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Patrick,

1) Xen's vocabulary

dom0 = the main (first) hypervisor, hosting all virtual machines -- like your Mac OS X
domU = any virtual machine.

This is not the real meaning but here I try to stay "understandable". But for better understanding please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen

My understanding is that your dom0 has to be replaced by Linux so you can run Xen. But for this part I am not a Mac OS X expert.

2) More info - details listed beow are only available for a Xen dom0 running on Linux.

[Extracted]:....I've ended my testing with ESXi, because I was not able to passthrough sound device, and USB....
[Comment]: With Xen you can :)

[Extracted]: ...with stock ATI Radeon..;
[Comment]...Xen offers VGA PassThrough feature for ATI Radeon.

Here is a link to a Youtube video to run Crysis 3 on a domU Windows 7 64 Bits with HD 7970

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTnchEG4YtI&feature=player_embedded

As you can see

- I can use PCI Passthrough to add a XBOX 360 Paddle while playing Crysis 3 (see at 09:12 in the Video)

- I have sound too :)

But it works on Linux domU too. Here is another Youtube video link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KzqOIMaBgX0

But you need to apply a few patches to able this feature with Xen 4.2 and over. Not very complicated to do.
Here are my instructions to do it but I know that there are currently better way to test it

http://www.davidgis.fr/blog/index.php?2013/03/13/935-xen-43-vga-passthrough-ati-card-hd-7970-changeset-26706

[Extracted]...memory allocation
[Comment]...Xen - limited to 3GB for RAM. A few developers are working on overpassing this limitation.

[Extracted]...no snaphost possible
[Comment]...If you used Xen with LVM is then snahshotting is easier to manage ;)

[Extracted] no sleep
[Comment] works on Xen for both Linux and Windows. The main issue is that you can reboot a domU without restarting the dom0.

[Extracted] Is it possible to create a virtualized desktop with VGA and PCI passthrough for 2 or 3 VM's running simultaneously (ie. each one with its own video card)?
[Comment] Yes it is doable. Never tested but from experience share with other Xen users I know that it should be run fine.

Hope it helps.

Kind regards.

David.

De : Patrick Proniewski <patpro@xxxxxxxxxx>
À : xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Envoyé le : Lundi 1 avril 2013 23h28
Objet : [Xen-users] PCI/VGA passthrough: differences between Xen and ESXi?

Hello,

That's my first post here. I'm absolutely newborn to Xen, never installed or used it. But I'm mastering many aspects of ESXi (vmare) and I've made some tests with PCI passthrough on this platform.

My main goal is to create a powerful desktop workstation able to run simultaneously FreeBSD, some flavor of Linux (work/games), some flavor of Windows (games), Mac OS X (main OS). Everything is detailed here: <http://www.patpro.net/blog/index.php/2012/11/11/2200-escaping-the-apple-ecosystem-part-0/>.

In order to achieve this goal, I must rely on PCI passthrough. At least VGA to get proper GPU power (3D gaming like Left 4 Dead 2, photoshop processing - I'm also a photograph), and sound. I was able to achieve very good performance running Windows on top of ESXi on my Mac Pro, with stock ATI Radeon passed-through, even better than native Mac OS X performances :).
I've ended my testing with ESXi, because I was not able to passthrough sound device, and USB.

But PCI Passthrough on ESXi comes with major limitations:
- memory allocation is fully reserved (ie. can't start this VM if all its allocated memory is not available)
- no snapshot possible
- no sleep
- one PCI device can only be passed-through to one VM
- and some others...

I've read the documentation for Xen about VGA and PCI passthrough, but I'm totally new to a great part of Xen's vocabulary, and I'm not sure to understand everything. It looks like Xen shares some limitations with ESXi.

Xen's Wiki reads "Xen 4.0.0 supports VGA passthrough of the primary graphics adapter (...) only". What about 4.2? Is it possible to create a virtualized desktop with VGA and PCI passthrough for 2 or 3 VM's running simultaneously (ie. each one with its own video card)?

regards,
Patrick

(i've subscribed to digest, Cc me, please)
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Re: [Xen-users] PCI/VGA passthrough: differences between Xen and ESXi?