2 VMs/1 PC

[Marine8907]

I'm currently using a 4790K OC'd to 4.7Ghz in my main rig currently and I want to setup a computer that can have a host and 2 VMs while still having close performance of the 4790K for each VM, what CPU would be best for this type of system (if any)? Go with an i7 Extreme like the 5960X or 5930K? Or go with a Xeon? Also, if I need a Xeon, would it be better to go with a mobo that has X79 or X99 chipsets vs. going with a mobo that utilizes C602 or C612? And before I forget to ask, can you utilize SLI or Crossfire for a single VM or can you only have one GPU per VM? If possible, I would like to have 4 GPUs: one for host, one for first VM and two in SLI for second VM. Is this possible?

 

Disclaimer: This is based off of Linus' 1 PC/2 VM gaming build video on Youtube.

 

So, in theory, this is to reduce the number of overall physical PCs in the office, to reduce power consumption from multiple devices, to game @ 4K UHD for one of the VMs, and to do editing as a hobby. I'm planning on having a separate media server on the LAN, so no need for to worry about that. This is more of "because I can do it", not because I necessarily need it. Plus, I want to learn more about VMs and Linux and what not. I'm assuming I would need to use Linux as the host.

[Kryis]

With the SLI, what are you planning to use? If it's Hyper-V or Vmware you can't do SLI, not sure about others though. Hyper-V does support remote FX though. Probably isn't any good for gaming.

 

I'd probably go with the 5960x with an x99s platform. I doubt any vm software supports SLI in vms, but hopefully some with more experience with other VM software can help.

 

I am pretty sure you can assign GPUs to vms with vmware(could just be their version of remote-fx) but haven't done it before in my line of work since it's not needed.

 

Eitherway I am pretty certain you cannot have a VM with SLI, you can probably have a virtual host with SLI but unlikely a VM itself.

 

However I did find this: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=41665.0 They can add more than one GPU to a VM, unsure if they ended up getting SLI working though.

 

FYI, Dual Booting would probably work Better.

[Streetguru]

35 minutes ago, Marine8907 said:

 

Don't bother

 

Just build an i7 6700 system, you could literally build a whole system for the cost of the 5960X

[Marine8907]

@Kryis Thanks for the info. I plan to use two GTX 950 cards and two 780ti classified cards. 780ti cards would be the SLI for my VM. The oher two would be host and other VM respectively.

Unfortunately, I'm not well versed in VMs and their hosts. Does a virtual host just mean the host of the system? Or is it another VM aside from the host? My friend also mentioned that I could just boot up several instances of Windows without a host, but I'm not quite sure I understand that whole thing. Also, I've read a ton of forum posts like the one you linked to where the person had tried to only have two GPUs in the setup and then pass both of them through to a VM when one was supposed to be the host. With my setup I will have a GPU for the host and 3 others (one for my wife's VM and two or mine). Theoretically, I would think that would be fine since none of the three being passed through the VMs would be the designated host GPU.

 

@Streetguru Thanks for at least reading this post. However, I do not want the 6th gen version of the 4790K, since I already have a system with the 4790K in it. Also, from what I've been told and read up on, the 4790K and 6700K are not powerful enough for the system that I speak of. I would like 4 core/8 thread performance or close to it for both users whether that be on a VM/host or VMx2/host setup. Also, I'm fully aware of what the costs are and that's not necessarily the reason for getting on here and posting. Not trying to be rude, but your post wasn't helpful or answering anything I asked about.

[Kryis]

1 minute ago, Marine8907 said:

@Kryis Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, I'm not well versed in VMs and their hosts. Does a virtual host just mean the host of the system? Or is it another VM aside from the host?

 

@Streetguru Thanks for at least reading this post. However, I do not want the 6th gen version of the 4790K, since I already have a system with the 4790K in it. Also, from what I've been told and read up on, the 4790K and 6700K are not powerful enough for the system that I speak of. I would like 4 core/8 thread performance or close to it for both users whether that be on a VM/host or VMx2/host setup. Also, I'm fully aware of what the costs are and that's not necessarily the reason for getting on here and posting. Not trying to be rude, but your post wasn't helpful or answering anything I asked about.

A virtual host is the physical host of the vms. So the machine that hosts Hyper-V, Vmware or unraid etc What you're wanting i'm pretty sure is not possible with Hyper-v or vmware, it might be with unraid but I have no experience with unraid so I can't really comment further.

 

If you don't need both machines running at the same time then look at a 5960x build with two SSDs, have one for each OS e.g win 10 for gaming and another win 10 for video editing.

 

The other question is, why not just have the one? Or do you plan to have videos encoding etc while you game? If not, then there is much point for dual booting or VMs.

[Kryis]

7 minutes ago, Marine8907 said:

@Kryis Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, I'm not well versed in VMs and their hosts. Does a virtual host just mean the host of the system? Or is it another VM aside from the host?

 

@Streetguru Thanks for at least reading this post. However, I do not want the 6th gen version of the 4790K, since I already have a system with the 4790K in it. Also, from what I've been told and read up on, the 4790K and 6700K are not powerful enough for the system that I speak of. I would like 4 core/8 thread performance or close to it for both users whether that be on a VM/host or VMx2/host setup. Also, I'm fully aware of what the costs are and that's not necessarily the reason for getting on here and posting. Not trying to be rude, but your post wasn't helpful or answering anything I asked about.

A virtual host is the physical host of the vms. So the machine that hosts Hyper-V, Vmware or unraid etc What you're wanting i'm pretty sure is not possible with Hyper-v or vmware, it might be with unraid but I have no experience with unraid so I can't really comment further.

 

If you don't need both machines running at the same time then look at a 5960x build with two SSDs, have one for each OS e.g win 10 for gaming and another win 10 for video editing.

