Virtualization Server Questions

[DaShesano]

Hi all,

As I begin to phase out ancient (between Harpertown and Gulftown) servers, I am now considering virtualizing a server I already have to take their places and save power . I was additionally wondering if it would be useful to buy a Radeon Firepro S7150 to give some GPU compute to the VMs (the servers have gpu compute currently). (The servers originally didn't do much CPU compute so I don't foresee any bottlenecks for the CPU) The server I was hoping to virtualize has these specs: Supermicro 5019S-M, 4 Seagate Enterprise Capacity 2TBs, Xeon e3 1225v5, 32gb HyperX DDR4 2133 (it works, I didn't ask questions). I was wondering if an s7150 would even work (I am fine moving cases to something larger to accommodate it), as I don't see my board on the 'known good' list for that GPU. Also, I currently use HyperV/Virtualbox for my VMs, and I don't see those on the supported list of hypervisors for the 7150, so could I just use virtualbox/hyperV or could I use VMware workstation? Additionally, when the VMs aren't being used, could I use the 7150 for general purpose compute (media encoder/folding@home). 

Thanks,

[sazrocks]

I don't see a reason for that card not to do all the things you have described.

[Electronics Wizardy]

18 minutes ago, DaShesano said:

was additionally wondering if it would be useful to buy a Radeon Firepro S7150 to give some GPU compute to the VMs (the servers have gpu compute currently).

What are you doing with the vms? Opencl compute? VDI? For normal vm's this won't help at all.

 

18 minutes ago, DaShesano said:

The server I was hoping to virtualize has these specs: Supermicro 5019S-M, 4 Seagate Enterprise Capacity 2TBs, Xeon e3 1225v5, 32gb HyperX DDR4 2133 (it works, I didn't ask questions).

Do you already have this or want to buy?

 

Unless you need lower power id stay away, not many pcie lanes, very low max ram, not much upgradability. Id go dual 1366 if you can.

 

19 minutes ago, DaShesano said:

HyperV/Virtualbox for my VMs, and I don't see those on the supported list of hypervisors for the 7150, so could I just use virtualbox/hyperV or could I use VMware workstation?

For that gpu you need esxi(Its a seprate os, no on windows) or xen server.

 

 

[leadeater]

29 minutes ago, DaShesano said:

Also, I currently use HyperV/Virtualbox for my VMs, and I don't see those on the supported list of hypervisors for the 7150, so could I just use virtualbox/hyperV or could I use VMware workstation? Additionally, when the VMs aren't being used, could I use the 7150 for general purpose compute (media encoder/folding@home). 

For Hyper-V you can use any DX11 GPU and share it between VMs. Remember though there is a limit to the amount of actual vRAM you can assign per VM and this for 3D acceleration tasks (CAD etc), small rendering and small compute but not for anything like gaming etc. Think VDI.

 

The S7150 GPUs are designed for ESXi and support SR-IOV which allows you to spawn multiple hardware virtualized copies of the GPU which can be assigned to VMs, this works much better than the Hyper-V way but has much stricter hardware and configuration requirements.

 

Cheapest option is to just buy or use the current GPUs you have for each VM and directly pass them through.

[DaShesano]

On 6/12/2017 at 7:44 PM, leadeater said:

For Hyper-V you can use any DX11 GPU and share it between VMs.

Would the intel HD P530 graphics be enough for sharing a GPU? I'm going to assume no, but would it give a launch point?

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, DaShesano said:

Would the intel HD P530 graphics be enough for sharing a GPU? I'm going to assume no, but would it give a launch point?

What do you actually need it for? If you don't need any GPU compute the default software rendering will be fine, hardware GPUs are not required.