Virtualize with ESXi 4.0

[whartsell]

Thanks...i was trying to run vmkfstools against the device name not the vml file....ill have to give it a try ....this is the only thing keeping my from moving forward with my WHS on ESXi pilot at home

[whartsell]

no joy here. I tried on two different systems and get an error about 'file does not exist or is not a valid disk'

[whartsell]

works...pebkac...I was running the command from the wrong directory

Can anybody confirm that a HDPVR hooked up to a USB controller via DirectPath works?

[ecsrun]

I've passed through a graphics card (8400GS PCI) to a Windows 7 VM using ESXi 4.0 (actually.. GA build of ESXi 4.1)

No problems with it. It is a second graphic card on the system. It is the only device sharing the PCI bus it is on (ie: when you try to pass it through, no other devices are 'forced' to pass through along with it)

I also pass through a LSI Logic SAS controller card which then interacts with a SAS based SAN for storage (12TB).

Very fast and the great thing about ESXi/ESX 4.1 is that you can now do QoS (quality of service) with disk throughput. In other words, if latency/access time reaches a certain point on the disk (10 ms in my case), vmware will prioritize IO requests based on a priority setting you can assign to each VM.

This allows me to absolutely hammer the server with many other VMs but streaming the 1080p off the storage VM never hiccups.

It is a server grade motherboard board, Intel 5400 chipset with a Xeon L5420.

You can do the same thing with a good P55 motherboard that supports VT-D. For example, I have an ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard with a core i7-870 chip. ESXi runs on there fine, but I decided to use that motherboard/rig as a gaming machine... hence the creation of the separate media center / server.

Cheers,

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by ecsrun

Very fast and the great thing about ESXi/ESX 4.1 is that you can now due to quality of service with disk throughput. In other words, if latency/access time reaches a certain point on the disk (10 ms in my case), vmware will prioritize IO requests based on a priority setting you can assign to each VM.

Got a link or any more info about that? It sounds interesting.

[taylormadearmy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Got a link or any more info about that? It sounds interesting.

I too would be interested in that!
Many Thanks
T

[DigitalMan]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Got a link or any more info about that? It sounds interesting.

You can create resource pools, this allows you to allocate cpu/memory for a whole group of VM's you add to a pool.

If you click on the resource pool (or on the host if you don't use resource pools) and go to the 'resource allocation' tab, you can see gray tabs for cpu/memory/storage, click on storage and you can see settings for all the disks across all the vm's in the pool and change iops, shares, etc.

You can also see the settings in VM edit settings, but I prefer the other view where you can see a larger set.

[champagnecharly]

Originally Posted by ecsrun

I've passed through a graphics card (8400GS PCI) to a Windows 7 VM using ESXi 4.0 (actually.. GA build of ESXi 4.1)

No problems with it. It is a second graphic card on the system. It is the only device sharing the PCI bus it is on (ie: when you try to pass it through, no other devices are 'forced' to pass through along with it)

Hello,

I apreciate this is an old post hope you can respnd. I was wondering what is your other GPU? Have you tried any other GPU apart from Nvidia since?
I've been trying with Rad HD 4550..b ut to no avail. keep getting blue screen error. Just to ceck when you said PCI did you mean PCI or PCI-e?


Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks