VM GPU sharing

[Didnthurt]

Hi all,

pls bare with me i just delved into virtualization the other day and started running my own host on an older laptop for quick testing. So far im really happy with it and see much potential for my homelab. However, as i feel like i want to expand this on some proper hardware, i was trying to figure out getting GPU usage to the VMs. I've already watched quite a bit of videos and read about it, but im more confused than before. Maybe someone could give me a quick guideline as of what can be done with GPU on Proxmox. I dont have a PCi graphics card atm so i cant test this myself

So can i share a single graphics card for say 4 VMs? Or do i need a dedicated card for each VM?
If more cards are necessary, do they need to be the same type/modell?

Thanks in advance!

 

[H4R0]

Depends on what you want to do with it. So what is your use case ?

GPU passtrough e.g single pcie gpu per vm is the best option performance wise. It will give you 99% native gpu performance. However for that to work you need modern hardware with vt-d support !

Otherwise you can use virtio gpu acceleration and share the gpu with all your vm's, this will allow you to use hardware acceleration for software that makes use of it. But It has quite some overhead. For normal desktop use its fine. For rendering / games i would go with a dedicated gpu.

You dont need a gpu at all, proxmox can virtualize it if you just need rdp/vnc.

 

[LnxBil]

In addition to @H4R0, if you want to virtualize desktop operating system with GPU stuff, best is to use a desktop virtualizer like VirtualBox or VMware Workstation. Performance is much better there.

 

[Didnthurt]

@H4R0 Thanks for the reply! Sorry, i should have described my scenario a bit more in the first place.

Id like to run Virtualization mainly for games, multimedia and testing.

So lets say i want 6 VMs that run games, how could i get 6 dedicated cards onto a board then? Or would i need to get 3 cards and split it between 2 VMs? Also, do the cards need to be all the same identical model then?

Thanks!

 

[vaschthestampede]

Excuse me if I reassume this post but:

virtio gpu acceleration and share the gpu with all your vm's

How exactly?
In servers with multiple unassigned graphics cards in passthrough is there any way to select which one to share?