Building a VM Server with gaming for a friend


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I am getting a list of parts together for a friend that wants to build a Virtual Machine server w/o unRAID, it will probably be ESXi.  I was going to pick out a server board with a c226 or c224 chipset but he wants to do some gaming on it and was wondering if a desktop chipset would be better.

 

What is the difference between a c226 and a z97?  Would a z97 board be a better fit?

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I am getting a list of parts together for a friend that wants to build a Virtual Machine server w/o unRAID, it will probably be ESXi.  I was going to pick out a server board with a c226 or c224 chipset but he wants to do some gaming on it and was wondering if a desktop chipset would be better.

 

What is the difference between a c226 and a z97?  Would a z97 board be a better fit?

 

Won't make a difference. The different chipsets do include different features, but ultimately what is going to make it a good gaming machine is the CPU, memory and video card. If you want to do virtualization make sure the MB supports VT-X, VT-D, and Hyper-Threading if you want to get fancy. The C226 has better odds of meeting your requirements.

 

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  • 5 weeks later...

I am also very interested in this type of setup.  Would anyone have successfully built one?  If so I would really like to see your parts list.

 

From what I read, Despite a large number of motherboards supporting VT-d  IOMMU they have disabled it via bios or a chipset doesn't implement it etc.  I'd like to work from a know working and easy to setup part list.  I'd like an Intel Nvidia setup but it sounds like business class motherboards are the safer route.

 

The Nvidia grid video cards look promising but they are about $2k.

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One significant difference is support for ECC memory modules.    This can make a big difference in the reliability of the memory subsystem ... particularly if you're going to install more than two modules (which I generally do not do when using unbuffered RAM).

 

As far as computing "horsepower", a high-end Core i7-4790 and high-end Xeon E3-1271v3 have virtually identical processing power.    Since you'll be adding a dedicated graphics card, you don't need a Xeon with embedded graphics (e.g. an E3-1276v3, although you may want to go with that so the system doesn't REQUIRE a graphics card (never know when you might want to repurpose it).

 

Especially since this is, in essence, going to be an ESXI virtualization server, I'd go with the server class components (C226 based board; E3-1276v3; ECC memory).

 

 

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My friend that wants to do this pointed out the nvidia grid that I posted about earlier today.

 

I read somewhere that all Asrock boards support VT-d even if the chip set doesn't.  For instance the z97 chipset doesn't support VT-d but Asrock does on their z97 boards.

 

I have an ESXi server with a Asrock C226 WS, 16GB ecc ram, and a Xeon 1245v3.  I do not game with mine though.  I only run 3 VMs unraid, windows 8 for apps, and the cyberpower powerpanel ESXi appliance for ups.

 

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Personally I fail to see the appeal when considered against the potential headaches. As has been proven in these forums, getting proper PCI pass-through can be tricky with either Xen or KVM, and if you really want a gaming machine I'd rather just invest in a proper setup for that and leave UnRAID to it's own devices.

 

Even if you get PCI pass-through working for gaming, there is no guarantee that your next update of UnRAID isn't going to pooch it.

 

Virtual machines have their place, but I'd rather have a dedicated desktop PC that is independent of my server infrastructure.

 

Maybe that is just me though. :)

 

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I have a dedicated workstation for my normal work; but would have no problems using an ESXi VM for it if I decided to consolidate a few systems (keep thinking about it, but haven't done it -- all my VMs just run under VMware Workstation on my main system).

 

But one thing I WOULD keep separate is a gaming machine -- primarily for the very high-end graphics a good one requires.    This need COULD be met with the Kepler GPU's in the Grid, assuming ESXi supports the virtual Grid GPUs ... but I simply don't think there's any real reason to integrate this kind of system with other VM's.    That said, a single high-end video card using GPU passthrough to a gaming VM should work very well.  And it would certainly be interesting to experiment a bit with the Grid virtual GPU's  :)

 

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Personally I fail to see the appeal when considered against the potential headaches. As has been proven in these forums, getting proper PCI pass-through can be tricky with either Xen or KVM, and if you really want a gaming machine I'd rather just invest in a proper setup for that and leave UnRAID to it's own devices.

 

Even if you get PCI pass-through working for gaming, there is no guarantee that your next update of UnRAID isn't going to pooch it.

 

Virtual machines have their place, but I'd rather have a dedicated desktop PC that is independent of my server infrastructure.

 

Maybe that is just me though. :)

 

This is going to be an ESXi or other host sever, unRAID is going to be a guest so when unRAID gets updated there should be no impact on the rest of the system.

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Personally I fail to see the appeal when considered against the potential headaches. As has been proven in these forums, getting proper PCI pass-through can be tricky with either Xen or KVM, and if you really want a gaming machine I'd rather just invest in a proper setup for that and leave UnRAID to it's own devices.

 

Even if you get PCI pass-through working for gaming, there is no guarantee that your next update of UnRAID isn't going to pooch it.

 

Virtual machines have their place, but I'd rather have a dedicated desktop PC that is independent of my server infrastructure.

 

Maybe that is just me though. :)

 

This is going to be an ESXi or other host sever, unRAID is going to be a guest so when unRAID gets updated there should be no impact on the rest of the system.

 

Okay, different base OS, but same premise. It still doesn't really make much sense to me. Other than bragging rights for your geek friends, it's still not really a worthwhile venture for a proper gaming machine.

 

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Okay, different base OS, but same premise. It still doesn't really make much sense to me. Other than bragging rights for your geek friends, it's still not really a worthwhile venture for a proper gaming machine.

 

There are plenty of reasons to do this other than bragging rights.  For instance He wants an ESXi server with unRAID, windows, Linux, and steam OS for playing and or steaming games to his laptop.  Some people don't want a separate machine for different tasks.  Why spend $2000 on two PCs when you can spend $1500 on one.

 

Plus he doesn't want 20TB of storage, he is going to use the free edition for about 6TB of storage.  Yeah sure he could build a cheap unRAID server for $300, then spend $1000 on a ESXi server to run a few windows and Linux VMs, and then spend $1500 on a good gaming rig that will get played once every few days.  Or he can take that same $1500 gaming rig and save $1300 by putting them all in one machine.

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Given the gaming requirements you've outlined, it should be pretty easy to create a VM that will support that, as long as the video card is passed through to the VM.    From what I've read, it seems that getting video pass-through to work correctly can often be a significant challenge.  It seems, however, that you've got enough ESXi experience to get this working fairly easily.

 

I agree that a high-quality ESXi server (server quality board & CPU with ECC RAM) can provide a better value than multiple desktop-class systems.    Whether the UnRAID VM is a Basic, Plus, or Pro system makes littler difference (other than the license cost) ... in fact, once set up it could be upgraded as easily as any other UnRAID license.

 

At least for now -- until a rock-solid hypervisor as a native component with a good hypervisor management tool is included in UnRAID -- I also think ESXi is probably the best way to go for a moderate number of VMs ... with UnRAID as either a separate VM or on a small, dedicated mini-ITX based server.

 

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