Headless UnRAID with no IGA/IPMI, Nvidia GPU passthrough


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I'm lost on this subject - I think I have an understanding but what I'm finding/reading leads me to think otherwise.

 

I have a motherboard without IPMI or integrated graphics. I've read that UnRAID can run headless, but the online manual seems to suggest this only means without connected input/output peripherals. That doesn't seem to be an issue with AMD gpus because some how they can be shared between a VM and unRAID (which sounds like magic to be honest). Nvidia on the other hand requires they be isolated for that VM - that's fine.

 

So if I have no IPMI or IGA and I have an Nvidia GPU, in my mind my solutions are either don't run unRAID with any GPU, or install a second card for it. If the first isn't possible, is it possible to passthrough the card in the first PCIe slot to a VM while running unRAID on the secondary card? If either of these is possible, it'd be great for the purpose of dual-booting Windows and unRAID until I get my configuration figured out.

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Hi!

 

First, I recommend you to test by yourself, as the sucess is always very dependent of your hardware, even the brand, specific model, bios, can make a substantial difference.

As of my thread (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=50193.0) I have a nvidia card and an amd card.

I always tested the nvidia in first place because I want it in the x16 slot for the gaming vm, so I don't know how the system behaves with an amd in the first place.

With the nvidia you must have another card, else unraid will use it for console and it will not show image when you passthrough it. In my case I use the cpu internal graphics for unraid.

In my early tests, on an amd platform, I used a pci card for unraid. It worked flawessly.

 

Bye!

 

 

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I only have Nvidia cards, a 980TI and a 210, so the AMD aspect is something I can't test myself. Also unfortunate is that my motherboard only has PCIe, (4 16x and 1 1x) so I don't have the ability to set IGA/PCI as my initial graphics adapter instead of PCIe. I really wish unRAID is something I'd known about before building this PC so I could consider more compliant hardware.

 

I kind of come away with your post thinking it's possible to run unRAID on the second GPU. Is that something you're aware of or can confirm?

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If you have 2 or more pci-ex.16x, so you can put the 210 in the first slot (to unraid) and the 980ti in the second to passthrough. I can't do that because my board, although it has 3 slots 16x, only the first is indeed 16x, the other two are 4x electrically.

The first (or internal/onboard) gpu is always the one that unraid uses. So to use another pci-ex slot, it's only possible if there is how to change it in the board bios (something that I never saw).

If the first slot is 1x, you have also the option to buy a vga card that is 1x compliant (to use in unraid).

Still I recommend you to do some tests; if you don't have another platform, grab a pendrive and a ssd, disconnect your actual drives and test unraid. Don't start a build "blindly".

 

Bye!

 

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There are some reports in the forum about using a single nvidia card and passing it through. For this you need to extract the ROM file of the card and tell the VM to use it. I'll see if I can dig up the thread about it so you can try.

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If you motherboard BIOS allows for selection of GPU based on the slot (as mine and I'm sure others do, as both my recent builds allowed for this), you can add a secondary GPU for UnRAID and set the primary GPU for boot/UnRAID to that GPU, leaving the 16X slot available for a VM.

If you have an old style PCI slot (most don't anymore), you can even buy a cheesy ~$10 PCI video card, and use that to for boot/UnRAID usage, leaving the other card available.

 

The thread that is mentioned for single Nvidia GPU passing to a VM is located here: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=43644.msg464975#msg464975

 

I'm in the AMD in the 1st slot (I've had this card prior to switching to the "one machine to rule them all" thinking), Nvidia in all of the rest.

Boot/UnRAID does its thing on that primary card, then I steal it away for my primary VM, which works pretty well (I'd also call this "magic").

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Double checked and I don't have any options for first graphics adapter. I'll look into this workaround for Nvidia passthrough, though the idea of having to pull information directly off the card is a little off putting.

 

Thank you for the help!

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