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Gaming over ESXi

Afternoon,

So I have a fun one, I need to build this server to ESXi 6.5, it's got 2 Nvidia K2 GPU's and a dual processor, 12 core Xeons.

My Director, yes, Director, wants me to build this as a virtualized Gaming Environment for Friday Afternoons.

Now I've read that you can do this and I know that there are a few things that need to be changed within ESX. However, my question would be can multiple people game at the same time from the server and shoot each other in the face. It won't be a heavy game, something like counter strike :D

Thanks
Alex

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

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Alex

ASKER

You're not wrong, but this is an autocad server with 2 x K2 GPU's in that we don't use anymore. We want to have this set up in the office for some light gaming, counterstrike is our preference, I just want to shoot my work colleagues in the face :D

Right so, this can be done with Horizon View but not with ESXi? I was planning on using something like WinVNC to connect to the virtual machine.

Thanks
Alex

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

ESXi is just a hypervisor, it has very little control for you to provide SHARED VMs, which can concurrently SHARED a Graphics Card.

Unless you just want two VMs, with both K2 cards added to each VM.

So therefore

VM1 - K2 in PCI Passthrough
VM2 - K2 in PCI Passthrough

You may want to try experimenting with Software/Hardware Graphics emulation, and no K2 card added, and see how the game performs.

Alex

ASKER

Ok,

So Horizon will allow for the split and dedication of part of the GPU to a specific VM, as well as multiple VM's right?

Also,

Good morning Andrew, thank you for your help, yet again :D, did you have a good weekend?

Thanks
Alex

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

So Horizon will allow for the split and dedication of part of the GPU to a specific VM, as well as multiple VM's right?

Yes, Horizon View is FULL VDI (virtual machines), with also special protocols, e.g. PCoIP and VMware BLAST for better end user performance.

Also,

Good morning Andrew, thank you for your help, yet again :D, did you have a good weekend?

Thanks
Alex

No problems, glad to help. Weekend it was quick and over again!

Alex

ASKER

Excellent,

I'll use Horizon View in that case, thank you for your assistance. It was too quick, I lost my friday night due to a trip to A&E but other than that, it was ok.