Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Brian Weeden wrote: I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). snip Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? Yes, the VM's are totally independent of each other. They can be brought up, shut down, created, and destroyed independently of each other. - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? Unless you're running VMWare ESX ($3000-$4000) you'd boot into an OS and then load your hypervisor, then boot your VM's. - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? You divvy up memory. They all share the CPU. Load put on one VM will have a negative impact on other VM's and your physical host. I believe you can set limits in ESX. - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? There's no concept of assigning physical hardware (beyond a nic) such as a video card to a VM (at least in the x86 world. You can in Solaris Logical Domains.) Each VM gets a virtual console, which you connect to with an app, or in the case of VMWare Server 2.0 beta, a web applet. You would not want to run a HTPC in a VM. You'd probably get by making the system that hosts the hypervisor the HTPC. - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. Absolutely will not work the way you describe.
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Oh well. Guess I will have to stick to two separate machines :( Thanks for pointing out the errors in my logic. On 12/21/07, Ben Ruset [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brian Weeden wrote: I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). snip Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? Yes, the VM's are totally independent of each other. They can be brought up, shut down, created, and destroyed independently of each other. - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? Unless you're running VMWare ESX ($3000-$4000) you'd boot into an OS and then load your hypervisor, then boot your VM's. - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? You divvy up memory. They all share the CPU. Load put on one VM will have a negative impact on other VM's and your physical host. I believe you can set limits in ESX. - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? There's no concept of assigning physical hardware (beyond a nic) such as a video card to a VM (at least in the x86 world. You can in Solaris Logical Domains.) Each VM gets a virtual console, which you connect to with an app, or in the case of VMWare Server 2.0 beta, a web applet. You would not want to run a HTPC in a VM. You'd probably get by making the system that hosts the hypervisor the HTPC. - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. Absolutely will not work the way you describe. -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Ben Ruset wrote: There's no concept of assigning physical hardware (beyond a nic) such as a video card to a VM (at least in the x86 world. You can in Solaris Logical Domains.) Each VM gets a virtual console, which you connect to with an app, or in the case of VMWare Server 2.0 beta, a web applet. Actually, to build on this, you can assign a raw storage device, such as a partition, to a VM and it will access it as local disk, as opposed to accessing storage emulated by the hypervisor in the form of a disk image file. Currently the limit is 2TB of raw space per VM.
[H] Building a Virtualization box
I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Unless someone knows or has seen something I haven't, video acceleration capable of hd, or to utilize specific hardware like a tv tuner doesn't exist. Video cards and sound, etc are all emulated and therefore sucky for that purpose. Sent via BlackBerry by ATT -Original Message- From: Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:11:51 To:hwg hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: [H] Building a Virtualization box I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
There is a new VMWare on the way that does support video acceleration. There was a demo video on Youtube awhile back, and it looked really good. T At 11:38 AM 21/12/2007, Chris Reeves wrote: Unless someone knows or has seen something I haven't, video acceleration capable of hd, or to utilize specific hardware like a tv tuner doesn't exist. Video cards and sound, etc are all emulated and therefore sucky for that purpose. Sent via BlackBerry by ATT -Original Message- From: Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:11:51 To:hwg hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: [H] Building a Virtualization box I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
On VMWare: 1.. You can bounce a guest without affecting either guests or the underlying OS. 2.. VMWare Workstation, Server both use the already installed OS and are simply applications hosting VM's - ESX is their proprietary OS (Linux Kernel) with the VM support functionality built in - obviously a much smaller OS footprint than Win2k3 or XP, but it really is a dedicated VM server at that point since you're not going to be using it for anything else. 3..For Server and Workstation I think you can really only tell it how many CPU's you want to dedicate and how much memory when you set up the guest. ESX allows much finer grained control and implements thresholds on resource usage. 4..Haven't thought about VM's for gaming sessions I would think there would be a pretty big performance hit. One gfx card is all I've ever had to work with on vm installs and have had 12 to 16 per box in server environments, though you're really only hitting the gui for maint and app installs. Workstation and probably to a lesser extent server should support the the functionality of the vid card since normally if the base OS can see it, the guest inside it can see it with ESX there's always issues with it being able to detect hadware. On 12/21/07, Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden -- -jmg -sapere aude
