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bobstone

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 3, 2005
Messages
361
Hello all.

I was thinking of upgrading my primary desktop (Main in my sig, used for gaming, programming, and testing) to a 4970s and a new Motherboard. I wanted to install Xen server and then pci passthrough my 780gtx and some usb ports to a Win 8.1 VM so that I can use it like a normal local desktop while still being able to run VM's 24/7 in the background.

I would use a local ssd for the desktop replacement 8.1 VM and iscsi for all the other VM's

I was hoping someone could tell me if the following Motherboard supports VT-d ( most of the manuals say they do, but I have found that some still do not support it correctly.)

GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-SLI

also FYI I know there are different easier ways to do this like just use virtualbox or vmware workstation. But I want to learn more and have my desktop be a VM for easy recovery if something happens.

Thanks
 
TBH and totally personal preference, I never liked the Asrock brand. no real reason. and ya I wrote the numbers wrong on the CPU, I did mean the 4790s...

If no one is sure about this motherboard can anyone recommend an Asus or Gigabyte board within 40$ of this one that supports VT-d and has a m.2 slot?

Thanks
 
why not use ESXi over Xen as the hypervisor ?

i also had a bad feeling about Asrock before, i had one for 3 years now and i can only say good things about it. It became my n1 mb choice.

i know you cannot passtrough Nvidia gpu whit esx don't know about Xen, pretty sure its the same tough
 
technobro said:
why not use ESXi over Xen as the hypervisor ?

i also had a bad feeling about Asrock before, i had one for 3 years now and i can only say good things about it. It became my n1 mb choice.

i know you cannot passtrough Nvidia gpu whit esx don't know about Xen, pretty sure its the same tough
Click to expand...

You can pass Nvidia with Xen but it is a real pain in the ass and require a lot of patching.
 
I tried Xen and ESXi with PCIe Passthrough, don't bother with it. I'm using KVM with VFIO and a custom built kernel. I've got it working with my GTX760, no modifications to the card. Just took a lot of learning. With XEN and ESXi, you still will run into the Code 43 with any NVIDIA card that is not a Grid or Quadro.

I've learned a lot over the last 3 weeks, but it works. I've virtualized both my Gaming Machine and my FreeNAS box, both with different cards passed through.

Gaming Machine:
  • gtx760
  • Creative Sound Blaster Z
  • 1 motherboard USB controller
  • 1 motherboard Ethernet controller

FreeNAS:

  • LSI SAS2008

Checkout this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1270311#p1270311

I used Arch, but others have used Fedora 21. Arch is neat, but at work I deal with RHEL.

But if your set on ESXi or Xen, i've modified a GTX465 in a Quadro 4K that I don't use - if you want to buy it :)
 
Last edited:
If u want to go with ESXi, go AMD. Other than that, AMD has its own issues, more so than NVIDIA. One thing I liked about my NVIDIA cards is their support for FLR. It allows them to survive reboots better.
 
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