ZFS powered all-in-one with GPU passthrough

[ultrakomm]

I'm looking to reconfigure my all-in-one because I'm going to do some (light) GPGPU calculations in Linux on it as well. I would also like to be able to use Windows VMs with hardware accelerated graphics (not at the same time of course).

Up until now I've been using SmartOS and I love it, but because it doesn't support passthrough of PCI devices, I can't use it anymore.

These are the two alternatives I've come up with:

VMware ESXi on metal
1x FreeBSD VM for ZFS storage (passthrough of the SATA/RAID controller)
1x Linux VM for GPGPU calculations (passthrough of GPU)
1x Linux VM with LXC/LXD containers for non-GPGPU applications
1x Windows VM for hardware accelerated desktops (passthrough of GPU)

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (with ZFS) on metal
1x Linux VM (KVM) for GPGPU calculations (passthrough of GPU)
1x Windows VM for hardware accelerated desktops (passthrough of GPU)
LXC/LXD containers for non-GPGPU applications

Is there a better solution to my problem?

My hardware:
HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8
Intel Xeon E3-1270
16GB DDR3 ECC
1x 240GB Intel SSD
4x 4TB WD Red
NVIDIA Quadro K620

 

[Orddie]

though others may be able to correct me... Vmware does not do GPU pass through well. My XP has been white box setups so you may have better luck with your HP.

 

[nk215]

I don't think you can use Quadro K620 in neither vDGA (PCI pass thru) or sVGA (software share) with VMWare.

You may want to do a quick test to be sure. Quadro K2000 works (or the older Quadro 4000 works too).