Virtualized HTPC - HyperV

[iainsheppard 5]

I am in the process of building a new microserver as the old one is running low on space and memory (N54L / 8tb no RAID / 8Gb)

I have purchased a G8 / 16Gb RAM / XEON E3-1265L and setup HyperV.  I have the following VM's setup so far and would like to know if anyone would know how to virtualize a HTPC.  I saw it was possible with XEN before but didnt know if it could be done under HyperV.  I plan to use a WIFI style remote

 

1 x ZFS Server

1 x AD / DNS Server

1 x App Server (SickBeard / Media Browser)

1 x Win 7 (TV)

 

memory and cpu wise there is little usage on this and would love to hear some other peoples thoughts on getting this to work.

 

thanks

iain

[Swynol 375]

never tried hyperV but aslong as you can passthrough the graphics card from HyperV to a VM then in theory its possible

 

i have created a thread about ESXi which i tried to virtualise by having 1 VM as a server and another as a HTPC

[JeremyFr79 228]

I ran a virtualized HTPC in HyperV to act as a host for an extender at one point, it worked flawlessly, I had to because of codec requirements at the time for my different HTPC setups.

[saitoh183 137]

I have a test HTPC in HyperV running on 2012 R2. It works but i dont find it works well. HyperV needs a setting enabled to allow 3D graphics which will only make the machine available using RDP. You will not be able to connect to it via the Console in the HyperV manager. Since its my test machine and i didnt get it really the full resources it needs to no be slow, you should just test it out.

[ebr 14930]

Just out of curiosity - why a VM?  What is the advantage?

[saitoh183 137]

Just out of curiosity - why a VM?  What is the advantage?

Personally i dont think there is any beside not having to use another physical box plugged to the same tv. If his media server is connected to the TV and he is running a server OS then he would need a VM to run MBC with WMC if he doesnt want to plug another physical box

[Guest virtualtinker]

I read on the Unraid forums of one guy who ran an ESXi server with a lot of video cards installed.  He this direct passthrough'd the video to each of his VMs and ran cables in his walls to connect those video cards to different rooms in the house.  He essentially turned his server into multiple HTPC clients for every room without having to keep physical hardware in those rooms.

[iainsheppard 5]

Thanks for all the replies,  I would like to just have one physical box with multiple GFX cards. only issue with the G8 is it only supports the expansion for one.  I went HyperV as it was easier to pass my HDD's through to the ZFS box.

[Swynol 375]

Just out of curiosity - why a VM?  What is the advantage?

there's a few advantages.

 

My Server is also my main HTPC in the living room. If i was going to VM it, at least i could work on the server while the family are watching the HTPC. My other plan was also to have 2 or 3 GFX cards and basically have each as a HTPC for a few rooms in the house. Saves having one in each room and will save costs of building so many machines. 

 

Also then using snapshot if i had an issue with a machine its quick and easy to blast down a new snapshot to rebuild it.

[Guest virtualtinker]

Not only that, but when your hardware ages and needs to be replaced, instead of having to rebuild everything from scratch, you can migrate the virtual machines over to the new hardware and only take the small downtime in powering down the VM and piggybacking over to the new machine.

[dannieboiz 13]

there's a few advantages.

 

My Server is also my main HTPC in the living room. If i was going to VM it, at least i could work on the server while the family are watching the HTPC. My other plan was also to have 2 or 3 GFX cards and basically have each as a HTPC for a few rooms in the house. Saves having one in each room and will save costs of building so many machines. 

 

Also then using snapshot if i had an issue with a machine its quick and easy to blast down a new snapshot to rebuild it.

was just searching around and find this very interesting. How do you achieve this if your rooms were 50-100 ft away from the physical server? 

[Swynol 375]

there's a few ways to achieve it.

 

i recently built the house myself, my house has a Node 0 or server room and from there all the main rooms have HDMI runs to them. Also each room has a minimum of 4 CAT6 network points where the TVs are so if i need to I can run video/audio over CAT6 using baluns.

[DeeMac 17]

Just out of curiosity - why a VM?  What is the advantage?

My htpc is a win7 box, acting as a HOST running virtualization software. I have the ability to run 2, 3...6 and more other virtual machines on the same hardware. Its not really about virtualizing media browser, the bigger picture is about virtualizing all the many different services and servers, minimizing the amount of hardware purchased and effectively using the unused processing power of 1 box. Imagine how many PCs we'd all have if we had to run 1 piece of software per machine. This also reduces power consumption, lowering electric bi!L's.

 

Per post #7 of this thread http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/8549-could-not-access-media-will-attempt-to-stream-use-unc-paths-or-path-substitution-on-server-and-ensure-this-machine-can-access-them/, if the android client and the iOS client could connect via smb... these clients wouldnt force the server to transcoded. This transcoding is what kills the virtualization we want. Media browser may need more scalability in mind that might actually fix virtualization woes.

[DeeMac 17]

Mods, a few posts recently have been centered around virtualization... Should we consider a subsection?

 

To be honest, there a lot to virtualization like which hypervisor so unsure if a generic 'virtualization' section will suffice vs having it broken down further but risk getting too granular - Thanks!