June 19, 201610 yr Hey guys, just thought I'd report in. First thing's first: Hardware ASUS P8P67 Evo Core i7 3770 3.4GHz 16GB DDR3 RAM 1TB WD HDD GeForce GTX 670 Geforce GTX 960 (chosen for their roughly equal speeds +/- 5%) nVidia Quadro FX1700 chopped to x1 (yes, physically cut off the connector) Now, the strange bit. I don't have onboard video, and couldn't get the VM to use the GTX 670, so I bought the Quadro card for $20 specifically for the purpose of cutting and booting from. Dropped it in the x1 slot... computer still booted from the first x16 slot (GTX 670), but unRAID DOES pick up the FX1700 and can even use it, so it is working. I was having a panic attack, I figured that would release the 670 for VM gaming. This project is supposed to be sold to make me money to cover bills at the end of the month here. turns out this setup can run UnRAID headless by simply setting the primary video card to PCI (under PCI settings in Advanced) This released the GTX 670 to be passed through to the VM. The unraid console doesnt show up at all so it feels like it takes an eternity to boot (is there anyway to have it jump right into unraid rather than waiting the 10 seconds for the menu (safe mode/memtest)? Like has this option never been explored before? I don't have *ANY* PCI cards installed, yet it still booted from PCI as primary video. I can still modify the server via the http://tower URL, but I spent these last (first) 6 days (of my trial mind you) reading over and over that unraid NEEDS an extra card for itself if you're using nVidia cards. EDIT: guess not, I guess I didn't think PCI setting would allow it to boot from the PCI-e x1 slot. Well... it works now at least. Here I was thinking "oh man this is awesome" lol While I'm on the subject. Now that I have UnRAID VM's running Windows 10 with an up time of more than 2 days now, is there anything I should look out for? As stated this is a project computer to be sold to an end user/children, so I want all the kinks worked out beforehand.
June 19, 201610 yr Regarding the delay in the boot menu, the time can be set in the syslinux.cfg file on the flash drive.
June 19, 201610 yr It's nVidia GPU has been reported to be non-cooperating when passing through headless + being in the primary PCIe slot.
June 19, 201610 yr While I'm on the subject. Now that I have UnRAID VM's running Windows 10 with an up time of more than 2 days now, is there anything I should look out for? As stated this is a project computer to be sold to an end user/children, so I want all the kinks worked out beforehand. Unraid VM's are too new to be kink free. I am afraid you are going to have a long term support project on your hands with this one. I hope your "customer" is tech savvy and understanding.
June 19, 201610 yr Why make an unraid vm machine instead of just a regular windows pc to be sold? If its aimed towards kids? Are you planning to have like 2-3 video outputs? For like 2-3 kids playing on 1 computer?
June 19, 201610 yr While I'm on the subject. Now that I have UnRAID VM's running Windows 10 with an up time of more than 2 days now, is there anything I should look out for? As stated this is a project computer to be sold to an end user/children, so I want all the kinks worked out beforehand. Unraid VM's are too new to be kink free. I am afraid you are going to have a long term support project on your hands with this one. I hope your "customer" is tech savvy and understanding. To do yourself and your customer a favor, refund their money and return the hardware. You will need to provide nearly constant support for that setup.
June 20, 201610 yr Author I understand the whole "need nearly constant support" and "why not just build one PC" but my question is... why? In the 3 days now since I've had both VM's set up properly the only time I've needed to do anything to the host itself is to start up the second VM because I forgot to disable sleep. Like what exactly would I be encountering here that I havent already? Unless someone gets into the host and mucks about that way or some hardware fails or changes (maybe an upgrade, but thus far it looks like the 1st PCI-e x16 slot is dedicated to one player, and the second slot to the other, so as long as GPU's end up in those proper slots even upgrading the graphics is possible), but that sounds like standard support issues anyway. In fact one would think being an isolated VM that any issues would be simple to fix. I understand the average user can mess up a PC far more than I could ever dream, especially since one of the kids here likes to mess around in the settings (feels like every hour or half hour he's asking for help), but as far as I can tell it's no different than dealing with it as if it were its own PC in the first place, he simply doesn't know and doesn't have access to the unRAID settings. (similar to how ISP equipment doesn't allow you to dive too deep). Like what specifically are you warning me about that would render this computer a pain in my/another user's butt? Even the USB controllers are passed through so everything on them is plug n play, front for one user, rear for the other user, being nVidia I don't have to deal with AMD's reboot issue (but in exchange I have to have a third graphics card but the end user shouldn't have to play with that anyway, it looks like a seamless experience for the end user). I'm not trying to be annoying or say "I don't believe you", but thusfar this has been a far better, and much smoother experience than SoftXPand ever was, aside from the initial setup & problem solving which took 4 days, when SoftXPand is up and running immediately after installing it.
June 22, 201610 yr Author whelp, I found my first issue: any time my primary VM ("Player 1") tries to download a game through steam, shortly after it starts to download, it crashes. Like hard crashes, I have to use the secondary VM ("Player 2") to restart it as the tower page says it stopped. Considering I just played a few hours with a friend on Steam (Don't starve together), and this happens nearly every time I try to start downloading a game, I'm thinking this is an issue with either UnRAID, or my vanilla Windows 10 install. Player 2 is idling on desktop when this happens so nothing else is downloading so it wouldnt be a conflict with the bridge. Any ideas? Google is no help.
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