3 ms·

I use (and love!) Proxmox but as a way to virtualise dedicated servers (eg from OVH / Hetzner) and avoid having to pay hosts like DO everytime I need a new VPS

I use (and love!) Proxmox but as a way to virtualise dedicated servers (eg from OVH / Hetzner) and avoid having to pay hosts like DO everytime I need a new VPS for a project. I'm completely confused by what this ("Proxmox PCI Switcher") is – and the readme isn't helping very much. Can someone explain?

simcop2387 5y ago
It looks like it's a tool to help manage hardware passthrough, specifically to pass through a single resource (GPU most often) and have the UI know that all the guests sharing it are mutually exclusive and you can only have one running at a time.
- monkey_monkey 5y ago
  Thanks, I see (I think). So some use cases would be for gaming (where you really need dedicated graphics performance), and also for MacOS as a guest OS (as otherwise the user interface is really slow)?
  - _joel 5y ago
    Passing through for GPU releated ML tasks or perhaps HW accelerated encoding. I've also used PCI passthrough with Blackmagic SDI capture cards so that a given VM could access the device and the SDI input feed.
  - zrail 5y ago
    This is also useful if you want to pass dedicated network interfaces through to specific guests. For example, I am planning to run a router on top of proxmox and pass through several dedicated NICs specifically for routing purposes.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    > for MacOS as a guest OS (as otherwise the user interface is really slow) Is this something specific to proxmox or non-mac hosted virtualization? I ask because I regularly run MacOS without GPU passthrough without any UI slowdowns at all. In fact, at one point I ran macOS in a VM as the primary UI on my MacBook for several years..
    - monkey_monkey 5y ago
      I tried running MacOS as a guest OS using VMWare Fusion a while back (2 or 3 years), and my recollection is that all the UI stuff (drag/drop, transitions, etc) were super slow. This was on a late 2013 though, so the experience may be very different now, in fact now that I've replaced it with a 2020 iMac, I'll give it another go and see.
    - m463 5y ago
      I have a main mac desktop, and "uploaded" my macbook into proxmox near the start of the pandemic. I just use mac to mac screen sharing to get to it and it works wonderfully. If you don't know, screen sharing is done very well - it does very intelligent things, such as drag and drop files from desktop to desktop or rich-text copy/paste between systems. It will also pass keys correctly, so command-q will quit a remote app instead of quitting the screen sharing app itself. same with alt-tab. I used to use screen sharing with the macbook itself, but it kept going to sleep with the lid closed at inopportune times even with caffeinate, so I just cut to the chase. I also was able to migrate the macos vm when I upgraded my proxmox machine hardware. "vzdump <vmid>", copy the dumpfile, "qmrestore <dumpfile> <vmid>", voila
- rosineygp 5y ago
  nice words, thanks! I have a lot of difficult to explain this. I will improve the docs... maybe record a video.
  - monkey_monkey 5y ago
    That would be a great idea, especially for people (like me) who are struggling to understand what this is, and why it could be useful.

simcop2387 5y ago

It looks like it's a tool to help manage hardware passthrough, specifically to pass through a single resource (GPU most often) and have the UI know that all the guests sharing it are mutually exclusive and you can only have one running at a time.

monkey_monkey 5y ago
Thanks, I see (I think). So some use cases would be for gaming (where you really need dedicated graphics performance), and also for MacOS as a guest OS (as otherwise the user interface is really slow)?
- _joel 5y ago
  Passing through for GPU releated ML tasks or perhaps HW accelerated encoding. I've also used PCI passthrough with Blackmagic SDI capture cards so that a given VM could access the device and the SDI input feed.
- zrail 5y ago
  This is also useful if you want to pass dedicated network interfaces through to specific guests. For example, I am planning to run a router on top of proxmox and pass through several dedicated NICs specifically for routing purposes.
- djrogers 5y ago
  > for MacOS as a guest OS (as otherwise the user interface is really slow) Is this something specific to proxmox or non-mac hosted virtualization? I ask because I regularly run MacOS without GPU passthrough without any UI slowdowns at all. In fact, at one point I ran macOS in a VM as the primary UI on my MacBook for several years..
  - monkey_monkey 5y ago
    I tried running MacOS as a guest OS using VMWare Fusion a while back (2 or 3 years), and my recollection is that all the UI stuff (drag/drop, transitions, etc) were super slow. This was on a late 2013 though, so the experience may be very different now, in fact now that I've replaced it with a 2020 iMac, I'll give it another go and see.
  - m463 5y ago
    I have a main mac desktop, and "uploaded" my macbook into proxmox near the start of the pandemic. I just use mac to mac screen sharing to get to it and it works wonderfully. If you don't know, screen sharing is done very well - it does very intelligent things, such as drag and drop files from desktop to desktop or rich-text copy/paste between systems. It will also pass keys correctly, so command-q will quit a remote app instead of quitting the screen sharing app itself. same with alt-tab. I used to use screen sharing with the macbook itself, but it kept going to sleep with the lid closed at inopportune times even with caffeinate, so I just cut to the chase. I also was able to migrate the macos vm when I upgraded my proxmox machine hardware. "vzdump <vmid>", copy the dumpfile, "qmrestore <dumpfile> <vmid>", voila
rosineygp 5y ago
nice words, thanks! I have a lot of difficult to explain this. I will improve the docs... maybe record a video.
- monkey_monkey 5y ago
  That would be a great idea, especially for people (like me) who are struggling to understand what this is, and why it could be useful.