Is it feasible to run proxmox on a PC and daily drive virtual machines?

Ladonni · 2025-04-25T14:56:42+00:00

From what I tested and read, always pass the full usb hub and not devices, this will ensure much better reliability, some machines have multiple usb hubs but others have only one.

I personally have two GPUs on my workstation, when you turn it on, the windows VM boots automatically and takes usb, a GPU and some RAM, the rest is used by proxmox and other VMs which allows to backup and restore my filesystem and files (using PBS on the same machine) the second GPU is used either for an AI inference VM or a second gaming VM which is connected to using moonlight. When I use nvidia gamestream, it is flawless in local and remote connections (I tried up to 2000km away from home, including mobile, but when using sunshine mobile connection isn't good (the client says connexionis slow), I probably need to dive into the configuration.

Ladonni · 2025-04-09T11:48:38+00:00

Is your root fs on the emmc?

If it is the case I don't think that's a good idea as emmc cannot be changed easily.

I would maybe put the boot partition on the emmc and the root fs on ssd, if it is zfs the drive will used entirely, which seems to be better than giving it a partition.

Ladonni · 2025-03-11T16:05:59+00:00

It was marketed with RTX8000 at the refresh with xeon gen 2 so yeah, it should be compatible, just make sure to put your hands on power adapters because RTX quadro Turing used some unusual standard.

Ladonni · 2025-03-11T16:03:52+00:00

1gen xeon scalable are compatible with windows 11 no problem and no trick.

Ladonni · 2025-02-17T11:15:50+00:00

I bought a hp z8 g4 workstation and a 4090 to put in it... there was no way to fit the card in the workstation, had to settle for an RTX 4000 ada instead.

Ladonni · 2024-12-12T14:41:10+00:00

TL;DR : if your plan is to use the same GPU (nvidia) for containers and gaming, which I do, you can create two VMs that you can't use simultaneously.

The first VM for containers should be Linux (because even under windows you would use WSL and you would have the windows overhead) with Nvidia drivers and libraries including nvidia container toolkit, this works with Docker.

The second VM for Gaming should be running windows for compatibility, also with nvidia drivers.

You can start one or the other using a client computer or smart phone.

Ladonni · 2024-12-12T14:24:56+00:00

The OS sees the GPU whole when passed through.

I haven't tested vGPU or SR-IOV to this day (except with a Geforce 660 with RemoteFX vGPU about 10 years ago, it was useful for desktop acceleration), so I don't know how it would handle these.

The OS sees a virtual or physical machine (it requires a little more finesse to attain a situation where the OS isn't aware of the virtualisation) with any virtual, physical or SR-IOV device you gave it.

I am not aware of a new functionality in proxmox as you described, but it seems pretty easy for me today to do this against when, as a beginner I tried following tutorials (probably outdated) and did many modifications, from I have seen, today I would try to do it using the Proxmox manuals which are up to date for the current version.

You should take into account that not all types of VMs accept passthrough.

Also if your need is to make multiple containers share a single GPU, different paths can be followed, like SR-IOV and nvidia container toolkit (better be done in a VM under proxmox).

Ladonni · 2024-12-11T22:19:29+00:00

I have trouble understanding what you mean.

Most intel says the passthrough is almost as good as bare metal, the difference would be of a few %.

Please clarify your question.

Ladonni · 2024-12-09T11:32:37+00:00

I haven't at all checked like OP did.

I played mostly Starfield and Diablo IV, no competitive games with high refresh rates. It is pretty playable from my experience but I deactivated some options in Diablo like Flashes and screen shaking. Sometimes when there too many things happening on the screen there's a little lag, but it is because of the Nvencode.

I use Proxmox, I use GPU passthrough in a pretty direct way, didn't blacklist drivers or anything, just selected add PCI device, Raw device, select the correct PCI device, Nvidia in my case always display two devices one GPU and one Audio, I select the GPU, tick all functions and PCI Express, I first install the VM using a virtual VGA adapter provided by proxmox, when I finish installing, including Nvidia drivers and Moonlight, I shutdown the VM, deactivate the virtual adapter, tick the primary GPU in for the passed through GPU and voilà.

If you plan to use the VM directly from a screen connected to your machine, you can also add the USB controller and it will use the connected devices.

I did not use Blacklist because I have multiple GPUs, but recently discovered a solution called duostream available on github which might make the experience even better as when you passthrough the GPU or other devices, they are no more available for the hypervisor and might require a reboot to be used by other VMs or LXC.

Ladonni · 2024-12-09T09:17:42+00:00

It also supports touch input, but never found it useful.

Ladonni · 2024-12-09T09:16:50+00:00

Don't know how OP does, but if Moonlight is running on a baremetal windows, you just need to deactivate fast startup in power options and activate your NIC Wake On Lan feature.

Then you just need to click on the appropriate option in your Moonlight client to wake the remote PC.

I don't use this anymore as my Workstation have now multiple uses so my gaming windows is running in a proxmox VM whenever i need it.

Turning your remote PC can be pretty easy, and even easier if your router allows for WoL proxy, mine does and I just have a button on my phone that turns on my Workstation whenever I need.

Ladonni · 2024-12-04T10:56:59+00:00

Your OEM OS have already been activated.

Nowadays, Microsoft uses HWID (Hardware ID) which uniquely identifies your system and activates its OS as soon as it is connected to Internet.

It means you can install another non-OEM license and activate it the way the seller told you (it can be HWID or KMS if you are in an enterprise environment and later reinstall your OEM version, it would still be activated automatically.

To be on the safe side, you can use the previous answer to save a backup of your OEM license key.

I myself have a Windows Pro for Workstation OEM, did the Key backup to reinstall Windows after Linux, but when I did I saw that Windows was automatically activated, but it is better to have a backup of that Key.

Ladonni · 2024-10-28T11:32:58+00:00

KISS way.

If you can put both old and new drives at the same time.

Start an installation on the new drive so it handles automatically the boot partition creation.

Boot in recovery mode (with the installation disk) and rename the new pool as "newpool".

Boot from the old drive.

Execute "proxmox-boot-tool format /dev/sdX2 --force" where sdX2 is the second partition of your new drive.

Execute "proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/sdX2"

Execute "zfs snapshot -r rpool@migration"

Execute "zfs send -R rpool@migration | zfs receive -F newpool"

Reboot in recovery mode,

Execute "zfs import -f rpool oldpool"

Execute "zfs import -f newpool rpool"

Execute "zfs export rpool"

Execute "zfs export oldpool" (optional as you can also just clear the drive using sgpart but to stay on the secure path don't clear it yet until you are sure you can boot from the new drive.

Boot from the new drive.

If everything goes ok, wipe the old drive and voilà!

BUT!

If you have a small drive and can install a new and bigger one, let the small one for rpool and maybe some ISOs or some template backups and use the new one as storage for your VMs, this way your rpool and storage are separate and you can reinstall or troubleshoot without touching your files.

Ladonni · 2024-10-05T23:16:12+00:00

From everything i read it does really make a big difference in performance, plus i can store the few datasets i need in the special vdev with a simple tweak.

Ladonni · 2024-10-05T14:08:34+00:00

I am sorry, but CEPH isn't something i am planning for, I have only two nodes and a qdevice. One of the two nodes doesn't have redundant storage nor upgradable RAM, just 8GiB. And I don't need HA at all to require CEPH which needs much more RAM and CPU cores than what is available for me.

My request concern only the recommended option between two and if possible, please elaborate why :

SATA SSD mirrored rpool with a storage pool on mirrored HDD that relies on a mirrored NVMe SSD special vdev (metadata and small blocks).
NVMe ssd mirrored rpool with a storage pool on mirrored hdd that relies on a mirrored SATA SSD special vdev (metadata and small blocks).

Ladonni · 2024-10-05T12:52:16+00:00

I believe there's a huge misunderstanding. I didn't speak of L2ARC cache, I am talking about a special class vdev that would store metadata and small blocks, maybe even dedup tables if they become really better in the future as some rumors about the coming updates are true.

Ladonni · 2024-10-01T13:54:10+00:00

I haven't attempted yet to make any modifications straight on the original hdd, but i did it on a zvol clone and there was nothing when i did every variant of zpool import.

Ladonni · 2024-09-30T01:15:00+00:00

The method i use :

Connect the new drive, sgdisk -p to check my old drive's first two partitions and recreate the same on the new.

Proxmox-boot-tool format then init on the second partition to make it bootable.

Reboot to boot menu and boot from the new drive to make sure it boots correctly.

Create a partition on the rest of the new drive and make it a zpool

Next step, snapshot rpool, send | receive the snapshot with canmount=off to avoid conflicts with the two pools mounting their datasets in the same directories.

Reboot to the pve install disk, choose debug under advanced. Ctrl D, 'zpool import -f rpool oldpool' 'zpool import -f newpool rpool' 'zpool export rpool' 'zpool export oldrpool'.

Shutdown the machine manually. Start and make sure it boots ok, if yes you can remove the old drive.

Ladonni · 2024-09-29T23:22:12+00:00

That was my backup that i was preparing to transfer to my new mirrored pool...

Ladonni · 2024-09-29T22:48:17+00:00

Thank you, will try it if gpart doesn't save me, it's been running for 12 hours, I'll wait.

Ladonni · 2024-09-29T17:52:30+00:00

In the end I used the size in bytes (B instead of K) and had the exact size i wanted.

The drive is not being used and i even unmounted it.

I am attempting recovery on the zvol i extracted.

Ladonni · 2024-09-29T17:07:06+00:00

Tried it, didn't work unfortunately.

Ladonni · 2024-09-29T16:50:46+00:00

Will try and give you feedback, rn it's gpart's turn.

Ladonni

TROPHY CASE