[mythtv-users] VMWare on the backend. Viable solution?

[Kenni Lund]

2010/1/12 Brandon Penglase <da5id2001 at spaceservices.net>:
> On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:10:37 -0500
> greg pryzby <greg at pryzby.org> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> Oh, and you don't need i7, an old machine works just fine for VMware.
>> You will like the new CPU performance for KVM though
>>
>
>
> While true for virtualization of OSs, this ISN'T true for
> PCI-Passthrough (which I believe became the topic).

Yes and no, you need to distinguish between paravirtualized
passthrough (which Xen has had for several years - I don't know about
Vmware) and hardware-supported passthrough with VT-d.

Paravirtualized passthrough doesn't require any special hardware, but
requires the guest to be aware of the passthrough mechanism, eg. a
capable Linux kernel in terms of Xen. With VT-d the guest is unaware
of the passthrough, and you can therefore also passthrough devices to
Windows guests.

> So it seems as long as you have a chipset that supports
> PCI-Passthrough, you should be good to do passing anymost anything on
> the PCI bus through.

Have a look at the link to the Xen wiki I send a few messages back, it
contains a list with more chipsets.

Best Regards
Kenni Lund