I use my system for storage only. I am only asking in case I decided to build a new system with virtualization in mind. When passingthru different hardware to Win10 VMs, are we getting 100% physical install performance? Are there any caveats? Do you guys also do the same with other OSs?

 

Thnx

Hey Mat,

 

There is a performance hit although if your system is optimized properly it should be small (3-5%).  Caveats for me were making sure to dedicate storage and pass it through to the vm and let the vm manage it, to set cpu isolation properly (the new 6.6 makes it pretty easy), and to set the boot order in the VM config when you have multiple disks.  When I was running a passed through NVME drive and an additional passed through sata disk it kept popping the uefi bios up and wouldn't save my changes.

 

Setting <boot order="1"/> on the nvme device solved that issue, although it occasionally liked to pop off if I was making changes to the template and needed to be reapplied.

 

I had some other issues but they were mostly related to the fact that I was using an e5-2697 v2 (big slow xeon).  If I was building another unraid box and the idea  was to have it do double gaming duty along with file storage/plex/handbrake like I have now I would have used 2 higher clocked CPUs or something newer.  I could also have lowered my expectations on the plex server.  That 12 core spoiled me.  Maybe i should have run a seperate VM to host the plex and handbrake dockers just to truely isolate them?  In the end I had a fully functioning gaming rig literally sitting next to my unraid server and I decided to shelve the project.  If my gaming rig blew up I would have no problem using my unraid box as a stand in until I figured out what to do though.

 

Next time the hobby bug bites me maybe I'll do something crazy like run unraid on both systems and virtualize my gaming rig too so I can run plex on the IGP and back up the primary.

Thnx for the response...It was only an idea. I did notice the Linus group are using UNRAID virtualization features heavily, and a lot of users here are using dockers and VMs. I am not using any of that at all, just a basic NAS storage system.

 

Thnx

I might revisit it in the future, I thought it was working pretty great but I kept getting really long weird fps drops that seemed to be related to the CPU's going idle on me.  If I was using 6 cores it happened almost constantly, but with 4 it wasn't so bad.  Just might need additional work that I didn't have the time for yet.  Not trying to steer you away from it, just manage your expectations and realize it does make things more complicated.  Other than that, happy building.