Accessing VMs on Unraid remotely using monitor, keyboard, mouse attached to RPi


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Ako NotYetRated, thanks for the explanation. Is your setup usable by several people at the same time? Especially regarding hdmi.

 

Jonp,  thanks for the input. I will take a look at the link. Noted on the highly adaptable situation of network and explanation on latency. I was thinking if a small network will be affected,  without big file transfers.

 

 

I have had, at most, media center VM streaming Batman Arkham Asylum, second VM streaming an HD movie with bitstreaming audio via Plex, and a Minecraft server with ~22 people online, with no issues on the gaming or movie playing. My second graphics card was not cut out for gaming, so I never tried doubling up on the gaming. Everything runs great. e3-1245V3.

 

In process of migrating to UnRAID and KVM now, can comment on performance once my 12TB of files have transferred. :)

NotYetRated,  thanks for the input

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Jonp, thanks for the clarification on kvm above.  I understand both,  but seeing this forum is about the other kvm,  some may be confused what I'm talking about.

 

I have an rpi,  version 1. The reason I cannot test yet is because my unraid hardware doesn't support iommu. I am contemplating whether it is worth to change hardware, specially if the discussion here gives positive results.

 

I initially wanted to find out if it's already being used in the way I intended. Since it isn't,  only way is to try it out,  as you have pointed out. I will have to wait for successful implementation though of others before considering changing hardware since my hardware is not capable.

 

Thanks

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  • 10 months later...

Just thought with Raspberry pi 3 out, maybe we can revive this topic.  Check out the link below.  This proves the user experience will greatly improve soon.  I don't know how to do it thought with kvm, not citrix.  Anybody care to comment?

 

 

I've been looking into this a lot lately as well. Looks like HDX/RemoteFX need (or suggest) expensive GPUs in the host machine to create vGPUs that are passed to the VMs. It looks like the best thing for KVM may be spice, which has been added into the unraid 6.2 betas. Before I saw this thread, I created a new one asking for user experience with spice (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=50233.0), so hopefully somebody chimes in with how well it works.

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Will check out spice.  Is it supposed to be a counterpart for HDX/RemoteFX? But just to share with all here,  using a xeon server in the office,  and provisioning VMs to users (regular way,  not VDI), using raspberry pi 3 as thin client, I got a very good user experience. I'd say very close to desktop like performance when not gaming. Youtube videos looks good,  scrolling looks perfect. This is with win 10 desktop. Before I upgraded to win 10, WIn 7 performance was lousy.

 

I've like to stress the server isn't using any discreet graphics card.  It's not even configured for remoteFX. Just plain old partitioning of the server and allocating resources for a vm to be created for win 7 or win 10.

 

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

 

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Will check out spice.  Is it supposed to be a counterpart for HDX/RemoteFX? But just to share with all here,  using a xeon server in the office,  and provisioning VMs to users (regular way,  not VDI), using raspberry pi 3 as thin client, I got a very good user experience. I'd say very close to desktop like performance when not gaming. Youtube videos looks good,  scrolling looks perfect. This is with win 10 desktop. Before I upgraded to win 10, WIn 7 performance was lousy.

 

I've like to stress the server isn't using any discreet graphics card.  It's not even configured for remoteFX. Just plain old partitioning of the server and allocating resources for a vm to be created for win 7 or win 10.

 

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

I too have been able to get decent performance from a raspberrypi 3 using xfreerdp. The issue I have with the raspberry pi is I can't get a dual monitor setup. Also, microsoft's RDP clients are definitely a bit more optimized then freerdp, so I fell back to using an old atom ion revo machine as my thin clients, and it works a bit better.

 

Out of curiosity, which RDP client are you using on your pi?

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've been using VMs hosted in unRAID from a variety of different clients over WAN and LAN and have been more than happy with the performance for most things.

 

Chromebook using Chrome Remote Desktop again absolutely fine.

MK808b+ SOC running Android using Microsoft RD app from App store has been fine (port forwarding & IP info required)

VNC using RealVNC again absolutely fine (port forwarding & IP info required)

 

This across a mixed range of VMs and Clients, Linux and Windows. Pi would have zero problems imo. The MK8080b+ SOC is similar hardware. Using Remmima or Chrome Remote Desktop to control the VMs on the server.

 

However, this was all for standard stuff - coding, some browsing, nothing major. Youtube not a great experience with vGPU.

 

Now for the tricky part. I'm hoping to do a little more heavy lifting on one of the VMs in the unRAID server and do some 3D modelling work. My server currently doesn't have a second GPU (runs headless) and so all VMs are using emulated GPUs.

 

Will passing through a dedicated GPU to that (Windows) VM that needs to do some of the heavy lifting (bearing in mind that it will still be accessed over one of the protocols above) improve performance? Just trying to figure out whether or not I really need to add a GPU for this task.

 

On the same subject, given that RemoteFX requires Hyper-V, am I right in thinking that there is no way for unRAID KVM to harness this? (Even if I host the VM on a hosted Windows Server within KVM?)

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A dedicated gpu will need hardwired access to gain the on screen acceleration you seek. If you wantedit a dedicated gpu for rendering it would work but not in screen performance.

 

I dont think a dedicated gpu needs to be hardwired to get screen acceleration. I regularly game stream over my lan using nvidea gamestreaming.

From my mac laptop acess my vms remotely with full gpu acceleration using splashtop desktop http://www.splashtop.com/ (i have also used on windows and android as well. I beleive there is a chrome plugin for splashtop so should be okay on a chromebook. (but i havent tried)

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  • 2 years later...
On 7/10/2016 at 10:53 PM, jang430 said:

In my scenario,  I want regular desktop experience, play youtube,  scroll without lag.  That's all I need. In my test with regular VM using rdp on Windows 10, performance is great from Raspberry pi.

 

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

 

I was wondering if this was ever accomplished? I have a couple rp3 and am looking for a similar solution since I am new to UnRAID.

 

If so any tutorials or links posted anywhere?

 

Alternatively, is there any way to use UnRAID as a server that hosts something similar to roaming profiles?

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On 1/10/2019 at 10:55 AM, Kesp said:

I was wondering if this was ever accomplished? I have a couple rp3 and am looking for a similar solution since I am new to UnRAID.

 

If so any tutorials or links posted anywhere?

 

Alternatively, is there any way to use UnRAID as a server that hosts something similar to roaming profiles?

I was able to access VMs using Rpi3, with the said software above.  Though as mentioned by Spaceinvaderone, best performance is to pass through a gpu.  Though when it comes to 3D gaming, there is lag in mouse movements.

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