Unraid does an excellent job at this. I helped a friend setup a rack mounted server, it runs home assistant, some other containers, and a VM for him to work in, or play games. AMD GPU being passed through.
Do you really need multiple VMs, can't you run all at one? The easiest would be to install some windows/Linux on a single machine. Then stream your games with Sunshine/Moonshine and connect over RDP/VPN?
As others have expressed- were already there. Understand though that the reason this hasn't caught on mainstream is the entire purpose of what you are asking is simple: it runs counter to the standards of commercial capitalism. We are talking about efficiency, self hosting, doing more with less, and cutting strings.
That said- understand that what you are undertaking is not dissimilar from building infrastructure in a company. You are building and expanding to meet your needs. Your needs are unique so there isn't a 'turn key' solution that will fit perfectly... so you need to try things and see what works.
As far as things you are talking about specifically: you are going to ultimately be dipping your toes into the virtualization world... so xcp-ng and proxmox are good choices. If you can get your hands on older copies and uh... source a key or two: esxi is also very beginner friendly but won't be able to upgrade thanks to their new pricing model. You seem like you are aware of the YouTube sphere so let me recommend 2GuysTech and the series on different hypervisors.
Once you decide on a hypervisor it's as 'simple' as building a PC to meet your needs. If you have one already I'd start there to get a feel for how much you can pull out of it to determine how much you may need. You can probably split up a single GPU or just pass it through (cost vs performance.). LLMs are power / resource hungry so that may require it's own GPU.
If power is cheap by you you can look into older server hardware but honestly this can be a messy space to dabble in (noise, heat, power costs.)
From there play with services that fit your needs.
It's very doable and there are some easier paths to take... certainly- but again the thing about homelabs is it's very custom. This is why the community (in general) is willing to help. We all have had to forge the same path.
100% ^^^ This.
You could do everything with openstack, and it would be a great learning experience, but expect to dedicate about 30% of your life to running and managing openstack. When it just works, it's great... when it doesn't... ohh boy, its like a CRPG which will unlock your hardware after you finish the adventure.
So my desktop is virtio based and uses pcie passthough to passthough the USB controller and GPU. It works fine as long as it has enough cores. There is some setup involved but most hardware works.
On my laptop I use VMs for a few things and that works well as long as you setup the proper guest addons. I use KVM with gnome boxes and virtual manager.
Xen has support for AMD cards intended for this that are fairly inexpensive on eBay. The S7150x2 should be what you're looking for.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| PCIe | Peripheral Component Interconnect Express |
| PSU | Power Supply Unit |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.
[Thread #807 for this sub, first seen 15th Jun 2024, 14:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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