27 Mar
2018
27 Mar
'18
8:04 a.m.
Apologies for the non-Bitfolk/server post, but I'm hoping that people
here have some useful experience to help me decide the best way to set
up virtualisation for home use (local as opposed to remote access).
I've just built myself a Ryzen PC and I understand that in the past few
years things have improved with virtualisation allowing GPU
pass-through. Guidance I've found on the net uses either Xen
(https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_VGA_Passthrough) or Synergy
(http://synergy-project.org/synergy/), but I think you can now do it
with KVM too (not sure if you can with Hyper-V, but I probably wouldn't
want to use it anyway unless there is a noticeable advantage).
I'm planning to run Windows for gaming and a few other tools, and Linux
for day-to-day usage and compiling (probably compiling in a different VM
to the rest). I plan to pass through one GPU for Windows and use a
second for the Linux VM(s). I may have a couple of other VMs for
testing or running programs that have particular
requirements/dependencies, but I'd only start these as needed and stop
them when finished.
What are people's experiences with virtualisation (especially on
desktops), and has anyone done hardware pass-through, particularly with
graphics cards?
Thanks
Gavin
28 Mar
28 Mar
7:07 a.m.
On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 09:04:05am +0100, Gavin Westwood wrote:
I'm planning to run Windows for gaming and a few
other tools, and
Linux for day-to-day usage and compiling (probably compiling in a
different VM to the rest). I plan to pass through one GPU for Windows
and use a second for the Linux VM(s). I may have a couple of other
VMs for testing or running programs that have particular
requirements/dependencies, but I'd only start these as needed and stop
them when finished.
Why not dual-boot? There would be less desire to break from compiling if
you had to completely stop what you're doing to game.
Though, having said that, cryptoware would nuke the disk. The paranoid
pull the power from their data disks when running windows - yes, I know
people who do this! (To be fair, crypto authors would *LOVE* to break
out of a VM...)
--
Best regards,
Ed http://www.s5h.net/
10:03 a.m.
On 28/03/2018 07:27, Ashley Nicholls wrote:
I used to game exclusively on a virtualised Win7
machine using Xen.
I would _highly_ recommend that you use KVM for this as it (usually)
just works out of the box.
Okay, I'll have a go with KVM. I was thinking that I might be better
using Ubuntu rather than Debian to keep up-to-date with the latest
versions? (CentOS would probably be better since KVM is a RedHat
product, but I've been using Debian for so many years that RedHat-style
distros leave me scratching my head for how to what I know under Debian).
I would also recommend using an NVIDIA card. My
personal experience
with AMD graphics was good until the RX4x0 series. I just couldn't get
this working properly under virtualisation whereas my HD6700s and such
were fine.
I've currently only got AMD GPUs (RX480, RX560), so I'll bear that in
mind if I have problems.
Gaming performance was about right give or take a
couple of FPS but
high levels of interrupt activity in the dom0/base system caused weird
issues. I found ZFS on dom0 to be espescially guilty of causing frame
jitter when gaming.
My original system was based off an i7-3770 with an Asrock
motherboard. I went through several iterations of hardware and the
biggest issue was always motherboard/BIOS support for VT-d
passthrough. I ended up moving to an E5-2690 and supermicro
motherboard as the hardware passthrough support was superior to the
consumer gubbins I'd been using before.
Hope my rambling has helped in some way!
Yes, thank you! :-)
On 28/03/2018 08:07, Ed wrote:
Why not dual-boot? There would be less desire to break
from compiling if
you had to completely stop what you're doing to game.
I've dual-booted in the past, and in the end tended just to use Windows
and find a way round doing things that would have been easier under
Linux. It's a pain to close everything down to switch and I run various
services that I want to keep running pretty much 24/7. I currently have
a Windows laptop with some Linux and other OS virtual machines in
VirtualBox, but they are slow.
I'll not be compiling that frequently. It's more the other part of
wanting to do my day-to-day stuff on Linux and have Windows 10 there for
gaming and a few other bits I find harder under Linux.
Though, having said that, cryptoware would nuke the
disk. The paranoid
pull the power from their data disks when running windows - yes, I know
people who do this! (To be fair, crypto authors would *LOVE* to break
out of a VM...)
I've been pretty good at not installing/getting exploited by malware,
but I do worry about some of the current stuff, especially the
ransomware, so having the isolation would put my mind a bit more at rest
(but yes, I am conscious that breaking out of a VM is still a risk).
Thanks
Gavin
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Gavin Westwood