Well most of it is already in the title, i really came to love unRAID since i started using it for my home server.
Recently my boss (small startup and i am kind of the tech guy) asked me how we could get into VR-Gaming, since some of our next projects will include VR and we want to get used to it.
Everybody is using MacBooks or slow Laptops, so no way of implementing it with our current Hardware.

 

My Idea was, to use this as an opportunity to genereate some new workplaces for my collegues who suffer with their old Laptops.

So Basically i am thinking about an unRAID Server with 1 GTX 1080 and 2 cheap GPUs to pass them through to VMs and have three people working on one machine. (Or 1 Gaming and 2 working )

VR-GPU    560€    https://goo.gl/FxoCpX
2*GPU    120€    https://goo.gl/VJHyBX
PSU        150€    https://goo.gl/1Fhv2G
Motherboard    170€    https://goo.gl/TpuK9d
CPU        300€    https://goo.gl/7UNwr4
RAM        350€    https://goo.gl/9DhKP6
Case    100€    https://goo.gl/km5gZv
4*SSD        360€    https://goo.gl/iqNW65
2*HDD        220€    https://goo.gl/v3bQ16
PCIe USB3    15€    https://goo.gl/gZLJsv

 

With this setup RAM would be upgradable, the two small GPUs won't draw to much power and every VM can have its own SSD to boot from. One SSD will be left as spare and the 4TB drives will be Array and Parity. We mostly work in the Cloud so i guess 4TB will be sufficient. There should be enough PCI slots to upgrade SATA-Ports if needed and the tweo m.2 solts might be nice in the future.

 

I am very new to PCIe passthrough and VM-Gaming (my own server is mostly for Media and Backups, i don't game at home) so i would be glad to recieve so feedback towards this build

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that CPU / motherboard combo is not going to play well with 3 simultaneous full pass through VM's. I think you are going to need to step up to the e5 xeon series of processor, along with a good bit more RAM. VR gaming itself is rather demanding, and what you laid out here probably would be barely enough to bare metal VR, let alone host other VM's at the same time.

 

I suspect you are probably going to spend much more money putting together a competent single VM hosting system than you would building 1 VR gaming rig and a pair of low end desktops. If you are wanting to get into the required tech, and the experience of doing it, then be prepared for much time spent researching and solving issues.

I'd say go to at least the I7 8700, 2 extra cores will help out a lot. 
Depending on how basic the desktop VM's have to be I do suggest adding more ram.

Well, I guess while the VR VM is running in VR mode no one else will be working at the machines.
So maybe I will check if only VR Gaming could be done with this setup

What do you think, would working on those three VMs be possible at the same time? Like light office work on the low end ones and maybe some video editing on the VR machine?

Well for me sure this would mostly be a tinkering project, but to convince my boss into spending around 2500€ it should be usable

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I'd say go to at least the I7 8700, 2 extra cores will help out a lot. 
Depending on how basic the desktop VM's have to be I do suggest adding more ram.

Well the i7 8700k is only 50€ more, so I will definitely consider it for the RAM... Well that shit is expensive...
I think I will go with the 32gb for a start and see how it's running. The Mainboard can hold 4 sticks so I can upgrade...

Thanks for your help

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16 hours ago, jonathanm said:

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that CPU / motherboard combo is not going to play well with 3 simultaneous full pass through VM's. I think you are going to need to step up to the e5 xeon series of processor, along with a good bit more RAM. VR gaming itself is rather demanding, and what you laid out here probably would be barely enough to bare metal VR, let alone host other VM's at the same time.

 

I suspect you are probably going to spend much more money putting together a competent single VM hosting system than you would building 1 VR gaming rig and a pair of low end desktops. If you are wanting to get into the required tech, and the experience of doing it, then be prepared for much time spent researching and solving issues.

 

Well thanks for the insight.
Whats do you think about the i7 8700k CPU? I think i can put that one into the server.

 

An other idea i had was kind of a dual booting process. I am not really sure if that would work, so if you have any ideas i would appreciate them
Can i install the VR Machine on a SSD and boot directly from the ssd if i want to go into "gaming mode" with all the other hardware beeing ready for it.
And if i want to work, i plug in unRAID and have the VM-SSD passed through completely to a VM.

Will this work? or would the hardware differences between real boot and VM be to significant for Windows 10 to handle?

correct me if i'm wrong, when you say "2 cheap GPUs to pass them through to VMs", you're saying that, the 2 workplaces that are going to use cheap GPUs are going to be also able to utilize GTX 1080 GPU process?

 

because i'm also planning to build an unraid server, 1 server for 3 gamers, but i don't want to invest 3 expensive GPUs. i just want to have 1 expensive GPU with 2 others running on cheap GPUs but utilize the main GPU mentioned above.

Edited September 9, 20205 yr by william_k