ESX and Ryzen 2/3

[Mercutio]

I'm considering throwing my old Ryzen 2700X into a box to use as.... a variety of things running headless ESX and various VM's.

One thing I WOULD like however, is to give the windows virtual dedicated access to the gaming graphics card I'll probably pop in this rig (so one of the VM's would be the "guest gaming computer").

This (as I understand it) means the other VM's would be without a display adapter... often fine as I can remote into them but... it would be nice to be able to get something from them in direct display. Under Intel or low end Ryzen with a iGPU, that's easy... with no iGPU...

Am I right in assuming a second display adapter could be plugged in (either card or...USB?) that could be virtualised for the other VM's use?

 

[BongoHunter]

You could add an extra adapter like this which might help?

https://www.zotac.com/us/product/graphics_card/geforce®-gt-710-1gb-pcie-x-1

I've used these with Ryzen systems in similar setups and had no issues, and most Ryzen boards have a spare X1 slot to use with them

 

[Mercutio]

Extremely late reply (I do apologise). But thanks muchly for that. I was just... on the point that PCIe lanes (even the 1x) are precious so USB VGA might be something of a gift (3x nvme's, gpu and sbz atm so lanes are a bit tight).

In parallel, I'm having crazy ideas about an SLI rig.

3 VM's: My day to day windows with both GPU's.

2 guest VM's rarely powered that get a GPU and half my cores/ram each for guest gaming (already have a second screen)

Probably won't bother but... will see