Nvme pass through to work as a VM installation medium.

[papajo]

So I a 1TB Nvme SSD which I divided into two partitions of 512GB (lets name them partition 1 and partition 2)


I would like to run two VMs (winfows 10) and install them on the respective partition (VM1 to partition 1, VM2 to partition 2)

Does it make sense to pass through the Nvme drive in terms of performance?

If yes how would I pass through to different VMs a Nvme with two partitions ?

 

[papajo]

Edit also if it is possible to mount the physical partitions and install windows on them is it also possible to later on boot normally from them?


This two vm on each partition is for my two nephews I am thinking of letting them (in case one nephew isnt around) to boot with full resource power

Could I in that way just boot from one partition or do I need to create two more VMs for that I just dont set them to run at start? (VM3 using partition 1 windows with full resources and vm4 using partition 2 windows with full resources so that either vm3 or vm4 can be started by one of my nephews depending on which windows installation is his)

last but not least can I script these boot profiles so that they could see a window or something choosing either to boot with shared resources or a single vm with full resources?

 

[mailinglists]

Wow so much complications..
Why don't you use it the way it;s supposed to be used?
Create a thin or thick LVM storage on that NVMe disk, or even ZFS for that matter and then create two VMs on it, each getting half of the space..

 

[papajo]

Wow so much complications..
Why don't you use it the way it;s supposed to be used?
Create a thin or thick LVM storage on that NVMe disk, or even ZFS for that matter and then create two VMs on it, each getting half of the space..

That would need more CPU resources directed towards promox and I use a 9900k (16 threads for two users) + I figure the vm would be snappier that way + I would hope that it could boot up as standalone windows in case they want to use the full machine for a single user (e.g one nephew isnt around and the other wants to play a demanding game)

 

[mailinglists]

Resource loss is negligible in this case. Just use thick LVM.
As the hardware configuration would change when booting inside VM and then outside, Windows will get deactivated each time you change it hardware.
Games need GPU, which can not be shared.
CPU time can be shared.
If you really want to, you could just do a partition pass-trough, by using it's id (/dev/disk/by-id/....disk...-part1) instead of whole disk, but it will be really complex, especially if you want it to boot directly to each windows install from host.. start thinking about EFI partitions...
.. good luck, you will need it..

I would again suggest you to simplify this, and have separate installs for everything, if really needed.