Oolite Bulletins

Hi everyone, just wanting to access the hive intelligence...

My current gaming machine is starting to show its age now (an Alienware M17x R3 laptop purchased in 2011) and I'm looking at replacement options.

The thing is, I also use this machine for running a smattering of VMs (both Linux and Windows), and so I'd like to consider the possibility of putting together a VM host where one of the VMs is given direct access to the graphics card.

So as an initial draft of the system configuration, I'm thinking something like the following:

i5 processor (but if I'm hosting VMs, should I get an i7?)
64 GB RAM (if I had 128 GB RAM, would that move the VM bottleneck back to the processor or to storage?)
Graphics card capable of supporting at least 3 x HD displays
1 - 2 TB local storage - I need to give some consideration to the specific storage configuration. If I'm hosting VMs do I want lots of spinning metal RAIDed together, or a bunch of SSDs, or a combination of both?
Linux OS for the host, VirtualBox for running the VMs, Windows 8.1 / 10 for the gaming VM (Windows 10 is getting a little creepy for my liking. I want to limit its access to my private life).

In terms of budget, I'm willing to spend a little extra to ensure that this system will have some longevity - if I can get 3-4 years out of it I'll be happy.

I've seen postings dating back to 2011 that suggest that such a setup is possible, but I'm wondering if this setup is worth the effort?

Oh and before anyone suggests, I don't want to go down the path of dual-booting. I'm happy to take a (slight) performance hit if it means that I can have access to all my OSes all the time. I'd sooner set up a dedicated gaming rig + dedicated VM host, but that would be less than ideal for a number of reasons (cost being the most obvious).

Bugbear wrote:

If I'm hosting VMs do I want lots of spinning metal RAIDed together, or a bunch of SSDs, or a combination of both?

The main consideration here would be the lifespan of the SSDs, I'm thinking.

Eliminating unnecessary write operations to the drive is the key to longevity with SSDs. To some extent modern OSs detect the presence of an SSD and adjust accordingly, but there are a few additional things one can do, or should at least check are correctly set. Especially given that you intend fitting a large amount of RAM, there is no need for a Linux swap partition, and the Windows virtual memory and hibernation files should be disabled in your VMs (be sure to give them plenty of RAM instead), along with drive indexing and auto-defrag (plus some other odds and ends). Windows has been known to leave auto-defrag enabled, even though it's supposed to disable this feature when being installed to a SSD, so you should check for this. These steps would considerably extend the life of your SSDs.

Not having tried it, I'm uncertain of whether or not VirtualBox informs guest OSs that they are running on a SSD. If not, then you would need to manually configure the OS after installation. Optimising an OS for SSD operation is a somewhat complex subject, and to a small extent is also a moving target, as SSD technology continues to improve. Basically this means you need to be a little wary of advice that's more than a year or two out of date. If you're not already familiar with the topic, I suggest you start here and here.

here is a link to Wendel from Tek Syndicate running VM's on a Linux host system. he also talks about graphics passthrough so covers a lot of what you are thinking of.using VirtualBox as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA8wwIGgCGs

sorry its a youtube video link....

Keep in mind you'll need to have atleast 2 graphical cards (one can be integrated in processor), unless you want to run the host headless.

Lone_Wolf wrote:

Keep in mind you'll need to have atleast 2 graphical cards (one can be integrated in processor), unless you want to run the host headless.

For that I was thinking of relying on the on-board video...

Diziet Sma wrote:

Bugbear wrote:

If I'm hosting VMs do I want lots of spinning metal RAIDed together, or a bunch of SSDs, or a combination of both?

The main consideration here would be the lifespan of the SSDs, I'm thinking.

Eliminating unnecessary write operations to the drive is the key to longevity with SSDs. To some extent modern OSs detect the presence of an SSD and adjust accordingly, but there are a few additional things one can do, or should at least check are correctly set. Especially given that you intend fitting a large amount of RAM, there is no need for a Linux swap partition, and the Windows virtual memory and hibernation files should be disabled in your VMs (be sure to give them plenty of RAM instead), along with drive indexing and auto-defrag (plus some other odds and ends). Windows has been known to leave auto-defrag enabled, even though it's supposed to disable this feature when being installed to a SSD, so you should check for this. These steps would considerably extend the life of your SSDs.

Not having tried it, I'm uncertain of whether or not VirtualBox informs guest OSs that they are running on a SSD. If not, then you would need to manually configure the OS after installation. Optimising an OS for SSD operation is a somewhat complex subject, and to a small extent is also a moving target, as SSD technology continues to improve. Basically this means you need to be a little wary of advice that's more than a year or two out of date. If you're not already familiar with the topic, I suggest you start here and here.

Thanks for the bedtime reading
I've been fairly lucky with my VMs that have been running on SSD. I'm thinking I can mitigate the risk of SSD writes by employing a sane backup procedure. (Oh and VirtualBox does allow you to specify whether the guest storage is SSD, not sure how much difference that makes to the number of writes though...)

Bugbear wrote:

(Oh and VirtualBox does allow you to specify whether the guest storage is SSD, not sure how much difference that makes to the number of writes though...)

That's good to know.. I'd say in that case, you'd just need to double-check that the Windoze guest has done everything it's supposed to do..