The Home Server Gaming PC (Xen) - possible?

Audigex

Audigex

Audigex

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Hey

Just wondering about the theory on this, as I'm considering it as an idea for my next build/upgrade.

Basically I'm currently running a few home server style things on my Raspberry pi, but I'd like to move them onto a more powerful box as it has expanded beyond it's meagre hardware. At the same time, I'm too space limited to have two PCs lying around, and I have a gaming PC which isn't normally doing a lot/is in need of an upgrade.

Would it be theoretically possible to use a 6/8 core PC with plenty of RAM, with Xen as a hypervisor, and run Windows for my gaming, with a home server behind it? ie both running on the same hardware at the same time as virtual machines, but independently?

I know I could run the home server or windows as a guest in the other, but that's not quite the same thing and leaves the guest vulnerable to crashes/lockups in the other (or just having to shut the host down for updates).

Presumably I'd lose a little performance for the overhead of Xen, and some performance for the home server itself - but I was thinking that if I could dedicate a single core and a block of RAM, even perhaps a hard drive, to the home server VM, it wouldn't interfere too much with the gaming PC (6/8 cores, or even a fast quad, would probably have power to spare for the games I play). I'm thinking that if I give the home server a gig or two of RAM from 12/16, plus a core of a hex-core, I should be able to avoid most problems?

So yeah, is it possible, or would I have issues regarding hardware (GPU?) or the machines interfering with one another? Also, how fine-grained is hardware control if I want to ensure that each machine has a minimum hardware allocation (either entirely fixed, or allowing either to use spare capacity up to a limit). Similarly can I allocate amounts of the network card? ie limit the home server to 10mbps so that it can't interfere with my gaming?

Thanks!
 
Perfect, thanks - I'll take a look. I'm surprised this isn't more popular, surely it's cheaper to add a little extra RAM and a better CPU than to build a whole separate home server?
 
Audigex said:
Perfect, thanks - I'll take a look. I'm surprised this isn't more popular, surely it's cheaper to add a little extra RAM and a better CPU than to build a whole separate home server?
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Yes but it then means leaving a potentially noisy machine on 24/7 using a lot of electricity and generating a lot of heat in summer. By using a low powered NAS or server such as a Raspberry Pi / HP Microserver, you can leave it on in almost silence and very low power usage.
 
aln said:
I disagree with the "a lot of hard work and buggy" statement, but you'll find a lot more fans of polished commerical solutions than DIY open source solutions around here. :)
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:p

I'm an avid OS fan and am not a fan of ESXi in the slightest. However Xens vt-d stack especially with pci-e was exceptionally buggy when I last tried it years back.... If it has improved please confirm and I'll give it another shot ;)
 
Subliminal Aura said:
:p

I'm an avid OS fan and am not a fan of ESXi in the slightest. However Xens vt-d stack especially with pci-e was exceptionally buggy when I last tried it years back.... If it has improved please confirm and I'll give it another shot ;)
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Even if its not true for you, I'm fairly sure it's generally true. :P

The link I posted shows ubisoft have this running pretty well a while ago and I imagine the software is only better since then. That doesn't mean it didn't have a problem with your specific configuration, but I'd guess your problems would be fixed by now.

Without doing a comparative between performance, features and stability, I use KVM on the simple basis that its mainline. Standard VMs work well enough for me, but I'm not doing anything fancy. :)
 
Has any progress been made with getting round the RAM limitation when doing VT-d with ESXi yet? I was running a W7 VM with an AMD 7750 passed through successfully but think the maximum memory was 2.25GB or something.

Will give Xen a shot again at some point.
 
As an update to this I have ditched ESXi and moved onto Xen myself. The latest version of ESXi (5.1) no longer supports USB passthrough. Although it is still relatively early days I have a Win7 VM running within Xen with a 7750 passed through.

Still migrating some of my other VMs (newznab etc) off so haven't played around much with adding an XBMC VM or really stressing it much.
 
Hades said:
Yes but it then means leaving a potentially noisy machine on 24/7 using a lot of electricity and generating a lot of heat in summer. By using a low powered NAS or server such as a Raspberry Pi / HP Microserver, you can leave it on in almost silence and very low power usage.
Click to expand...

This in a nutshell

It sounds good in theory,,, but for average "home user" it makes no sense. Leaving a large "host" system on 24/7 is bonkers.

A home server suggests that you have data to share between multiple sytems at home and remotely from outside the home. If you only have room for 1 sytem I suggest a rethink of a NAS as already mentioned.

ESXi, Zen and virtual instances are fine and you'll see them bounded round and round here and elsewhere in the forum. Reality is they are fine... if your:

A) IT Pro

B) A Uni student having a ball with multi OS's and bashing scripts to prove or make something work.

IMO
 
The thing for me is that I want a gaming machine (so fairly powerful hardware anyway) but I need to keep it to a budget... it makes more sense to me to add a little extra RAM and take a slight CPU penalty, but save myself the cost of a NAS. Even a high end machine running as a server is going to use less electricity a year than a NAS+costs to run the NAS.

Assuming a PC draws 100W at idle, just running a couple of lightweight linux servers, it costs ~£100 per year. Approximately 1/3 of that time I'd have my PC on anyway, so that's about £66/year a year of electricity. Even a basic NAS would use about 20W (£30/year) so I reckon on about £50 a year extra cost to run the PC at idle, as compared to just running a NAS.

To get a decent NAS is £160, plus disks. If we assume that I'd have to put the disks in my PC anyway, I'll discount them (but combining disks would probably mean a saving, as neither machine would be at 100% disk use). That's over 5 years of running the PC at idle, just to break even on buying a NAS.

Add in the fact that I've got the flexibility of putting multiple servers on the PC, and the option of using the full power of the PC when I want to (I don't want my servers limited to 500MHz or whatever a NAS has), and I think it starts to make sense.

I've tried the Raspberry Pi as a NAS idea, and while it's good, I'm not just trying to get a NAS - I want more powerful servers and I don't want to have to run them as virtual machines.
 
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