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Hmmm. So maybe then what I will do is run the WinXP gaming install as the host OS. Then I can run a WinXP or Ubuntu work VM on top. If and when video works I can then maybe have a HTPC VM running. The HTPC only serves up xvid and DVD playback, I don't do recording or HD with it. Possibly HD-DVD or Bluray in the future but I'm so pissed off at the format ways I'm trying to boycott it for now. On 12/21/07, Thane Sherrington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is a new VMWare on the way that does support video acceleration. There was a demo video on Youtube awhile back, and it looked really good. T At 11:38 AM 21/12/2007, Chris Reeves wrote: Unless someone knows or has seen something I haven't, video acceleration capable of hd, or to utilize specific hardware like a tv tuner doesn't exist. Video cards and sound, etc are all emulated and therefore sucky for that purpose. Sent via BlackBerry by ATT -Original Message- From: Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:11:51 To:hwg hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: [H] Building a Virtualization box I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Uhm, shouldnt matter. I just used an ATI 9600 agp video card. The idea was no virtual environment, just a dual screen desktop. One DVI output for the desktop monitor and the other output for the HDTV. Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Which card did you use? On 12/21/07, Tharin Olsen wrote: Unfortunately a Virtualized environment isn't going to be of much use for multimedia/gaming purposes. Most of the hardware is emulated in the guest os. I have a consolidated HTPC and Desktop that I built for use at my girlfriends place and it works fine. My secret was to use a dual-head video card. ;) -Tharin O. Brian Weeden wrote: I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Unfortunately a Virtualized environment isn't going to be of much use for multimedia/gaming purposes. Most of the hardware is emulated in the guest os. I have a consolidated HTPC and Desktop that I built for use at my girlfriends place and it works fine. My secret was to use a dual-head video card. ;) -Tharin O. Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Which card did you use? On 12/21/07, Tharin Olsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Unfortunately a Virtualized environment isn't going to be of much use for multimedia/gaming purposes. Most of the hardware is emulated in the guest os. I have a consolidated HTPC and Desktop that I built for use at my girlfriends place and it works fine. My secret was to use a dual-head video card. ;) -Tharin O. Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
There's no VM in what he was talking about. His setup is the same as if you had a desktop with two monitors. Windows handles driving the two monitors. Brian Weeden wrote: Ah - mine already has dual DVI outs. So maybe it will work for the purpose. Sorry for asking the dumb questions but I have never setup a multi-monitor solution before. What controls which signal goes to which card output? Is it a graphics card setting under the windows desktop or something with the VM? Did you get Powerstrip working with it?
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Ah - mine already has dual DVI outs. So maybe it will work for the purpose. Sorry for asking the dumb questions but I have never setup a multi-monitor solution before. What controls which signal goes to which card output? Is it a graphics card setting under the windows desktop or something with the VM? Did you get Powerstrip working with it? On 12/21/07, Tharin Olsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Uhm, shouldnt matter. I just used an ATI 9600 agp video card. The idea was no virtual environment, just a dual screen desktop. One DVI output for the desktop monitor and the other output for the HDTV. Brian Weeden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Which card did you use? On 12/21/07, Tharin Olsen wrote: Unfortunately a Virtualized environment isn't going to be of much use for multimedia/gaming purposes. Most of the hardware is emulated in the guest os. I have a consolidated HTPC and Desktop that I built for use at my girlfriends place and it works fine. My secret was to use a dual-head video card. ;) -Tharin O. Brian Weeden wrote: I wanted to pick everyone's brain a bit about building a virtualization machine (vm). Right now I have 2 machines, my main desktop and my HTPC. I would like to consolidate them into one box. It would be in my office behind the wall where the A/V rack is for the home theater. The goal would be to have 3 VMs running at all times: 1 dedicated to HTPC functions with video out from the card to the A/V rack Either 1 work XP VM OR 1 gaming Xp VM 1 VM linux web server The hardware would be an Intel quad-core (probably Q6600), 4GB of DDR2. I would like to continue using my Radeon Sapphire X1950XT card but I think that might be a problem. It has 2 DVI outputs with HDCP but I'm not sure how it would work if I tried to game and feed a DVD at the same time. Questions I need to get answered before I can pull this off: - If you install some new software or have another reason to reboot one of the VM instances can you just restart it and avoid rebooting the whole machine? - When you boot up, is there a primary OS that loads and then you run the different VMs inside of it or do you boot straight to a VM? - Can you divvy up the resources for running multiple VMs at once so like each gets a GB of RAM and 2 cores? - Would I need 2 Video cards, one associated with the HTPC VM and one associated with the Work/gaming VM? - If I do need 2 cards, how would that work hardware wise? Never done it before in the same box. Do I just get a board with 2 PCI-Express slots and slap a card in each? We're not talking about SLI here - but two different cards working independently. -- Brian Weeden -- Brian Weeden -- Brian Weeden
Re: [H] Building a Virtualization box
Yes, Ben understood what I meant. It would make more sense and wouldn't seem innovative in any fashion if you had dealt with multi-displays before. I have two soundcards, onboard audio + pci soundcard w/ optical out. My htpc apps are assigned to direct audio output to the addon card. This machine isn't meant for 24/7 dual tuner PVR use or anything. I just use it to play my digital audio archives and encoded videos on an onkyo receiver and 42 lcd tv. I can control my media stuff with an IR remote. I'm testing out Linux but am mainly running this rig under Windows XP MCE 2K5. I have a dedicated htpc in my home but it is a low power system that streams video and audio off a server over a gigabit network (not necessary). I bought a pulled Core Duo mobile processor off of ebay for $30 and installed it on a mini-itx motherboard. H264 encodes play great with CoreAVC codec because it can utilize multiple processors. -Tharin O. Ben Ruset [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There's no VM in what he was talking about. His setup is the same as if you had a desktop with two monitors. Windows handles driving the two monitors. Brian Weeden wrote: Ah - mine already has dual DVI outs. So maybe it will work for the purpose. Sorry for asking the dumb questions but I have never setup a multi-monitor solution before. What controls which signal goes to which card output? Is it a graphics card setting under the windows desktop or something with the VM? Did you get Powerstrip working with it?
