Best posts made by apayne

@olivierlambert I think this is probably the most sensible of the schemas so far.
The dark background reduces glare, text is high-contrast, and the red actually draws the eye as a highlight or accent color. Looks sharp!

@olivierlambert I did a bit of light digging.

General consensus is that Dell's servers are not ready for this kind of stuff, but then again I've seen crowds get things wrong before:
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/6mafcg/can_i_install_a_gpu_in_a_dell_power_edge_r810/

This is the method described for KVM:
http://mathiashueber.com/fighting-error-43-how-to-use-nvidia-gpu-in-a-virtual-machine/

Additional KVM docs (plus a small description of the vendor ID problem):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF#"Error_43:_Driver_failed_to_load"_on_Nvidia_GPUs_passed_to_Windows_VMs

An updated methodology for Ryzen on-chip GPU:
http://mathiashueber.com/ryzen-based-virtual-machine-passthrough-setup-ubuntu-18-04/

This is the method described for VMWare:
http://codefromabove.com/2019/02/the-hyperconverged-homelab-windows-vm-gaming/

Hyper-V documentation is a bit more sparse, but this hints that Microsoft may have simply worked around the issue (ala vendor license agreements), at least when using RemoteFX:
http://techgenix.com/enabling-physical-gpus-hyper/

(Optional) Get CUDA working for cheap-o cards:
https://medium.com/@samnco/using-the-nvidia-gt-1030-for-cuda-workloads-on-ubuntu-16-04-4eee72d56791

So it looks like the common factors are:

• The GPU device must be isolated on the host with the vfio kernel driver. To ensure this, the vfio driver must load first, prior to any vendor or open source driver.
• GPU must be connected to the guest VM via PCI pass-through. No surprise.
• The CPU must not be identified as a virtual one, it must have some other identity when probed. This appears to be the key to preventing the dread NVidia Error 43; it suggests the driver is just examining the CPU assigned to it, although some documentation mentions a "vendor" setting. The work-around is to make it into a string it doesn't match against, and it just works. Even a setting of "unknown" is shown to work. I don't know if there is a way to specify in a XCP guest "please don't identify yourself as virtual".
• For cards that are CUDA capable but "unsupported" by NVidia, you install the software in a difference sequence (CUDA first, then driver).

Disclaimer: I'm just compiling a list to get an idea about what to do; I haven't done the actual install, nor do I have the hardware. Hopefully this helps.

@cg re: old CPU support, the note was already taken it just strikes me as ironic. I understand the need for less power hungry processing but in my case I’m using a hefty 260 watts idling for the server alone. I am guessing the old SAS/SATA enclosure I have rigged to it is another 300 or so at idle. That’s a lot of draw for “newer”, but the capacity is excellent so I won’t be needing more hardware. Plenty of room to spin up new VMs.

Re: Hyper-V, I already use the 2nd Gen at work via old 2012r2 installs. It’s OK and gets the job done. However I’ve been tasked with shuffling and consolidating some older installations to newer hosts/hardware, and the move process is a bit clunky for that version. Device pass through seems a bit limited.

Last time I saw VMware it was a demo lab we did at work, and it too was “just ok”, that was with the vmsphere(?) web interface, etc. However last I heard they are slowly tightening the list of supported hardware drivers, and by extension, supported hardware. That was a few years back so maybe they have added new drivers.

XCP benefits from decades of Linux device driver development. It simply boots, and that removes a lot of “officially supported hardware” headache for me. And the price is right too