this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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How feasible would it be to use one computer as a combined server/desktop with virtualization? (lemmy.starless.one)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/selfhosted
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I currently have a 24/7 linux old-office-PC-turned-server for self-hosting, and a desktop for mostly programming and playing games (linux as a host + a windows VM with a passed-through GPU). The server's i5-3330 is usually at ~10-15% usage.

Here's the actual idea: what if, instead of having a separate server and desktop, I had one beefy computer that'd run 24/7 acting as a server and just spun up a linux or windows VM when I needed a desktop? GPUs and USB stuff would be passed through, and I could buy a PCIe SATA or NVMe controller I could also passthrough to not have to worry about virtualized disk overhead.

I'm almost certain I could make this work, but I wonder if it's even worth it - would it consume less power? What about damage to the components from staying powered 24/7? It'd certainly be faster accessing a NAS without the whole "Network-Attached" part, and powering on the desktop for remote access could just be a command over SSH instead of some convoluted remote WoL that I haven't bothered setting up yet.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Edit 2 months later: Just bought a 7950X3D and use the 3D V-cache half of it as a virtualized desktop with the other cores used for running the host and other VMs. Works perfectly when passing through a dedicated GPU, but iGPU passthrough is very difficult if not impossible since I couldn't manage it.

Edit even later-er: iGPU passthrough is possible on ryzen 7000 after all, everything works great now.

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[–] world_hopper 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've thought about this too. All the hypervisors I've wanted to test or use to try operating systems quickly require browser usage over the network.

Which hypervisors are people using for OP's type of use case? KVM?

[–] vegetaaaaaaa 2 points 2 years ago

I run libvirt + virt-manager for VMs on my desktop machine. My headless hypervisor box also runs libvirt but without the virt-manager graphical interface - I can still use virt-manager from my desktop to connect to/manage this headless libvirt instance.