Emby Server, Linux, Hyper-V Host

[darrenkdean 29]

Good Morning,

 

I will be miniaturizing our servers over the Christmas Holiday.  The new SFF machines with Xeon processors & integrated graphics cards support intel quicksync, negating the need to have a separate dedicated Emby Server.

 

As a result, I'm going to test virtualizing the Emby Server.  Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016 will be the host with either CentOS or Ubuntu Server used as the Emby Server OS.  We currently run it on a dedicated Ubuntu Server machine.

 

Has anyone else virtualized the Emby Server?  How does it work?  Anything I need to know?

 

New Emby test server, Dell PowerEdge T30, Intel Xeon E3-1225 v5 (costed a whopping $299, doorbuster)

 

Best-

 

Darren

Edited December 17, 2017 by darrenkdean

[ax3l 7]

I have a T20 running Emby in a Ubuntu VM.

 

AFAIK no issues to be aware of except I am unsure about quicksync in a VM

[dcrdev 251]

Hardware acceleration pass through should be available on any Intel chip that supports GVT-d, that Skylake chip should do.

 

Bare in mind that for QuickSync, you'll need a kernel compiled with the Intel Media SDK extensions  - CentOS doesn't provide this in their repos; you'll have to do it yourself, not sure about Ubuntu. That being said I would recommend vaapi instead of QuickSync, it just works out of the box on pretty much any setup.

[mastrmind11 717]

+1 for vaapi.  There aren't any linux kernels that support qsv besides RHEL and I think maybe Ubuntu 14.04 had it.

[Guest plexman]

Try Proxmox and run Emby in a Ubuntu container, you just have to pass the renderD128 device to the container. Easier and with containers you get better performance than VM's.

[swyn 0]

Hyper-V often does not play nice with GPU passthrough (and impossible if you only have one GPU), so you will most likely lose the ability to use hardware transcoding.  KVM based hypervisors (I've had luck with Proxmox and Unraid) do not have a problem with this though.  If hardware acceleration is important, you may want to consider using something other than Hyper-V.  If you don't care too much about the GPU passthrough, Hyper-V will work fine.

Edited December 19, 2017 by swyn

[darrenkdean 29]

I have a T20 running Emby in a Ubuntu VM.

 

AFAIK no issues to be aware of except I am unsure about quicksync in a VM

 

Are you using hardware acceleration, VAAPI on your Emby Server?  Have you tested & confirmed hardware acceleration is working as expected?  Lastly, what host OS are you using?

 

Ultimately, I need the T30 to accomplish two things for me.

• Hyper-V Host, Windows Server 2016
  • Virtual: Emby Server, VAAPI accelerated via onboard Intel GPU
  • Virtual: File Server, Windows Server 2016 (storage spaces)

Attempting to shorten the learning curve/build out & understand any obstacles we might face passing the hardware acceleration through to the VM.  As always, greatly appreciated.

 

Best-

 

Darren