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I'll go against the grain and recommend running your lab on Windows 11 Pro and Hyper V (often included with reclaimed PCs). Hyper-V is a very capable hyperviso

I'll go against the grain and recommend running your lab on Windows 11 Pro and Hyper V (often included with reclaimed PCs). Hyper-V is a very capable hypervisor and Windows hardware compatibility is excellent. Remote mgmt can be done over RDP, SSH or WMI Nearly everyone has a spare PC lying around collecting dust, and within an hour it can be running a dozen VMs . Reclaimed HP & Dells are cheap and include a Windows Pro license. otherwise they can be had for $20 I recommend Alpine for the guest OS. It's fast to set up, natively supports Hyper-V hosts and compact (about 1/10th the size of a debian guest). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/best-practices-for-running-linux-on-hyper-v https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualizat... https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Hyper-V_guest_services https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Hyper-V_guest_services

buybackoff 3y ago
You could use this built-in OEM license from a Windows VM in Proxmox. Just search for that on Proxmox forum. Hyper-V is very limited in hardware support, you won't be able to pass-through stuff. And you always pay for VM layer, while in Proxmox you could use containers which give almost the host performance.
- tonymet 3y ago
  that's changed in recent years. you now have access to hardware and the gpu for inference, for example.
  - buybackoff 3y ago
    Maybe in the Server version. I haven't seen anything useful in Windows Pro. I could not setup SR-IOV even with Powershell after wasting a lot of time on searching for help.
- haunter 3y ago
  Hyper V Server 2019 (not the same as Hyper V inside Win 10/11) is free and has GPU pass through https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/deploy/deploying-graphics-devices-using-dda https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualizat... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2019 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-...
haunter 3y ago
Not sure why are you downvoted, Hyper V is perfectly fine Hyper V Server 2019 is also free you don’t have to pay for anything https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2019 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-... And you can install a full GUI too https://gist.github.com/bp2008/922b326bf30222b51da08146746c7c27 https://gist.github.com/bp2008/922b326bf30222b51da08146746c7...
- tonymet 3y ago
  that's an interesting option. does it boot into cmd.exe by default?
  - haunter 3y ago
    Yes that only but you can install a GUI + a web interface
theideaofcoffee 3y ago
This is how I have my setup running, a moderately-outdated, but still beefy (E5-2699v4, 512GB ram, etc), Dell Precision tower, which originally started as a design machine with a handful of Autodesk and EDA tools. I wanted to try out proxmox, but I was too lazy to want to move all of those installed things off onto another host, reinstall, then move it back into a Windows VM. I suppose I could still run proxmox in a HyperV instance and then VMs within there, but it feels like too many layers of indirection. HyperV is perfect for what I want to do, run a dozen or two sandbox and experimental VMs. I can pass through hardware, assign raw volumes, partition out network interfaces for routers and other shenanigans and it's stable too. And with RDP, I just use the mac version of the remote desktop client to use it interactively, which also works surprisingly well even over tailscale on another continent!
- tonymet 3y ago
  sounds like an awesome setup. this is what I tell my friends. Just run Hyper-V. They can easily be checkpointed and moved to another hypervisor. Use what you got!
daemin 3y ago
How do you handle the fact that Windows 11 is a desktop OS and it tends to want to do whatever it feels like restarting for updates and such. I would imagine it's a bit of a pain to have the system reboot at random, killing your VMs etc.
- arh68 3y ago
  Windows 10 hardly restarts a lot. There's no pain. If I reboot windows, my Debian VM comes right back up, with all the docker-compose services running (a la `restart: always`). Like nothing ever happened. So I just don't think this is a problem. But that's just my experience...
- tonymet 3y ago
  I manage this by scheduling restarts. Maybe 2-3x / month. fwiw my linux machines get periodic kernel & firmware updates that also need restarting
arh68 3y ago
I absolutely agree. Windows Pro + Hyper-V + Linux = super good. And I'm a Mac guy, if anything. Remote Desktop is really good, too. I use it all the time from my MacBook (though I mostly SSH, naturally). WinSCP + midnight commander are all the extras I need. If you have enough memory/CPU on your workstation/gaming machine, Just 1 PC works great.

buybackoff 3y ago

You could use this built-in OEM license from a Windows VM in Proxmox. Just search for that on Proxmox forum. Hyper-V is very limited in hardware support, you won't be able to pass-through stuff. And you always pay for VM layer, while in Proxmox you could use containers which give almost the host performance.

tonymet 3y ago
that's changed in recent years. you now have access to hardware and the gpu for inference, for example.
- buybackoff 3y ago
  Maybe in the Server version. I haven't seen anything useful in Windows Pro. I could not setup SR-IOV even with Powershell after wasting a lot of time on searching for help.
haunter 3y ago
Hyper V Server 2019 (not the same as Hyper V inside Win 10/11) is free and has GPU pass through https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/deploy/deploying-graphics-devices-using-dda https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualizat... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2019 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-...

haunter 3y ago

Not sure why are you downvoted, Hyper V is perfectly fine Hyper V Server 2019 is also free you don’t have to pay for anything https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2019 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-... And you can install a full GUI too https://gist.github.com/bp2008/922b326bf30222b51da08146746c7c27 https://gist.github.com/bp2008/922b326bf30222b51da08146746c7...

tonymet 3y ago
that's an interesting option. does it boot into cmd.exe by default?
- haunter 3y ago
  Yes that only but you can install a GUI + a web interface

theideaofcoffee 3y ago

This is how I have my setup running, a moderately-outdated, but still beefy (E5-2699v4, 512GB ram, etc), Dell Precision tower, which originally started as a design machine with a handful of Autodesk and EDA tools. I wanted to try out proxmox, but I was too lazy to want to move all of those installed things off onto another host, reinstall, then move it back into a Windows VM. I suppose I could still run proxmox in a HyperV instance and then VMs within there, but it feels like too many layers of indirection. HyperV is perfect for what I want to do, run a dozen or two sandbox and experimental VMs. I can pass through hardware, assign raw volumes, partition out network interfaces for routers and other shenanigans and it's stable too. And with RDP, I just use the mac version of the remote desktop client to use it interactively, which also works surprisingly well even over tailscale on another continent!

tonymet 3y ago
sounds like an awesome setup. this is what I tell my friends. Just run Hyper-V. They can easily be checkpointed and moved to another hypervisor. Use what you got!

daemin 3y ago

How do you handle the fact that Windows 11 is a desktop OS and it tends to want to do whatever it feels like restarting for updates and such. I would imagine it's a bit of a pain to have the system reboot at random, killing your VMs etc.

arh68 3y ago
Windows 10 hardly restarts a lot. There's no pain. If I reboot windows, my Debian VM comes right back up, with all the docker-compose services running (a la `restart: always`). Like nothing ever happened. So I just don't think this is a problem. But that's just my experience...
tonymet 3y ago
I manage this by scheduling restarts. Maybe 2-3x / month. fwiw my linux machines get periodic kernel & firmware updates that also need restarting

arh68 3y ago

I absolutely agree. Windows Pro + Hyper-V + Linux = super good. And I'm a Mac guy, if anything. Remote Desktop is really good, too. I use it all the time from my MacBook (though I mostly SSH, naturally). WinSCP + midnight commander are all the extras I need. If you have enough memory/CPU on your workstation/gaming machine, Just 1 PC works great.