Is this right hardware for passthrough?

[vobo70]

Hello,
I would like to invest as a little to get low power usage virtualization host.
I would like to pass to VM / container: SATA hard drives, all 4 network cards, sound card
and various USB devices (that could be done easly) and maybe iGPU (not necessary)
Proxmox will be on m2 drive
motherboard Asus P10S-C-4L:
https://www.asus.com/pl/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/P10S-C-4L/
cpu Intel Xeon E3 1235L v5:
https://ark.intel.com/products/88170/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1235L-v5-8M-Cache-2-00-GHz-
will it work as expected?
Is it a good choice?

 

[LnxBil]

I would like to invest as a little to get low power usage virtualization host.
I would like to pass to VM / container: SATA hard drives, all 4 network cards, sound card
and various USB devices (that could be done easly) and maybe iGPU (not necessary)

Why do you want to have virtualisation and then pass through almost all real hardware? These goals are contradictory.

Maybe you should start with your wanted features instead of how you want it to be implemented. We can give better advice if we know the goals.

 

[vobo70]

First I would like to achieve as low power server as I could.
Should act as NAS, router and home automation server.
So I thought I will do virtualization as my option for router distro is pfSense or OpenWRT. I know any of these can act as NAS but don't know if I can run Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/) and spotify client (mopidy). And work as router push me to use Intel PCIe dual GbE for LAN and WAN.
Maybe point me other options.
Thank you very much.

 

[LnxBil]

Maybe point me other options.

I'd go without all the passthrough options whenever you could. If you just create a bridge of every network port you can also archive what you want. I'd also use ZFS for storing your local data and get all the available features there. I'd also invest in SSD instead of harddisk to get even lower thermals and lower power comsumption.

You can run Home Assistant and mopidy without any problems in LX(C) containers.

As a hardware choice, I'd also investigate PCEngines APU boxes, which are built for such a setup. I really like them and they can also directly provide WiFi including at least 2 NICs.

 

[vobo70]

But PCEngines APU (know them, I have buch of Alix 2d2) support only 1 SATA - no data redundancy.
I'm testing right now Banana PI R2 which seems to be not bad.
Thank you again.

 

[LnxBil]

But PCEngines APU (know them, I have buch of Alix 2d2) support only 1 SATA - no data redundancy.

That is not totally correct: You have one soldered SATA port, an additional unsoldered SATA port (but working) and also 1 mSATA - so in total 3 SATA ports. (SATA + mSATA is on the stock APU, but can be soldered as this guy shows here).

 

[vobo70]

Right. But only on APU not APU2 ... which is better.

 

[LnxBil]

Right. But only on APU not APU2 ... which is better.

Yeah, I didn't want to restrict it to a special incarnation. Depending on what you want, there is APU2 up to APU5 with the same CPU, difference only in RAM, NICs and mobile capabilities.

Two sata ports (one beeing msata the other beeing the sata connector) can be used on the APU2. You can also add a mini pcie to sata controller.

 

[vobo70]

Thank you for your answer. But honestly I would stick to something more versalite.
I also thought about Xeon E3 1235L (25W TDP) and some C236 chipset motherboard.
But I think I will stick with Asrock J5005-ITX so far. At the end of this month I will buy it and let you know how everything is working.

 

[LnxBil]

But I think I will stick with Asrock J5005-ITX so far.

They also work pretty good. I'm running an ASRock J4205-ITX without any problems including 16 GB of RAM.

 

[vobo70]

I bought ASRock J4105M (micro ATX) with 3 PCIe (2 x x1 and 1 x x16 (logically x1)) and passing through for network and dell perc h310 raid card working properly. Act as NAS/router/home automation combo ;-)
Also works with PCIe to NVME adapter as system disk.