Best OS and software for a gaming virtualization environment?

[rootknight]

Hello everyone, I'm here to ask for some advice on what should I gather to start building a virtualized environment for gaming on a Windows 10 VM:

 

First of all, my PC has a Ryzen 5 1600, a single GPU (RX580 8GB) and 16GB RAM, with a 250GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. So with that said my main questions are:

 

- Which OS would be the best as an Host? Should I use Server OS or Desktop is good enough? I saw that RedHat based Linux systems are a popular choice in enterprise but I'm not that familiar with Linux and I see that Ubuntu distros are the more popular and there's more material on them for troubleshooting and all that;

 

- Should I work with QEMU, VirtualBox or there's other stuff I should use?

 

- Do I need additional software to permanently assign ports to VMs?

 

- Can you assign CPU power dinamically instead of just reserving cores for each VM?

 

Thanks for the help in advance

[Electronics Wizardy]

What board do you have?

 

You want a second gpu here, and this is a pain on many ryzen boards.

 

Any linux distro will do it the fine. Qemu works the best.

 

You can share cores, so the guest have full access to all cores when it sneeds it.

[rootknight]

MSI B350 Gaming plus, I don't think it's a "great" board for this kind of things but when I build this I didn't have VM shenanigans in mind but it should have AMD-V enabled at least.

 

If any distro is fine I'd probably go towards stock Desktop Ubuntu since it's the distro with the most "information" out there in terms of help (at least that's my experience by searching online)

 

I want to try to work out with a single GPU for now if it's possible since I don't have leeway to buy stuff for the next months (unless I can buy something for like 20$), the issue about wanting a second GPU is about performance or there's some issue into sharing the GPU power between machines? I'm not too concerned about dropping performance right now, I just want to see if I can make it work for now.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, rootknight said:

MSI B350 Gaming plus, I don't think it's a "great" board for this kind of things but when I build this I didn't have VM shenanigans in mind but it should have AMD-V enabled at least.

 

If any distro is fine I'd probably go towards stock Desktop Ubuntu since it's the distro with the most "information" out there in terms of help (at least that's my experience by searching online)

 

I want to try to work out with a single GPU for now if it's possible since I don't have leeway to buy stuff for the next months (unless I can buy something for like 20$), the issue about wanting a second GPU is about performance or there's some issue into sharing the GPU power between machines? I'm not too concerned about dropping performance right now, I just want to see if I can make it work for now.

You really can't do this with single gpu and your setup. You really need a x370 board here do to how the lanes are laid out. And a second gpu.

 

You can't share power on this gpu. 

 

What is your goal? id just run a linux vm in hyper-v or dual boot.

 

 

[rootknight]

So an X-series board is a needed upgrade, that blows.

 

My goal for now is just to get familiar with KVM virtualization, I have plans in the far future but for now it's just about training.

 

Hypotetically, If upgrade my board and CPU to a Ryzen+ with a X470 board, can I use the APU as the first GPU and dedicate the other card to the VM? Also, how much can I get done with the current set-up in terms of using KVM?

[Electronics Wizardy]

11 minutes ago, rootknight said:

So an X-series board is a needed upgrade, that blows.

 

My goal for now is just to get familiar with KVM virtualization, I have plans in the far future but for now it's just about training.

 

Hypotetically, If upgrade my board and CPU to a Ryzen+ with a X470 board, can I use the APU as the first GPU and dedicate the other card to the VM? Also, how much can I get done with the current set-up in terms of using KVM?

If you just want to learn about vkm you can do that in windows with a hyper-v vm. Or just dual boot. You don't have a good system for gpu passthough, intel is still much better here.

 

You can probably use an apu, but the cpu will be slower then than your current one.

 

Why not just install linux and give it a shot?

[rootknight]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you just want to learn about vkm you can do that in windows with a hyper-v vm. Or just dual boot. You don't have a good system for gpu passthough, intel is still much better here.

 

You can probably use an apu, but the cpu will be slower then than your current one.

 

Why not just install linux and give it a shot?

Sounds like the best idea until I get a specific build for Virtualization, thanks for the help.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, rootknight said:

Sounds like the best idea until I get a specific build for Virtualization, thanks for the help.

Do you have a goal of what you want to do in your vms?

 

Why can't you use hyper-v in window? it supports gpu passthrough in 2016.

[rootknight]

What I've heard is that Hyper-V has to be bought and I'm not doing anything worth paying for right now.

 

My goal is to someday have a single PC Tower in my home serving various users via VM client, but that of course is meant to be on a much, much beefier system. I wanted to see if I could start doing some testing on the build I already had but if this is the situation I might just keep working on Virtual Box until I get a new system or sell the current one to fund a proper VM build, but the actual PC was bought in December so it's quite a waste to sell.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, rootknight said:

What I've heard is that Hyper-V has to be bought and I'm not doing anything worth paying for right now.

 

My goal is to someday have a single PC Tower in my home serving various users via VM client, but that of course is meant to be on a much, much beefier system. I wanted to see if I could start doing some testing on the build I already had but if this is the situation I might just keep working on Virtual Box until I get a new system or sell the current one to fund a proper VM build, but the actual PC was bought in December so it's quite a waste to sell.

Hyper-v is included in windows 10 and there is a standalone server that is free.

 

Id wouldn't do this, its a pain to use and configure, and cheaper to just have multiple mid range systems. If you want just remote into your desktop and you can use it on anouther pc, I don't see how vms can help here.

[Razor Blade]

If you have Windows 10 Pro you can just use a simple powershell command to enable hyper-V

 

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

 

[rootknight]

Just now, Razor Blade said:

If you have Windows 10 Pro you can just use a simple powershell command to enable hyper-V

 

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

 

That's actually pretty interesting to know, I'll look into that.

 

In terms of utility, it's kind of a waste of effort, but it's mostly stuff I plan to do for bragging rights and because it sounds fun.

[Razor Blade]

1 minute ago, rootknight said:

That's actually pretty interesting to know, I'll look into that.

 

In terms of utility, it's kind of a waste of effort, but it's mostly stuff I plan to do for bragging rights and because it sounds fun.

It is pretty useful for things like testing software before you install it on your main OS. Or trying out different OS all together. Heck I made a whole virtual network with 2 windows boxes, 2 linux mint boxes, a PFsense router, and Bind DNS on ubuntu server just to play around with networking on free open source software. It's a great learning tool if anything.

[jde3]

On 5/4/2018 at 10:13 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you just want to learn about vkm you can do that in windows with a hyper-v vm. Or just dual boot. You don't have a good system for gpu passthough, intel is still much better here.

 

You can't learn KVM by using Hyper-v it's is it's own animal. The only way to learn KVM is to use it and learn it.. or get a book.

 

Back to your original question on PCI passthrough this appeals to me somewhat to make a steam server system that sits on a headless VM but I think I'll wait on that project till bhyve support allows VGA PCI passthrough so I don't have to have a Linux host.

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 minutes ago, jde3 said:

ou can't learn KVM by using Hyper-v it's is it's own animal

Yea you can, you can run kvm in a hyper-v vm. 

 

 

[jde3]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea you can, you can run kvm in a hyper-v vm. 

 

 

Kill me now. Like mixing vomit with shit.

[tHe Admirer]

If you want to play with and learn KVM/QEMU/Hyper-V, why not just rent a I7 server from hetzner and leave your pc for the gaming?

[DogKnight]

On 5/8/2018 at 11:18 AM, jde3 said:

Kill me now. Like mixing vomit with shit.

LOL