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The specification you present is a bit unclear. Any modern virtualization has very fast CPU virtualization (it's hard to say near-native, as there are always c

The specification you present is a bit unclear. Any modern virtualization has very fast CPU virtualization (it's hard to say near-native, as there are always corner cases), and snapshotting tools. I don't know about Sharepoint; the "clone installs" is a bit fuzzy too, but one can clone installed systems by just copying the underlying image file and ensuring that it has a unique identifier (and updating the guest O/S license, if required). If GPU matters, VFIO definitely is part of the solution. However, if you're trying to achieve a sort-of full system passthrough (eg. because of drivers that have bugs related to certain hardware components, which it seems to be your situation), this will never happen, because certain parts of the guest need to be necessarily emulated (e.g. chipset). Even passing a USB port is not easy - one actually needs to pass the whole hubs (AFAIK a port may belong to two hubs - USB 2 and USB 3).

matja 5y ago
For the USB part, would adding a extra USB adaptor card (assuming it's a desktop machine) and using PCI-passthrough/VFIO on that adaptor make it easier? From my knowledge of QEMU, then no USB emulation is involved - the guest OS sees the entire USB adaptor (and the host doesn't) - so one can have all the special USB hardware connected to that.
- pizza234 5y ago
  I'm not knowledgeable with this, but I think so, as it'd be a standard passthrough. What needs to be kept in mind is that, as the standanrd passthrough, it's subject to the IOMMU groups handling (in best case, there's no other device in the same group; otherwise, one needs some trickery, which AFAIK is not 100% guaranteed to work).
- acoard 5y ago
  I've read of people doing this setup for exactly this on homelab and VFIO subreddits. PCIe passthrough is easier. I've no personal experience with this, but it seems to work well; the VFIO setups are hardcore anyways.

matja 5y ago

For the USB part, would adding a extra USB adaptor card (assuming it's a desktop machine) and using PCI-passthrough/VFIO on that adaptor make it easier? From my knowledge of QEMU, then no USB emulation is involved - the guest OS sees the entire USB adaptor (and the host doesn't) - so one can have all the special USB hardware connected to that.

pizza234 5y ago
I'm not knowledgeable with this, but I think so, as it'd be a standard passthrough. What needs to be kept in mind is that, as the standanrd passthrough, it's subject to the IOMMU groups handling (in best case, there's no other device in the same group; otherwise, one needs some trickery, which AFAIK is not 100% guaranteed to work).
acoard 5y ago
I've read of people doing this setup for exactly this on homelab and VFIO subreddits. PCIe passthrough is easier. I've no personal experience with this, but it seems to work well; the VFIO setups are hardcore anyways.