It sound like you are thinking of a basic terminal server and thin client setup

My question is why?

Are you planing to run the VM s on your "gaming PC"

you say lots of people use your pc for stuff other then gaming, is that really a problem? Do you not want people to use your computer? Its a pc not a console it can multi task.

 i use my PC all the time, its a bit of a pain to have someone asking if they can borrow it for an hour, especially when im in the middle of my course work or while im programming. and the plan is to have a server running the Virtual machines and keep my main PC for gaming and remote accessing into the server for programming and storing the files on a NAS so i can access the NAS at college.