Virtual Media Server

snakefood · 4 Jun 2010 at 16:52

Hi Gus...another question..

I would like to run a copy of esxi, and ideally would like to run a virtual media server to stream some hd content from. I have a pretty basic setup, 4 500G disks in raid5, a quad -cpu and I have a spare NV 8800 GTX that I could dump into the box..

I've read there are ways of getting a virtual machine to address the physical graphic card, so it doesn't use the crappy virtual display drivers that are normally installed by vmware..anyone had any success with this?

I have a plasma plugged striaght into my server, and would like to stream media straight to it..

Ta if poss..

ubern00b · 4 Jun 2010 at 16:55

I could be wrong but as far as I know this is not possible. Not with ESXi anyway. Why don't you just run a normal client OS?

memyselfandi · 4 Jun 2010 at 17:01

ESXi won't be able to address the local graphics card to do that. In fact are you sure it will even support the RAID controller you have raided your disks with as it's hardware compatibility list isn't all encompassing?

edit: more explanation ... ESX and ESXi are thin linux hypervisors whcih then have virtual machines running under them. There is no local desktop to output to the screen just a text terminal which allows access to some basic configuration settings.

You would do better to have something like a Revo connected to the Plasma and then stream media to it from the other box using that as a media store (although it would seem to be massively overspec'ed to do that)

edit: if you just want to run virtual machines and have a desktop locally to then you want something like vmware workstation/player or virtualbox. That would allow you to use the machine normally and then run a VM in the background as well (with an obvious performance hit to both).

snakefood · 4 Jun 2010 at 17:41

Ah, i was thinkin of using something like vnc to connnect to the virtual box and play the media, but you're correct, the only output from the actual server would be the gui of esxi...

hmm...thought there was a work arond..might end up having to chuck a copy of win7 on the box and stream from that instead..

What's a Revo?

Moeks · 7 Jun 2010 at 15:24

A Revo is an Acer Revo, it's a very compact Atom based net-top basically.

I'm not sure what advantage to you using a VM to do this would have anyway though, it'd be more resource efficient to actually use your standard client os to do it.