Need help to build a dual vm gaming + maybe NAS and game server

[Enzaii]

Hi everybody,

First I want to tell I never had any experience with Unraid and VM's exept one time I had run macOS in Windows by VmWare.

Also I'm french so maybe i will make some spelling mistakes

 

My project is to centralise 2 windows gaming VMs into one PC and maybe also a NAS and a game server.

I read some tutos about Unraid, how it works, how to setup and globally I understand it but I still got questions.

I decided to choose an X299 platform, I got an ASRock X299 Taichi XE motherboard, 32Gb (4x 8Gb) of DDR4, 2x 500Gb 970 Evo Plus SSDs, 3 HDDs (2To, 3To, 4To)

I also got a Radeon VII and a Quadro M5000 wich I will probably switch for another Radeon VII.

I still need to choose the CPU : I want each machine got 8 threads so minimum 8C/16T CPUs.

I have as choice several CPUs : 7820X (16T 28lanes), 9800X (16T 44lanes), 7900X (20T 44lanes), 9900X (20T 44lanes), and all the other x299 Core X-Series.

I also want to make a NAS / Private game server combo for my files backup and to host games like Ark or Minecraft who needs 4 threads and a good cpu power.

So I want to get your thought about the best options to choose

 

  I /   Should I choose a CPU with even more cores or build two separate machines : one for gaming and the other one for the NAS and server ?

        Also what about the power efficiency of a 8+ core 150+ W CPU for an all-time runing NAS and only few hours gamings and not everyday ?

 

 II /  Does Unraid need dedicated cores ? In some places I see YES , in some other I see NO ... So finally YES or NO ?

       And for 2 VMs is it better to assign 8 threads each from 4 "real cores" or from 8 "real cores" ?

       4 = VM1 0-1-2-3-8-9-10-11 / VM2 4-5-6-7-12-13-14-15     or     8 =VM1 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 / VM2 8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15

 

III /  Is it possible to share one vDisk (raid 0 of the 2 SSDs) as only one Steam Library for the 2 VMs with different Steam accounts ?

      Or should I got one vDisk per VM , with almost the same files on it ?

 

IV / Can an optane 32G0 M.2 module be used as cache for an HDD ?

 

Thanks for reading me

[testdasi]

1 hour ago, Enzaii said:

My project is to centralise 2 windows gaming VMs into one PC and maybe also a NAS and a game server.

I read some tutos about Unraid, how it works, how to setup and globally I understand it but I still got questions.

I decided to choose an X299 platform, I got an ASRock X299 Taichi XE motherboard, 32Gb (4x 8Gb) of DDR4, 2x 500Gb 970 Evo Plus SSDs, 3 HDDs (2To, 3To, 4To)

I also got a Radeon VII and a Quadro M5000 wich I will probably switch for another Radeon VII.

I still need to choose the CPU : I want each machine got 8 threads so minimum 8C/16T CPUs.

I have as choice several CPUs : 7820X (16T 28lanes), 9800X (16T 44lanes), 7900X (20T 44lanes), 9900X (20T 44lanes), and all the other x299 Core X-Series.

I also want to make a NAS / Private game server combo for my files backup and to host games like Ark or Minecraft who needs 4 threads and a good cpu power.

So I want to get your thought about the best options to choose

 

  I /   Should I choose a CPU with even more cores or build two separate machines : one for gaming and the other one for the NAS and server ?

        Also what about the power efficiency of a 8+ core 150+ W CPU for an all-time runing NAS and only few hours gamings and not everyday ?

 

 II /  Does Unraid need dedicated cores ? In some places I see YES , in some other I see NO ... So finally YES or NO ?

       And for 2 VMs is it better to assign 8 threads each from 4 "real cores" or from 8 "real cores" ?

       4 = VM1 0-1-2-3-8-9-10-11 / VM2 4-5-6-7-12-13-14-15     or     8 =VM1 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 / VM2 8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15

 

III /  Is it possible to share one vDisk (raid 0 of the 2 SSDs) as only one Steam Library for the 2 VMs with different Steam accounts ?

      Or should I got one vDisk per VM , with almost the same files on it ?

 

IV / Can an optane 32G0 M.2 module be used as cache for an HDD ?

 

Thanks for reading me

1. It depends on the games. Most games won't need more than quad core 3GHz. So assuming each VM has 4 cores, you are left with 2 free cores with 7900X/9900X. Then you need to reserve 1 core for Unraid so you are left 1 core for the game server. That means either you have to run your game server on 1 core (2 threads) or 1 of your 2 VM will need to drop down to 3 cores.

