Imre Oolberg
2013-Nov-26 00:42 UTC
Asking if ASRock Z87 Extreme3 / i5-4430 / Radeon HD 7750 / GeForce GTX 650 is fit for Xen
Hi! I wish to ask your advice on workstation hardware which i intend to use for two purposes 1. study Xen as virtualization platform especially from PCI/VGA passthrough point of view 2. use Xen as means to separate one physical workstation into different security realms and powering 3-4 displays with picture I am not sure how exactly this second point is going to be, but i think of something like - primary VGA adapter is connecting dom0 to two monitors - secondary VGA adapter is connecting domU (using linux or windows) to the other two monitors, and there is used vga passthrough - mouse and keyboard are shared over synergy I see that it could be done with several physical computers as well but i hope it be more quiet this way and also more fun! I have used Xen for several years and projects but not much for desktop (although i currently have also something set up but something different). So, i tried to do my homework and came up with such hardware list - ASRock Z87 Extreme3 (Z87 chipset, Intel I217V network, AHCI, VT, VT-d), http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z87%20Extreme3/ - Core i5-4430 (non-K), (VT, VT-d) - GeForce GTX 650 - for dom0 - Radeon HD 7750 - for domU I chose different video adapters because so i will have more flexibility using them (i dont intend to get them info SLI). I would be thankful if somebody could confirm that these items work with Xen and especially the VGA passthrough part. Or if the are other suggestions. My OS platform would be most recent Ubuntu, i.e. at the moment 13.10 amd64 and Xen 4.3 with xl toolstack. Best regards, Imre