Xen users - May 2011 - Looking for tips: building a workstation around Xen and GPU pass-through

I''m building my new home machine right now and as usual this will be a
heavily overloaded workstation that will serve as development and
testing machine, file server and game console (plus I''m adding TV cards
and multimedia streaming for my home network).

Since these use cases work against each other (file server is
unavailable when the machine is used as game console), I''m heavily
considering the use of Xen to provide everything at once. Performance
shouldn''t be an issue in general, but the game console use case
definitely requires direct access to a GPU.

Therefore I have several questions:

- is this feasible in general?
- is the GPU passthrough usable enough with non-server GPUs?
- when buying, what technologies should I look for on the motherboard
  (most likely choosing Gigabyte + Intel CPU again)
- is there some virtualization technology creeping on the horizon that
  is worth waiting for?
- how good is Xen at dividing resources?
  - the file-server and multimedia-streaming portion of the workstation
    has to work even if the game console part is eating 100% of its
    resources and vice-versa
- the system will run on top of 8 disks with software Raid6 and LVM,
  should I buy a dedicated disk for the game console portion of
  the system?
  - I have read about some problem with Xen and I/O performance

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

-- 
Mgr. Simon Toth

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2011/5/17 "Mgr. Šimon Tóth"
<toth@fi.muni.cz>:
> I''m building my new home machine right now and as usual this will
be a
> heavily overloaded workstation that will serve as development and
> testing machine, file server and game console (plus I''m adding TV
cards
> and multimedia streaming for my home network).
>
> Since these use cases work against each other (file server is
> unavailable when the machine is used as game console), I''m heavily
> considering the use of Xen to provide everything at once. Performance
> shouldn''t be an issue in general, but the game console use case
> definitely requires direct access to a GPU.
>
Some information here:
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthrough
> Therefore I have several questions:
>
> - is this feasible in general?
> - is the GPU passthrough usable enough with non-server GPUs?
> - when buying, what technologies should I look for on the motherboard
>  (most likely choosing Gigabyte + Intel CPU again)
> - is there some virtualization technology creeping on the horizon that
>  is worth waiting for?
> - how good is Xen at dividing resources?
>  - the file-server and multimedia-streaming portion of the workstation
>    has to work even if the game console part is eating 100% of its
>    resources and vice-versa
> - the system will run on top of 8 disks with software Raid6 and LVM,
>  should I buy a dedicated disk for the game console portion of
>  the system?
>  - I have read about some problem with Xen and I/O performance
>
> Any input will be greatly appreciated.
>
> --
> Mgr. Simon Toth
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
>


-- 
Todd Deshane
http://www.linkedin.com/in/deshantm
http://www.xen.org/products/cloudxen.html
http://runningxen.com/

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> Some information here:
> http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenVGAPassthrough
Yes, I have read that, but it doesn''t really answer any of my questions
(OK, maybe the virt. tech. part). Specifically the information on GPU 
passthrough is extremely limited (and not very current).

-- 
Mgr. Simon Toth

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