As long as you don't overclock (and you shouldn't when hosting VMs and/or running a NAS), modern CPU efficiency (together with modern electricity cost) is basically not something you need to worry about. The TL;DR: is if you have to worry about electricity costs, you probably need to worry more about essentials like food and water.

 

2. Yes, Unraid needs at least 1 core for it. You have to remember NAS functionality and virtualisation needs CPU power too! For 1 VM, you might be able to live with just half a core reserved for Unraid (i.e. 1 thread) but 2+ VM - forget it.

For gaming VM, assign all threads from the same physical cores. That will give you best performance consistency.

 

3. No. Steam Library should be on the array, not vdisk. And vdisk can't be shared among concurrent VM. There are plenty of guides on how to integrate Steam with Unraid so have a quick look around Youtube. (hint: start with SpaceInvader One channel)

 

4. The cache that you are thinking, no.

 

Having said all of the above, if you insist on the X299 Taichi + 2x Radeon VII of graphic cards then I would say life will be hard.

You will likely need (and even with that, no guarantee):

• Vega patch. You will need to compile Unraid kernel with the vega patch. There's a forum user who compiled 6.8.3 with vega patch (among other patches) so you might be able to use that but there's no guarantee the user will do the same with future versions.
• Dumping your vbios (rom file) for the graphics card.
• Boot up with a graphics card that is not the Radeon VII (preferably one that won't be passed through to another VM). This may or may not be easy since the Taichi will always pick the 1st PCIe x16 slot to boot (Gigabyte motherboard will allow you to pick any x16 length slot to boot with).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Enzaii]

Thank you for your quick reply !

For the "power efficiency" I talked, that was not really about the cost but more like : Why consuming 70W at idle for just a NAS when it can be only like 10W ?

I think i will made two systems rather than one because my gaming mate loves RGB lights and fans ... so a f**king system that lights up rgb all day in the office will make me cry i think ! When gaming okay but not all the day.

 

The game servers can full up a 3.0G quad core CPU when 20 players are on so 1 or 2 threads no way.

And server is surprisingly way stable on windows rather than on Linux 🙃

I think i will recycle an ITX board that i have, with a Windows Server to not get it rebooting everyday for updates.

And with some drives in raid for storage it would be the perfect NAS / server combo.

 

For the main system I will probably go for a 10 core CPU : so 7900X, 9820X, 9900X or 10900X. I will check wich is the best for me and my money.

Threads assignement : 0-10-1-11 to Unraid , 2-12-3-13-4-14-5-15 to VM1 and 6-16-7-17-8-18-9-19 to VM2. 

 

Yep by vDisk I would say array, I'm not so RAID terms friendly for now but it will come ! So yes i know i can make an array and share it to both VMs as like a network drive but the main question was : Can two people play the same game at same time from same disk ? What about the backups of games ?

I assume that will not be a problem as we can share the library and play a game with another account on the same pc but i'm not sure.

 

I dont intend to boot faster my vm with the optane if thats what you think.

I will probably go for one or two 2.5 ssd of 256G for the two main vDisks for windows directories

My two 512G ssd in raid 0 for a 1TB "ultrafast" Steam library

And the 2T drive for the mass storage : not so important files, downloads and so on.

So just can it be used as a cache drive to speed up a little bit this type of "slow" 3.5 mechanical drive ?

 

I got the Taichi and one of the R VII so I'm a bit stuck with it. That's a Taichi XE maybe she is different  

I can manage to get the first slot with a small nvidia card like a GT 710 or 1030

I would prefer to get the radeons on first and second positions for cooling facilities. And also lanes assignements but not a priority.

Is it an issue to boot on a GPU that will passtrough in vm ?

I will search about the radeon patch. Won't unraid add support for vega in future versions like 7.0 ?

 

Kernel patching .. Hhhmmmrrrr , I made hackintosh on a dual xeon mobo few month ago. A real pain but it works !

Nothing is impossible. It will WORKS and also WELL, at least i hope !

[Enzaii]

Is there any guide or something like that to make a Vega GPU working by passthrough ?

In VNC mode my vm works fine but when i try to assign the gpu it starts to boot then freeze.

And with the ton of posts over all the forums speaking of that cards and of the reset bug, i miss myself.

I don't really care about that reset bug because the 2 vms will be both up or down on same times and when they will be down the pc will be shutted down