Headless or Cardless ??

[methanoid]

Long time lurker but finally seriously considering unRAID.... but I like to do my research first (and I have trawled the forums really!)

 

The KVM element really appeals and I intend to have up to 3 VMs with individual GPUs each. I've seen plenty of evidence of people running "headless" but a contradictory video from Linus Tech Tips where he says you need to install a crappy GPU card (or use iGPU) for unRAID to grab. This might be a confusion as to what running "headless" is in comparison to "cardless"

 

My X99 mobo will allow 3 cards but no IGP and no spare slots for PCI or even PCIEx1 card. Does that mean it is a bust? Linus seemed to suggest unRAID will grab the first, primary PCIE GPU.

 

Can someone clarify for me?

[sgibbers17]

For the first boot of unraid you need a graphics card to get the ip address after that you do not need it.

[billington.mark]

I have 2x graphics cards, each are passed through to VMs, no on board graphics. (windows 10 and Openelec)

 

One of the graphics cards gets the console on boot, then my W10 VM steals it when that starts up.

 

Even if you shut down the VM, the console doesnt return, you can still however access through SSH and the webGUI is always available. (I use SeaBIOS on my VMs, not sure this is the case with OVMF)

 

There has been whispers of a hotkey switch between passed through graphics to jump back to the unraid console to be a feature in 6.2 though. KVM is still pretty new to unraid, so plenty of time to mature over the next few versions.

 

 

[methanoid]

Thanks guys... so Linus was wrong (haha!). Good to know. One more to cross off the "Worry List" 

[BogyOne]

Hi, I'm going to perform necromancy here but this topic resembles closest the concerns I have.

 

I run on Asus X99 WS-E (no built in GPU) and am preparing for long time to jump over to VMs. How do the solutions you have given work in practice:

 

- For the first boot of unraid you need a graphics card to get the ip address after that you do not need it.

Do you mean first ever or first on every server power up?

 

- One of the graphics cards gets the console on boot, then my W10 VM steals it when that starts up.

How does it happen? Automatically? On start up of specifc VM which has first GPU assigned to it? I can't recall seeing the boot gpu (I've put old, old card in top slot)

 

Would I need to reset bios boot gpu?

 

I'm okay with using external USB card for boot for X99 if anyone could point the direction to find it.

 

Thanks for helping out newb, going now to search for solution to implement USB PnP on each machines.

 

B1