Gaming host - zero/thin client endpoints

agnes · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:55

Afternoon all,

I have a question around latency and general usability. I want to setup a 4U server chassis with a dual CPU socket board, 2, possibly 4 GPU's, storage etc etc. A standard server aside from the CPU and GPU choice.

It will be primarily a host to VM's using Hyper V as I don't want to cough up the licence cost for VMWare.

I will ideally have 2 end points, both being zero clients to remote onto said VM's on the host, of which my partner and I will have dedicated VM's as our 'desktops' where I'd like to allocate shared resources of the GPU's as we're both big gamers. This way, we don't have loud PC's in the gaming room.

My fear is stuff like online games. What sort of latency will we be looking at? Enough of an impact to make games unplayable? We're not exactly professional online gamers, but having huge impact lag will obviously be a less than desirable attribute.

We'll be going through a LAN via a 10gig switch. The host will have multiple other VM's running, but nothing intense, just stuff like linux boxes for my partner to work on her programming stuff (she's a senior software dev), maybe a media server and possible a few other small other VM's. Again, all tiny footprints in the grand scheme of thing.

The main goal is to have both our desks with zero clients on the back of the monitors, RDP's to our gaming VM's. Sound will be a digital output to the zero client obviously with local amp's/dac's if needed (for me it will be anyway to power my HD650's).

I'm not sure how things like wireless adaptors will work for our MS controllers, but I'm sure I can find a way around it.

Sorry for the long post! Thanks

Rroff · 13 Feb 2017 at 13:58

Depends a bit on the nature of your gaming - if you are sitting back with a controller, etc. easily acceptable - for serious FPS gaming you may notice the additional input latency - with the nature of networking even if you have a basic ping time of 0.1ms between the end points the actual data can be seeing delays of 10ms or so and/or sometimes be delayed by other traffic.

EDIT: Not sure what RDP is like these days but when I played around with that kind of thing versus game streaming I was seeing delays of upto ~300ms in the picture coming through RDP. Even with some kind of game streaming client you will see a few ms of encoder lag.

agnes · 13 Feb 2017 at 14:12

Rroff;30499029 said:
Depends a bit on the nature of your gaming - if you are sitting back with a controller, etc. easily acceptable - for serious FPS gaming you may notice the additional input latency - with the nature of networking even if you have a basic ping time of 0.1ms between the end points the actual data can be seeing delays of 10ms or so and/or sometimes be delayed by other traffic.

EDIT: Not sure what RDP is like these days but when I played around with that kind of thing versus game streaming I was seeing delays of upto ~300ms in the picture coming through RDP. Even with some kind of game streaming client you will see a few ms of encoder lag.

Hmmm, thanks for the input. The only serious gaming we do would be Overwatch. And even then we don't play seriously. Just for fun. I think it's mostly input lag that we're worried about.

That was my second set of questions, are there any clients that can do a direct stream to VM's?

Rroff · 13 Feb 2017 at 14:15

Obviously steam streaming and there is stuff like streammygame (though looks like they've kind of given up) I've not kept up with it in a couple of years.

As an alternative would something like the HP Envy curved AIO be an option? Gigabyte or someone was showing off a pretty decent version with Pascal GPUs inside but I've not seen anything of it since so not sure what the status is.

agnes · 13 Feb 2017 at 14:21

Rroff;30499076 said:
Obviously steam streaming and there is stuff like streammygame (though looks like they've kind of given up) I've not kept up with it in a couple of years.

As an alternative would something like the HP Envy curved AIO be an option? Gigabyte or someone was showing off a pretty decent version with Pascal GPUs inside but I've not seen anything of it since so not sure what the status is.

Naaa, we've no intention on buying something like that. We'll have a server regardless as we want a host to build VM's on. If we can't make it PC game capable, then we'll likely just stick to beefy self build desktops.

I might tinker around with my current PC, build it up as a host, borrow a thin client from work and do some preliminary tests. If anything, it will be a much worse connection than the final product but will at least give me an idea of what is capable.

Rroff · 13 Feb 2017 at 14:22

Testing it is the only way really - when it comes to things like input latency everyone has their own tolerances.

bledd · 13 Feb 2017 at 14:25

I hate to burst your bubble, but this sounds like an expensive experiment that will likely not be up to scratch..

agnes · 13 Feb 2017 at 14:40

bledd;30499128 said:
I hate to burst your bubble, but this sounds like an expensive experiment that will likely not be up to scratch..

Oh, I'll experiment with kit I already have. I'll essentially just stick a new drive in my desktop PC with Server 2016, stick VMware on it and use my laptop and my partners PC as endpoints to see what the latency is like when playing games on separate vm's I setup.

And I can also test out VMWares vDGA feature to see how it shares the GPU resource.

So costless test, but will give me a rough idea on what the latency will be like. And I can run latency tests. If it's bad and I feel it's not playable. Then we scrap the idea of a server capable of hosting gaming VM's and just create a basic much smaller spec server for vm's and continue with keeping our beefy desktops (which are both due a full rebuild next year).

crazyDAJT · 13 Feb 2017 at 15:14

have u looked at this?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uKJw8IKVYQ8

I use steam streaming all the time when I want to play games without going to my man cave, so play games on the TV, I have played hitman, the division, world of warships without a hitch.

I don't notice any really input lag or delay, I stream to an old dual core athalon PC so not very powerful at all.

I'm looking to do the same thing but only with one VM, for gaming on my 6 year old netbook and the TV. You might want to look into unraid due to the way it deals with GPU pass though.

agnes · 13 Feb 2017 at 15:30

Indeed that's an option too. Which still allows for a basic host for other VM's.

traveyb · 13 Feb 2017 at 15:57

Yup unraid is what you are after. This will allow you to basically have separate gaming VM's with there own GPUs. I'm sure someone on the forums has it setup at the moment?

agnes · 13 Feb 2017 at 16:39

traveyb;30499419 said:
Yup unraid is what you are after. This will allow you to basically have separate gaming VM's with there own GPUs. I'm sure someone on the forums has it setup at the moment?

Aye, but I wonder what the latency is like?

crazyDAJT · 13 Feb 2017 at 17:06

agnes;30499572 said:
Aye, but I wonder what the latency is like?

Why should it be anything different from using steam in home streaming? LTT did a video a while back showing bare metal vs VM performance and it was very close.

agnes · 13 Feb 2017 at 17:21

crazyDAJT;30499675 said:
Why should it be anything different from using steam in home streaming? LTT did a video a while back showing bare metal vs VM performance and it was very close.

Aye? I'll check it out.