Hi all,

 

My name is Jan-Paul from the Netherlands. I've been using unraid for a while now, mostly as a NAS and with sabnzb. Still on version 5.xx I think. Recently I looked up the forums and saw interesting things. AS version 6 has arrived, with new options that I am interested in but do not know where to start. As I see it, I rediscovered the forum again 6 month's too late.

I am using unraid for storing movies in HD and with Kodi, streaming stuff. Using VM's is drawing my attention as it might be useful for me. Wanting to use unraid to use one system to be able to use two or three streams simultaneausly and use two windows 10 systems for general use and or medium gaming. Possibly using GPU passthrough from unraid server to clients.

Talking about clients, what should I use as clients for my kids, if passthrough is possible.? Sever will be on the third floor, clients in de livingroom. I do have wired network with gigabit capability. But does passthrough work through network? Can anyone give me hints where to start reading. As the forum is a bit overwhelming with info. Concering hardware I am not up to date or better yet up to a level so I can make desiscions about what kind of cpu/ motherborad to get for the tasks I want to use it for. V3 xeons look ok but they are not as cheap anymore and are power hungry. Would go for it as the cpu's were still $70, proper motherbords (server grade) are expensive. But the Vti Vtd things are confusing and QS an ES. Bwhoaarch, can't see the thees through the wood. Dutch saying that doen't make sense in English but let's say, I am a bit lost.

If you want to run a couple of VM's with Windows 10 and use them for gaming, then the user has to be physically next to the unRAID server, you can't do it over distances, maybe 5 or 10 feet but that might be stretching it. Depending on your hardware, you can pass through a gaming video card to a Windows 10 VM for gaming, no problem. You want a CPU that support VT-D for hardware passthrough. Perhaps there are some Dutch users on here that can help you out.

Thank you for your quick response. You are pointing out a couple of useful things here. Hoping to get some reactions from Dutch users. English is fine too, reading is easier for me than writing it though, as you might have noticed.

You can stretch out how far a physical vm goes by using an hdmi over cat 5e/6 extender, and the same for usb2 as well. This is not over an ip network but standalone cat. cables. I've read that using the hdmi over cat ip extenders can saturate and overwhelm a gigabit network, but have no experience personally with them.

 

I run a few of these in my home to physically extend the desktop to locations about 50 feet from my server. Different extenders can go further as well. They run about 30-50 dollars for a kit on amazon. I can detect no latency in using them. The usb2 over cat 5e extender costs about 50 bucks. You can get a complete "KVM" over cat 5e/6 extender that puts the hdmi signal and the usb signal in one standalone cable, but cheapest i've seen that is 150 for a kit.

You can use "USB Redirector" by simplycore.com to seamlessly pass USB devices from a host PC to remote PC's over the LAN (I use it to relay 4 web cams) or use up to 30 meter USB active extension cables to bring remote USB devices much closer.