Is Virtualization right for my usage?

[DanielCoffey]

I have been reading Jon's blog about gaming on your NAS and I have been wondering if Virtualization is appropriate for my specific usage so I thought I would ask.

 

I currently have a small NAS with unRAID 6.1.9 Plus running a single PLEX docker serving an Apple  TV 4. I also have a PC which is set to dual-boot to Win10 for Steam games that are Windows-based and for Photoshop CS6. The same PC is used in Linux Mint 17.3 for all household tasks such as browsing, finance, online shopping and any of my Steam games that are available for Linux. I am having issues when dual-booting from Win10 back to Linux in that USB devices are not initialised correctly most of the time, requiring a PSU reset and cold reboot which is a pain when you have to swap over several times a day.

 

I am aware that the current hardware is not suitable for Virtualization as I have an i7 4770K which does not support VT-d but in the next few months or so I will be planning a new build and wondered if I could combine both PCs into one device.

 

It would have one CPU (with iGPU), one gaming GPU, one monitor, one keyboard, mouse and tablet. There would be my 6 current unRAID drives plus a few SSDs outside the array. I would not be expecting the Win10 VM and Linux VM to be active at the same time (one would sleep while I used the other).

 

Do you think Virtualization is appropriate or should I be looking to sort out my dual-boot issues?

[edgeinterface]

It kind of depends on whether your dual-boot usb issues are easier to solve than setting up unRaid VMs

 

With virtualization you might have completely new set of issues to deal with. Passing devices through is greatly dependent on your hardware and there's always a chance it won't work in your specific case even though it works for everybody else.

 

I still didn't make a switch from my Win7 and bunch of virtualbox VMs I use for work even though I already have all my hardware ready, solved issues with passthrough of GPU and other devices and even have all the data transferred to array in unRaid. Basically what I really need to do is to add my SSDs and last HDD that Win7 uses to unRaid and I would be done. I have Win10 VMs already created and configured in unRaid, one for "work", one for "home", few for "work test lab stuff" Main thing that stops me from committing is the fact that I would have to go through the whole process of configuring my work environment. It's not hard to do but it's time consuming and when I think about this I lose my will to live

 

Another thing that kind of bothers me is switching from Windows to Linux. I am Windows guy, I never managed to get into Linux and I tried quite a few times, I really did. I understand Windows, I know Windows, I develop software for Windows, I use Windows. unRaid is Linux and having all my home & work dependent on OS that I don't understand or know how to use / fix makes me uneasy. It's nothing concrete or even rational - in reality I can just fire up my laptop or even phone and google for solutions but it's that feeling.

 

My post probably won't help you much but I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone in asking this kind of question

[DanielCoffey]

Thanks for the thoughts.

 

I have poked the Linux Mint hardware forum with my dual-boot issues but that sub-forum is a bit on the quiet side at the moment.

 

In the mean time I will wait and see what the good folks here think about my use case for Virtualization. Since I wanted to get a new machine within the next half year or so I figured I should start thinking ahead about the important choices (such as VT-d support).

[JonathanM]

It would have one CPU (with iGPU), one gaming GPU, one monitor, one keyboard, mouse and tablet. There would be my 6 current unRAID drives plus a few SSDs outside the array. I would not be expecting the Win10 VM and Linux VM to be active at the same time (one would sleep while I used the other).

As of the current stable version of unraid (and possibly the beta's, I haven't tried) sleeping a VM isn't a gui option, you would need to use virsh command line options, and even then I'm not sure of the impact of sharing hardware with sleeping OS's. I currently have a debian jessie and a windows 8.1 VM running on 6.1.9 that share a Nvidia GT-720 quite happily, but I shut them down completely before switching to the other. I don't know what levels of OS power management are KVM friendly, so it's possible you might be able to figure something out. I personally never need to sleep a VM, I'm either using it or shutting it down totally. Your use case may very well necessitate some form of savestate.

[DanielCoffey]

It is looking like I need to get my dual-boot issues sorted. At the moment I have been advised to look  at disabling BIOS FastBoot and Win10 Fast Start to see what Win10 is doing on Shut Down.