Proxmox

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Proxmox VE is a complete, open-source server management platform for enterprise virtualization. It tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor and Linux Containers (LXC), software-defined storage and networking functionality, on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can manage VMs and containers, high availability for clusters, or the integrated disaster recovery tools with ease.

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Classroom with thinclients and proxmox-backed VMs - What are my options? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by poinck@lemmy.world to c/proxmox@lemmy.world

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I have a room with 30 thinclients currently running Windows with the possibility to open RDP sessions.

The current setup using VMWare is slow even for 2D content. That is why I want to replace it with Proxmox. What can I expect? I suspect the current setup is using SAN, I want to go ZFS on local drives.

I experimented in a homelab on KVM to see how fast the VMs can become. With 8 cores Google Earth becomes somewhat usable over RDP. But imagine 30 students using it on the same VM. The VM is Debian 13 btw.

I also experiemented with spice and 3D acceleration, but it works only locally and does not support multiple logins. What other options do I have. Even when I setup the VM to use virgl it uses software rendering over RDP. I thought of replacing the Windows on the thinclients with Linux, but then I would need individual VMs for every student and a secure spice session. Is that even possible? I would need a potent GPU in the server, maybe more than one. Is a 64 core CPU and 512 GB RAM enough for 30 students?

I've read that proxmox uses temporary .vv files for noVNC in the browser. I hope this can be setup permanently to be accessible over the network.

Any advice or new ideas are welcome!

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[–] NameTaken@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Sounds like you want a video card that supports SR-IOV. Any gpu that supports this is going to be pretty pricey. I think the intel flex 140 or 170 are specifically designed for a scenario you describe but are $2 - $7k and are one of the few that don't require any licensing fees. Which can also be significant. There are more powerful options but the price goes up from there.

For that price though you may be better off just buying 30 used mini pcs? Not sure what the budget or design constrains are though.

Hope that helps or at least gets you in the right direction.

[–] KaninchenSpeed@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The intel arc pro b50 can do sr-iov according to wendell and its sub 500$

[–] NameTaken@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That is awesome! Thanks for posting. I wonder what the B60 will be able to do! According to the video though this is only good for about 8 VMs at a time and gets a little sketchy/unstable if multiple VMs are trying to max it out. It seems this is early days and the drivers aren't finalized but the future looks bright. This could be a nice addition to a home lab.

[–] KaninchenSpeed@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 days ago

I don't think sr-iov even officially in the drivers yet, I would give it a few months to mature. The performance is probably enough for 8 VMs with google earth tho, but you would probably need multiple for 30 people.

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