Will a VM use a dGPU for "GPU-tasks?"

[MichaelD]

I currently have a W7 box that I use as a NAS. The specs on the box are total overkill for NAS-duty. (E3 Xeon/16GB RAM) The box runs headless and I RDP in to manage it.

I am thinking of setting up Hyper-V on the box and running two W7 VMs; one for the NAS and the other for HD video editing with Vegas Pro. Vegas Pro CAN use NVidia GPUs to do video encoding tasks.

I know you cannot share a dGPU b/t VMs without very expensive hypervisors/software. I want to dedicate the GPU to the video editing VM. The box would continue to run headless. For video editing this isn't ideal, but for my purposes it would be fine. I do more editing/titles/transitions than I do "proper color matching."

My question is will the OS in the VM utilize the dGPU for video encoding tasks, even though the box is running headless?

Maybe I haven't asked all the right questions, so please LMK what additional info you might need in order to help me out. Thanks very much.

 

[ViRGE]

AFAIK Hyper-V does not support GPU passthrough. You would have to use a different hypervisor to get that functionality.

 

[heymrdj]

Yup no passthrough on Hyper-V, just Remote-FX (which is very powerful in its own right). You're really looking at remote workstation with that wish list which brings you to Citrix XenDesktop with HDX and VMware Horizon View, both of which are in the multiple thousands of dollars in licensing to even start with. I will say I have no issues with running Adobe with Remote FX. I haven't had much time to test with our new lab, but we're running 1080p youtube videos and flash games without issues in a Windows 8.1 VM with RemoteFX.

Specs:
3x HP DL380G8p hosts
2x 8 core xeons in each host
2x Nvidia K4000GPU in each host
512GB RAM each host.

 

[Fox5]

Xen can do GPU pass through (with enough effort), but I think all the normal consumer virtualization platforms can only emulate a card and pass through the calls to a host OpenGL or Direct3D driver.

 

[MichaelD]

Thank you, everyone, for the detailed replies. I'm certainly not looking at spending thousands of dollars to do this...I was maybe going to upgrade to 32GB of RAM (max the MB will support) but that was it.

The 4/8 core Xeon 1230V2 does a pretty good job of encoding all by itself, especially when that's really the only thing it's doing. I just wanted to see about giving it a boost as I have a 470GTX sitting here collecting dust.

I still will probably mess around with Hyper-V and the two dedicated VMs though.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[SolMiester]

OP, you don't need to do VM for the video task, do a VM for the NAS box only and run the HOST as a WS at same time to do your video coding!.....

I do the same thing with 8.1, Hyper-V for the VM (Plex in my case), and the 8.1 HOST does other chores!

 

[Fox5]

FYI, Xen Server is a free virtualization technology if you want to play around with it.

Or do what SolMiester said, and do the hardware accelerated tasks on the host, and still use VMs to do other things.

 

[MichaelD]

Running the NAS in a VM and using the host for editing is a great idea, and something I'd not considered...it makes perfect sense, actually! Thanks, SolMiester.

I did check out Xen Server and it certainly looks impressive, but way above my needs. Did bookmark it for future "what ifs?" though.

 

[Emulex]

you need the fully licensed commercial version to do virtual gpu - VGPU mode.

dvga = VT-D Passthrough to one vm
vSGA = like remote-fx virtualization using software plus hardware assist (weak)

It sounds like you want to pass-through the video card to the vm only one right?

 

[Global688]

Don't use Hyper-V. Hyper-V can only "pass through" only so much video RAM (200 or so). What you want is to enable RemoteFX on Windows 8.1 or better yet Server 2012r2. This enables the full video card to be used (directx, limited opengl).


To enable this on the host: gpedit.msc -> Computer Config -> Admin Templates -> Windows Components -> Remote Desktop Services -> Remote Desktop Session Host


The options you set are in there.

 

[KentState]

OP, you don't need to do VM for the video task, do a VM for the NAS box only and run the HOST as a WS at same time to do your video coding!.....

I do the same thing with 8.1, Hyper-V for the VM (Plex in my case), and the 8.1 HOST does other chores!

That's what I do with VM Workstation. Have 4 or so machines using 16GB RAM and dedicated disk. Doesn't have an impact on games unless the CPU is being hit.