question for our CPU guru's

[sacretagent]

hi guys

 

for the moment i am using an ASUS p7p55D-e as my main windows machine

it has an intel i5-760 processor and 8 GB of ddr3 ram

 

now i want to buy a new rig for me and put this current setup to work as a vmware with unraid machine and retire the old p5bplus

 

it should only run unraid, one vm with musicbrainz and one vm with newznab... i would buy 8 gb more ram

have 2 adaptec 2 ports sata cards and i guess a m1015 to pass thru

 

now here come the questions:

 

1. i need VT-D to be able to access the controllers from within Unraid ?

2. according the intel specs space it seems this cpu has no vt-d ?

http://ark.intel.com/products/48496/Intel-Core-i5-760-Processor-8M-Cache-2_80-GHz

3. but when i go into my mobo bios i can enable vt-d .... it is not greyed out or so ....

is this normal? will vt-d work or not ?

i saw i think Johm say somewhere if it is not an option on the cpu that you won't be able to set it ?

so main questions remain ... will i need vt-d and does the cpu processor support it or not ?

 

 

 

 

[Ford Prefect]

1. i need VT-D to be able to access the controllers from within Unraid ?

Yes, in order to go for a native unRAID in a VM you need to pass-through the controller..you need vt-d or the AMD-V(IOMMU) feature to do so.

There is an alternate set-up with raw disk devices passed to the VM...this involves a software layer ...the physical disks and controller remain with the hypervisor.

The VM will see virtual disks, which are in fact taken from raw disk devices (or partitions) at the hypervisor side (instead of being just files on the hypervisor datastore)

This has a performance penalty and higher risks because of the layered approach.

 

2. according the intel specs space it seems this cpu has no vt-d ?

http://ark.intel.com/products/48496/Intel-Core-i5-760-Processor-8M-Cache-2_80-GHz

...correct.

 

3. but when i go into my mobo bios i can enable vt-d .... it is not greyed out or so ....

is this normal? will vt-d work or not ?

i saw i think Johm say somewhere if it is not an option on the cpu that you won't be able to set it ?

so main questions remain ... will i need vt-d and does the cpu processor support it or not ?

 

You need vt-d support in the processor to go that route....the function is implemented there

You will also need support from the mobo-chipset (compatible PCIe bridges) and support from the BIOS (to enable it).

conclusion: with your set-up, vt-d is not possible with that i5 CPU

I also don't know if vt-d is confirmed to word with your mobo (although BIOS option is there).

You need confirmation or take the risk. The HCL for that feature is not that long. Reality shows that the feature list in the parts alone is not good proof enough.

[Ford Prefect]

...if you want to keep the hardware / CPU, maybe a different approach:

 

Since your VMs are doing networking only, I'd look into employing virtualbox on a native unRAID host.

There's a thread around, somewhere here

Edit: ...here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=25099.msg223840#msg223840

[Johnm]

#3.

 

Just the opposite. many desktop boards that have a VT-d in the bios do not work correctly even with the correct CPU.

If the vendor has deviated from the Intel reference design, the VT-d might be broken.

 

There are also boards out that are probably quite capable of VT-d that do not have the bios option because the vendor does not want to support it.

 

when working with desktop and VT-d it is potluck.

most desktop boards get new revisions quite often when the suppliers change available parts or what parts are cheaper that month.

 

 

As far as your board, the nic is not ESXi compatible. you would need a PCI or PCIe nic and another CPU. Even then it is not 100% that it will work.