VM performance and USB device on remote or host

[opcod]

Hi

I've surf quite a time in regards of VM under ESXi. But some point are really not clear.
Maybe if someone can help out in that ..?

I'm planning a i7 4770s 16gig with ESXi for : 1 vm as NAS , 1vm as Win7 , 1vm as win7 for testing purposes.

- If i use a 4770s to run let say autocad or Rhino cad, is running those on a VM with
2 or 3 core and with 5gig of ram can result in same performance as a desktop core i5 ?

- If i whant to use USB device controller or Joystick, do i must always plug it into
the VM main server or i can access the controller via a thin slow remote desktop that i log into the VM ?

(example or maybe the best : if i plug a joystick into a rasberrypi can the joy be detected into the VM ? Or i MUST need again usb extender ..?)


Thanks in advance

 

[lopoetve]

- If i use a 4770s to run let say autocad or Rhino cad, is running those on a VM with
2 or 3 core and with 5gig of ram can result in same performance as a desktop core i5

No, it'll run like a 2-3 core 4770. Ish.

- If i whant to use USB device controller or Joystick, do i must always plug it into
the VM main server or i can access the controller via a thin slow remote desktop that i log into the VM ?

While you can absolutely use them to control something in the VM, I suspect you'll find the latency somewhat annoying. Locally it would work almost perfectly - but you mention joystick - VMs only have very basic SVGA cards, so unless you're firing up games from 1996, you'll probably be disappointed.

You'd have to pass through an actual video card to the guest otherwise, and that introduces another completely different level of complexity, and doesn't work as well as you'd hope (some fun things you have to do to get ESX happy with it, and it only seems to work on very specific cards), barring buying a K1/K2 Tegra card.

 

[opcod]

HUmm in fact it might be pretty bad news for multimedia app. I saw that the ATI
might work quite well, juste certain of.. But, is passing the onboard GPU possible ?

I always see other passing an external pcie card, but passing the onboard video, can
it work too ? of course propabliy not with full dual output function but ...


And perhaps the main application. I'm running Virtualbox with most of my soft on a
i7-3770K . So all VM with 4gig of ram and 1 core. And it's quite ok. So running a 4770 or 4770s at 2 core with about the same amount of ram should be just quite ok if
not little better than from now ?

i haven't found esxi VM performance benchmark run into a VM, but should be not a huge
difference i think..

 

[lopoetve]

Most likely, not - remember, ESX expects to have a video card for the console as well, and it really isn't designed for that (and passing the embedded video in the 4770 through is almost certainly a no-go, as much of that PCI bus is shared with other important things like portions of the processor and DMA controllers as well, which you can't pass through).

I'd expect you'd get a significant boost in performance from the upgrade. ESXi will give you close to RTOS performance if you need it, but it's designed originally for enterprise applications - not anything multimedia/game related, which is what I suspect you're trying to do. There are ways to make stuff like that work well if you want to invest the money, but it's non-trivial to do so.

 

[opcod]

Hi

thanks for the tips, pretty clear too. But as the system i'm plan to do is to run a vm
for : Xpenology ,
a vm with Win7 for most internet surf and
a third one Win7 to test applications or so.

I already had a quad nic card Intel VT 1000 and i'm planning to put an hardware Raid
card on the system to let the Xpenology handle the file storage system. Perhaps an
Areca card.. or Adaptec 2820SA not sure ...

As running a Xeon cpu, i can save the graphic function, but at the same time to run
the esxi, i might need to install a graphic card too. So is putting a pcix ati card, a cheap one, can i used the onboard gpu ? Or only the best bet will be to use a
higher perfo by passthr...

But in both case it might be better than having a simple NAS, as the other VM can
give other access around the house and let access via a vpn over the phone..

 

[lopoetve]

So, why do you want a high performance GPU in a guest? What's the goal?