My place on the net to muse, share, and sometimes rant
When I got my first real IT job I knew I wanted to learn more.
I was exposed to all sorts of new technologies and implementations I had never seen before.
However I quickly ran into a wall when I wanted to learn more; there wasn’t any real time for me to do so during work hours, and they weren’t keen on educating me (part of the reason I left).
After recycling gobs and gobs of old tech from clients I finally got my chance.
Read MoreSo yet again my planned Xen hyper-visor is on hold.
After converting my Server 2012 R2 from a generation 1 guest to a generation 2 successfully it has jumped up greatly in performance. Short version: Converted boot drive from MBR to GPT and added EFI boot, see here. FYI, you can do this from a Windows 8 install disc, but it must be a 32-bit disc, as gptgen is not 64-bit.
Also the fact I was able to get Ubuntu Server to install as a Gen 2 and get great performance.
Considering how nicely Windows took to not only being converted from physical to virtual into Hyper-V, it also took to moving from MBR/BIOS to GPT/UEFI, I don’t think Xen will get me any better performance, especially with the lack of specific official drivers for devices.
I’d like to use Xen in the future for Linux boxes since they love it, but I’m holding off until I can get another server for that.
Finally converted my main server from a physical machine to a Hyper-V server.
Went fairly straightforward except that I should’ve initially added the VHDX to a Gen 1 VM and not a Gen 2. Oh well.
Now I’m getting some experience running and administrating a Server 2012 R2 core OS. Not too bad with RSAT on another PC. 😀
Links coming tomorrow to what helped me get up and running. Too tired right now.
So I decided not to go with Hyper-V.
After reading several sites trying to do what I am and having less than stellar performance I went back to Xen.
Amazingly Citrix completely opened up Xen and even made VGA Passthrough easy as anything else.
I’ve already tested with Xen on my main gaming rig and was successful in getting it to go through my main graphics card and display on at least one monitor.
Next step it both monitors, pass through USB for my devices, and test game and benchmark performance pitting my current Windows 8.1 rig against a virtual Windows 7. If it’s within a few percentage points I’m all in!
Trying my hand at a gaming hypervisor yet again.
Instead of using Xen I’m going to see how Hyper-V from Microsoft fairs using RemoteFX and vGPU.
I scrapped my plans for a hypervisor a while ago when I found my original graphics card and new gfx card BOTH do not support FLReset.
Essentially it lets the hypervisor reboot my gfx card and give it to one of the virtual machines.
Without that, I can’t make a gaming hypervisor.
But now I’ve got another idea… Read More
CWtheNerd - Life inside of technology 