 

The other question is, why not just have the one? Or do you plan to have videos encoding etc while you game? If not, then there is much point for dual booting or VMs.

[Streetguru]

16 minutes ago, Marine8907 said:

I'm not well versed in VMs and their hosts

That would be the main reason not to spend money on such a project that will be filled with nothing but headache and pain.

Otherwise, you'd want to wait for the Broadwell-E chips as they should have more cores/threads at a similar price

Do the extra PC's need much performance? Because an FX 8 core is still pretty solid as far as virtual machine workloads go.

 

Also was that Host + VM + VM all with an i7's worth of performance? As you'd need a 12 core CPU for that

 

also it's probably an even bigger head ache to try and virtualize a dual GPU set up

Also if you plan to virtualize nvidia GPUs to a windows VM, nvidia doesn't like that very much and produces an error "Code 43" though there's a relatively easy fix I hear.
 

 

[Marine8907]

7 minutes ago, Kryis said:

A virtual host is the physical host of the vms. So the machine that hosts Hyper-V, Vmware or unraid etc What you're wanting i'm pretty sure is not possible with Hyper-v or vmware, it might be with unraid but I have no experience with unraid so I can't really comment further.

 

If you don't need both machines running at the same time then look at a 5960x build with two SSDs, have one for each OS e.g win 10 for gaming and another win 10 for video editing.

 

The other question is, why not just have the one? Or do you plan to have videos encoding etc while you game? If not, then there is much point for dual booting or VMs.

This is so I can game on or do whatever on mine while the wife can get on hers any time while I'm there or not and game or do her editing. It would be essentially like having two PCs in an office, but with only one tower's worth of hardware. Just like Linus did in his video on YouTube. Problem is he never really went into detail about GPUs while using unRAID either.

 

If I did a dual boot, would that be like win10 running within win10 and just having each one show on a different panel? Or would I be able to boot from two separate disks and not have one run within the other? Sorry, if I'm not clear.

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, Marine8907 said:

 

Dual Booting wouldn't work like that, it really is just much simpler to build a 2nd PC, just convert yours to an ITX system, and build the other one into an ITX system, and just duct tape them together, takes up the same amount of space

[Marine8907]

1 minute ago, Streetguru said:

Dual Booting wouldn't work like that, it really is just much simpler to build a 2nd PC, just convert yours to an ITX system, and build the other one into an ITX system, and just duct tape them together, takes up the same amount of space

If you're not going to be constructive, please stop commenting. I know that this setup can happen at least without SLI and you making stupid jokes doesn't help.

[Streetguru]

2 minutes ago, Marine8907 said:

If you're not going to be constructive, please stop commenting. I know that this setup can happen at least without SLI and you making stupid jokes doesn't help.

I'm trying to save you from pain and suffering.

 

If you only want 2 machines with i7 like performance, you'd want a 5960X or broadwell equivalent. Your 2 GPUs, a PCI-e USB adapter, a high end dock for the second PC for all the USB and audio stuff. Tons of RAM, a beefy PSU and lots of time.

If you wanted to do 3 machines with i7s, you'd need a $2000 12 core CPU that only runs at 3ghz

https://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80660e52687v4

[Kryis]

Nah Dual boot requires a reboot and selecting the OS. if both need to accessed at the same time then dual booting is pointless.

 

Unraid with GPU should be fine, but I don't think he had SLI on any of the VMs, i think they just got an GPU assigned per VM. I'd have to watch the video again and see.

[Marine8907]

8 minutes ago, Kryis said:

Nah Dual boot requires a reboot and selecting the OS. if both need to accessed at the same time then dual booting is pointless.

 

Unraid with GPU should be fine, but I don't think he had SLI on any of the VMs, i think they just got an GPU assigned per VM. I'd have to watch the video again and see.

 

Would it be possible to just have a host + VM setup with what I've mentioned? Or would I have to have a host + VM + VM setup? If I can cut one of the VMs out, then that's fine.

[Marine8907]

If I got a dual socket mobo and had two E5-2690 v1 cpus, would that be enough?

[Kryis]

3 hours ago, Marine8907 said:

If I got a dual socket mobo and had two E5-2690 v1 cpus, would that be enough?

 

5 hours ago, Marine8907 said:

 

Would it be possible to just have a host + VM setup with what I've mentioned? Or would I have to have a host + VM + VM setup? If I can cut one of the VMs out, then that's fine.

I'm not sure how unraid works, but if it it's anything like vmware, then no. If it's more like hyper-v then yes, but it'd be better to have the two VMs and leave the host doing the hosting. From a quick google, unraid appears to be more like vmware than hyper-v. Meaning it's more of a 'platform' than a OS.

 

Also, found more info on SLI

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=45496.msg435232#msg435232

It's not possible. So you're limited to one gpu per machine. You can add more, but they won't work in SLI.

 

Honestly, I think an 5960x Will be more than enough. Since doing 4k gaming through a VM is unlikely to work well. As streetguru said, waiting for boardwell-e would be wise.

 

My advice, keep your current rig, and build another for you wife or for video editing etc. If you still want to go down the VM route. Build a physical machine with a boardwell-e, 32GB of ram (The host itself normally needs spare ram (2-4GB for host) and then split the rest for the VMs. Assign 4-5 Cores to each machine(Go Xeon if you need more cores, that's only really going to help with video encoding tbh). Assign one GPU to each VM(go for a 1080 or a 1080ti if they come out in 6 months.)

 

Also a reminder, VMs tend to be slower than comparable machines that run on non virtualized hardware. I believe this is more on CPUs than GPUs that are running as passthrough.

 

Also note, someone with Unraid Experience can probably advise better and or correct anything i've said.