VE acting like bare metal

[theawesomerb]

Hello guys ,

i'm discovering this amazing and powerfull Hypervisor , and i'm planing to try it , however , since i have only one pc , i do now want to transform it elusively to a server and use it from my mac via a web browser.

i want to install windows 11 on it and ubuntu , and i have two screens , i want it to act like this :

when i push the power button , the pc boots into windows on one screen and ubuntu in the other screen , with the ability to pass the mouse from the screens, both screens are attached to the same graphics card.

my config :
two monitors 19" 1080p from hp
cpu: ryzen 3600x
gpu: rx 6900xt
ram : 32gb
drive : 1tb ssd , 256gb ssd , 1tb HDD , 512gb HDD.

i asked this question like everywhere , i didn't find any answer, thanks in advance.

 

[Dunuin]

when i push the power button , the pc boots into windows on one screen and ubuntu in the other screen , with the ability to pass the mouse from the screens, both screens are attached to the same graphics card.

For that each VMs needs its own GPU for passthrough. So you need 2 or 3 GPUs (might work without a third GPU for the PVE host or not). Sharing the mouse/keyboard between OSs could be done in software over the network via something like "Barrier" and USB passthrough or via a hardware KVM switch. If you want a desktop-like experience where any USB device might be passed through into both VMs without bandwidth/latency problems you might also want to buy two USB-controller cards and pass them through as well. And in case you want to use some speakers or headphones, you might need two soundcards as well, as otherwise there will only be the audio of the HDMI/DP outputs of those GPUs. So probably not as easy as you think. VMs can't make use of your hosts hardware, unless you pass it through and then neither the PVE host nor any other VM might use that hardware anymore. And if PCI passthrough works at all depends on your hardware.
Usually not great when not using workstation/server hardware.

Probably wouldn`t be much more expensive to just buy another PC and run both bare metal on dedicated hardware and then using KVM software/hardware for the mouse/keyboard/USB sharing.

 

[theawesomerb]

For that each VMs needs its own GPU for passthrough. So you need 2 or 3 GPUs (might work without a third GPU for the PVE host or not). Sharing the mouse/keyboard between OSs could be done in software over the network via something like "Barrier" and USB passthrough. If you want a desktop-like experience where any USB device might be passed through into both VMs without bandwidth/latency problems you might also want to buy two USB-controller cards and pass them trough as well. So probably not as easy as you think. VMs can't make use of your hosts hardware, unless you pass it through and then neither the PVE host nor any other VM might use that hardware anymore. And if PCI passthrough works at all depends on your hardware.
Usually not great when not using workstation/server hardware.

Finally an answer ! daaamn thank you mate ! so i need to buy another gpu in order to get that second vm working separatly in the same time, allright , i can manage that

i didn't find a way anywhere on youtube that shows how to boot for example windows 11 directly on the host machine , instead of just having a blank screen showing the lan http adress to connect to ! is there a way to do that ( why i start my pc i access directly the VM like a bare metal instead of having a blank black screen with http adress, since i dont want to use my other laptop for anything else except installing proxmox !)

 

[Dunuin]

Finally an answer ! daaamn thank you mate ! so i need to buy another gpu in order to get that second vm working separatly in the same time, allright , i can manage that

Maybe even two GPUs. Not all mainboards allow to boot without a GPU. And when a GPU is initialized by the BIOS/UEFI when booting, this might cause problems later when you want to pass it through. So best you test that PCI passthrough with your existing GPU first.

i didn't find a way anywhere on youtube that shows how to boot for example windows 11 directly on the host machine , instead of just having a blank screen showing the lan http adress to connect to !

You can't boot win 11 directly. You always have to boot PVE and PVE will then run that Win11 virtualized and passthrough a GPU so the Win11 VM can use that GPU for hardware accelleration and outputting picture/sound to the display. And PVE won't have an output (so no text console for debugging stuff) unless you buy a third GPU for that.

 

[theawesomerb]

You can't boot win 11 directly. You always have to boot PVE and PVE will then run that Win11 virtualized and passthrough a GPU so the Win11 VM can use that GPU for hardware accelleration and outputting picture/sound to the display. And PVE won't have an output (so no text console for debugging stuff) unless you buy a third GPU for that.

I meant only one VM , like it boots proxmox , then proxmox boots windows11 on the screen , without having just a blanc screen with http adress so i can access it with a different machine , i hope you understood what i want to do ?

 

[Dunuin]

I meant only one VM , like it boots proxmox , then proxmox boots windows11 on the screen , without having just a blanc screen with http adress so i can access it with a different machine , i hope you understood what i want to do ?

Yes, just wanted to make things clear. Not that you think you will get bare metal performance or that Windows will be able to use all the IO/hardware of that PC.

And check your IOMMU groups first. Most of the time those consumer mainboards will only allow you to passthrough PCIe devices plugged into the 1 or 2 specific PCIe/M.2 slots that are connected to the CPU and not those slots that are connected to the mainboards chipset.

See here for IOMMU groups and PCI passthrough: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough