Passthru of Graphics card

[manilx]

Hi all

I've Emby in Docker in a VM on xcpng 8.3
All working fine but I'd like to test hardware encoding.
The Protectli VP6670 I use have the follwing CPU:

In the PCI info for passthru I have the following:

Can I pass the Iris Graphics VGA controller to the VM?

I've only used USB passthru until now, so I'm unsure on this.

Thx in advance

[gskger]

@manilx Maybe this post on Intel iGPU passthough gives some ideas? You probably loose the video output on the Protectli when you assign the iGPU to a VM.

[manilx]

@gskger Thx for that. Seems it could work. But loosing video output on the host itself would be a problem.....

[imaginapix]

@manilx

I was going through the same with my Protectli devices and found the following, which also might apply to your situation:

• When enabling passthrough for the IrisXE graphic, the HDMI port showed no picture anymore - BUT - then DP port still shows everything, even with passthrough enabled

My Protectli uses openboot as BIOS, so this might make a difference, so better mentioning it.

[manilx]

@imaginapix Thx fo that. Very useful. I'm using standard Bios and need the HDMI port for display as I have a piKVM hooked up for remote interaction.....
Guess I will refrain from that as so far the CPU manages transcoding fine most of the time. And with a passthru I would also have issues with backups (snapshots) and migration.

[imaginapix]

@manilx

Yeah, it's a bummer that active PCI/USB passthrough blocks snapshots/backups.

I understand that it is a problem for the migration since there is no guarantee that the device is also available on the other host, but for snapshot/backup it should not be of importance

[olivierlambert]

This is something to dig at the XAPI & Xen level, to know how difficult it could be, I have no idea.

[manilx]

@imaginapix Exactly, migration is logical but snapshots and live backups is another ballpark.

[imaginapix]

@manilx said in Passthru of Graphics card:
... and need the HDMI port for display as I have a piKVM hooked up for remote interaction.....

Before I forget:
You could use an DP to HDMI cable for that, but given the other things we talked about, this might also only be a crutch.

[manilx]

@imaginapix Didn't think of that.... But I guess it's more work than it's worth in this instance.