MediaServer 8.3 - Bifurcation Edition

Some hardware updates, some minor mods and lots of cabling later, I've managed to get my unRAID server hosting eleven (13?) usable PCIe/PCI expansion cards which I'm using to manage storage devices and populate VMs with passthrough GPU, USB and Utility adapters.

All with 2x slots to spare on my 5x slot mainboard.

Here's how...

unRAID discrete USB Passthrough to multiple VMs

For a while, I've been working towards consolidation of machines into VMs on my unRAID system.  unRAID is great for this as it allows for hardware passthrough of devices such as GPUs, USB adapters and other items. Passthrough of discrete USB controllers is especially important. unRAID does allow direct device passthrough, but I've found this unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. Mainly, it's not a great solution for high-bandwidth devices such as audio cards. Also, it's not really plug'n'play, with hot swapping being somewhat patchy.

Passthrough of the full controller solves these problems, One of the challenges of this approach is however, physical capacity for discrete devices. With each VM requiring a PCIe GPU and a USB adapter, it's possible to run out of slots fairly quickly. Yes, it's possible to use on-board controllers, but that's not always a full solution and PCIe cards are often required in addition.

Another approach is to use multi-controller PCIe USB adapters. These are cards the occupy a single slot, provide multiple ports and. crucially, have multiple on-board USB controllers that would, in theory, permit each controller to be passed through to a separate VM.

One such card is the Sonnet Allegro USB3-PRO-4PM-E, sadly now discontinued. There are alternatives, but as users in this thread are finding out, broad compatibility is patchy.

As an alternative, I've been using a PCIe expansion kit to pass through discrete controllers to VMs. These devices were all the rage during the mining boom as they allowed users attach multiple GPUs to a single PCIe slot in order to leverage compute power. They work by essentially switching multiple PCIe ports through a single 1x motherboard port. Although the device sports four 16x mechanical slots, each is in itself only a 1x slot - but that's all that's needed for a USB controller.

Splashtop Latency Demo

A user over at unRaid Forums asked me about latency when using SpalshTop Personal to access an OSX VM running on unRaid. I promised a quick video to show it in action. Sorry about the delay!

Enabling HEVC on Rx570 in MacOS VM

In following the MacOS Bare Metal thread on unRaid forums, it was bugging me that I wasn't getting full performance from my VM GPU. I have a Sapphire RX570 4GB passed through to a Mojave VM, and while it was showing Metal and H.264 encoding support, HVEC remained resolutely elusive.

It should be simple, enable Lilu and WhateverGreen kexts and go. It turned out to be anything but.

Solved - Av Access USB prevents system boot

In a previous post, I'd detailed my setup of using a  4KEX100-KVM  to extend an unRaid VM to a very remote screen over ethernet.

This has worked out great, with one exception. With the Av Access transmitter USB plugged in to my server, the system would not post. It was necessary for me to unplug the USB, wait for post and unRaid to start booting, then plug the USB back in.

This was a chore, especially as my server sits in my attic and can be a pain to access.

I was living with the issue as thankfully I don't need to reboot too often, but in researching something else recently, I came across a known issue with some older USB devices. It turns out that some USB devices feed +5V back to the host adapter. This can result in some motherboards failing to post - my symptoms exactly.

The extreme solution is to sever the +5V wire in the USB cable (!) but before going that far, I decided to try placing a USB hub inline between the USB host adapter and the transmitter unit. Hey Presto! I can now boot and reboot without issue.

All hail the interweb.

Video Surveillance on unRaid

Inspired by everyones favourite unRaid you tuber SpaceInvaderOne's then partially completed series on setting up CCTV in unRaid, I figured it was time to get started on a little bit of home security.

I'd previously worked on building an interface to my legacy Comfort alarm / home control system, and that's fine for basic alarm, but video was always the next step.

SpeaceInvaderOne conducted a basic analysis of cameras and software available, before publishing a walkthrough of how to set up his chosen Shinobi docker. This, along with some other research, started me on my journey. I went ahead and purchased two of the SV3C 1080p PoE cameras he mentioned. These would connected to the spare PoE ports on my Unifi Switch 8 (see my Unify blog post for more details).

I tried installing Shinobi, (before the walkthrough dropped), and failed miserably. In any case, I'd previously researched the area and at the time decided that Blue Iris looked like the best option for scalability and integration.