New user - looking for some help

[IrishBiker]

Hi Guys

I bought a Kettop Mi8250L8, it’s got a i5-8250U with 8 intel nics. Initially I bought it purely as a pfsense or opnsense router/firewall combo. However, this puppy can handle 32gb of memory and have enough space for a few drives so I have decided to install Proxmox and run a lightweight hypervisor. I’ve got a few questions if you don’t mind helping with:

I’ve added the kernel addon to enable passthrough but I’ve noticed that the CPU speed is locked on the base freq of 1.6Ghz. This CPU can turbo when needed up to 3.4Ghz. Is there an option to enable this?

I’m planning to run opnsense as a vm and initially I thought I would passthrough all 8 nics and the wifi module as opnsense as it will be the firewall/DHCP etc etc for all my network devices and remove the need for a septate switch. however, it seems I can only add 5 devices max. Is this correct? Is there a better way to do this?

I’m going to run some lightweight dockers including a Plex server. I am going to install Lubuntu (lightweight ubuntu) vm and run them from however I would like Plex to transcode at least one stream when I am away from home. The CPU has the Intel UHD 620 graphics and that should be able to handle at least one transcode stream. As Proxmox is running Debian, I could install a docker and run them from the hypervisor or I’ve also been looking at the multi GPU passthough option, however I could not get it to work correctly. What’s the best way to install and run a plex server? Should I just run it as a service on the hypervisor and let it access the GPU directly from there?



Thanks

Paul

 

[Dunuin]

I’ve added the kernel addon to enable passthrough but I’ve noticed that the CPU speed is locked on the base freq of 1.6Ghz. This CPU can turbo when needed up to 3.4Ghz. Is there an option to enable this?

Latest PVE should dynamically switch frequencies between min and max what your BIOS allows it to use. So if you allowed boosting in BIOS and set in BIOS that the OS should handle clocking, then PVE should use frequencies between 1.6 and 3.4GHz based on the actual CPU load.

I’m planning to run opnsense as a vm and initially I thought I would passthrough all 8 nics and the wifi module as opnsense as it will be the firewall/DHCP etc etc for all my network devices and remove the need for a septate switch. however, it seems I can only add 5 devices max. Is this correct? Is there a better way to do this?

Did you try to set the "all function" checkbox? If you for example got two quad port nics you only would need 2 PCI Passthrough entries in your VM hardware tab as it will then passthrough all 4 ports of that NIC to the VM with a single entry. Not sure if you can break the limit that way but might be a try.

I’m going to run some lightweight dockers including a Plex server. I am going to install Lubuntu (lightweight ubuntu) vm and run them from however I would like Plex to transcode at least one stream when I am away from home. The CPU has the Intel UHD 620 graphics and that should be able to handle at least one transcode stream. As Proxmox is running Debian, I could install a docker and run them from the hypervisor or I’ve also been looking at the multi GPU passthough option, however I could not get it to work correctly. What’s the best way to install and run a plex server? Should I just run it as a service on the hypervisor and let it access the GPU directly from there?

If you don't got a free GPU to passthrough that might be an option. But in general you want to run as less as possible services on the PVE host itself so there is at less as possible stuff that could cause problems and then effecting all guests.

 

[IrishBiker]

Hi Dunuin, thanks for the reply:

Latest PVE should dynamically switch frequencies between min and max what your BIOS allows it to use. So if you allowed boosting in BIOS and set in BIOS that the OS should handle clocking, then PVE should use frequencies between 1.6 and 3.4GHz based on the actual CPU load.

I'll double check all the settings in the bios, I'm nearly sure they are set correctly, however going over it one more time won't hurt.

Did you try to set the "all function" checkbox? If you for example got two quad port nics you only would need 2 PCI Passthrough entries in your VM hardware tab as it will then passthrough all 4 ports of that NIC to the VM with a single entry. Not sure if you can break the limit that way but might be a try.

I have tried both with all functions and without however I keep getting the following message:



Unless I am not reading the error correctly it does not allow any additional PCI devices. The unit come with 2 quad nics 4 x Intel I211-AT and 4 x Intel I350 however PVE only lists them as I211's and IOMMU does not group them together but sees them as separate nics:



As far as the unit is itself I don't think I can break them down:

If you don't got a free GPU to passthrough that might be an option. But in general you want to run as less as possible services on the PVE host itself so there is at less as possible stuff that could cause problems and then effecting all guests.

Ideally I would like the console and my VM's to share the 620 but Plex is the most important out of them all so I feel running it as a service on the host is the path of least resistance.