Shadowflash

Intro: I've been here in the past. I'm always stubborn. A few years ago this didn't work for me and I went with esxi because it offered me a lot more with my hardware and multi-user req's. I'm happy with that choice. As I've now retired that box to a single user station, AND my kids are aging out of the house very quickly, I'm once again enamored. I've done what I've done in the past because it's been the most cost effective for a 3-5 local user environment. Now, I want to focus a lot more on single user... while maintaining my empty nest. Hardware: Most of this I already have in house, but the rest of it is cheap enough even for me to obtain. I'm starting with a DL585 G7 quad socket Opteron 6x HP IO Accelrator cards.. Gen1 640GBx2 each The chassis can house 8x 2.5" SAS (which I currently have none) I have a Quadro 4000 and a K4000 other useless old GPU's What I'm thinking: PLEASE ADVISE HERE! Socket 1-2 are going to be a mess no matter how I look at it Socket 1 only has 2 slots. https://www.ioiusb.com/Host-Adapter/U3X4-PCIE4XE111.htm#:~:text=The U3X4-PCIE4XE111 is a,%2C USB IF TID 380000026). this is pure management for everything. I don't know how I can get away from this on the base socket. Direct passthrough controller x4. VM 1: (Socket 2; this is where it gets weird.. So now i have 3 slots to work with, but none for socket 1 I can assign 1 640gbx2 back to bare metal for a docker drive (plex) and a cache array drive. the last 2 slots I can K4000 passthrough and 1.2TB for the VM.. Not ideal... but is there a better way?