VM for main family PC or cheep mini-PC/itx?

[Everend]

I'm sleeping in the same room as my PCs, I'm getting tired of the lights and fans.  I have an Unraid ATX and another ATX machine as the family PC both from about 2009. I'm preparing to build new unraid system with more power and move it to another room.   The old unraid &/or the old PC will become an off-site backup server. 

 

For the family PC should I get a mini-PC or build a passive cooled itx OR create a VM for them to surf the web?

 

I'm considering i5 or i7 12th gen for the unraid system.  So I'll have extra cpu/memory for creating a vm but if it's in the other room, I'll need to route hdmi cable to the monitor. Maybe wireless mouse will reach through walls or extension usb cable to unify dongle set next to the monitor. 

 

With a family PC they can power cycle it without me...

With a VM I can remote manage from work  through VPN...

Edited September 27, 2022 by Everend

[Everend]

Even if we have a mini-PC for surfing, is it a thing to create a VM and somehow surf through that to protect / isolate the mini-PC from malicious sites?   My current hardware doesn't support VMs so I don't have experience with them at all.   
If I have keyboard, mouse, monitor plugged into the Unraid machine then VM would work the same as a family PC.  But if they are in the other room, can I do that? 

With non-tech wife/kids do I want to bother with VM or is that just making things too complicated?  I could get an 2-3 year old workstation mini-computer for $100 or even a new one for $200-300 and just keep it simple.  The one I'm replacing is 12+ years old so any kind of upgrade is going to be drastic.

 

2009 unraid is still working... some mkv files are not playing through emby to FireTV anymore.  I suspect a codex type issue since I can play the file using VLC on Win10 but haven't tried anything else.   I want to get the bigger / faster CPU, memory and HDDs so when I start working on this, recoding files or whatever, it doesn't take 5 years to process.

[ghost82]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:56 AM, Everend said:

With a family PC they can power cycle it without me...

With a VM I can remote manage from work  through VPN...

It is possible to powerdown the whole server from the virtual machine too if it is of interest, with a qemu hook.

This, for example:

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $1 == "Monterey" ]] && [[ $2 == "stopped" ]]
then
  shutdown -h now
fi

Basically, when virtual machine with name Monterey is stopped (shutdown), the whole server will shutdown too with command shutdown -h now.

Obviously, to boot again the server you need physical access.

Out of interest you can also autostart a vm when the server boots.

 

On 9/28/2022 at 1:12 AM, Everend said:

Even if we have a mini-PC for surfing, is it a thing to create a VM and somehow surf through that to protect / isolate the mini-PC from malicious sites?

Consider a vm as a real pc, so yes, this is possible; depending on what you want a vm could not be strictly necessary, for example pihole is a plugin for unraid.

 

On 9/28/2022 at 1:12 AM, Everend said:

My current hardware doesn't support VMs so I don't have experience with them at all.

Things to check are vt-x and vt-d support; vt-d is higly recommended too, to be able to passthrough hardware to the vm.

 

On 9/28/2022 at 1:12 AM, Everend said:

If I have keyboard, mouse, monitor plugged into the Unraid machine then VM would work the same as a family PC.  But if they are in the other room, can I do that?

If I understood well, for this to be possible you need the keyboard/mouse and gpu passed through to the vm: this will work like a desktop pc.

If they are in another room they have other devices in their hands (a client), another pc? you can access the vm with remote desktop from the client and manage all from the client. Depending on the use, a gpu passed through to the vm is recommended for graphics acceleration even if the vm is accessed remotely.

Good alternatives to remote desktop are moonlight, parsec, nomachine.

 

On 9/28/2022 at 1:12 AM, Everend said:

With non-tech wife/kids do I want to bother with VM or is that just making things too complicated?

It depends on how you configure the server; for them it could be the same as using a real pc; as I wrote it is possible to autostart the vm on server boot and shut it down on vm shutdown.

If the vm is configured with keyboard/mouse and gpu passthrough attached to a monitor they will not notice they're running a virtual machine.

Edited October 4, 2022 by ghost82