proposal: run a windows KVM with GPU passthrough on a GCP linux instance.

[hradec]

I was able to install Proxmox hypervisor on GCP, using GCPs nested virtualization kvm, and was able to run Windows 7 inside a proxmox VM running on a GCP instance.

It works perfectly! I used Windows 7 just because it was a smaller VM to upload, and easier for me to try.

The beauty of having Proxmox running on GCP is that you can run Proxmox locally on a home computer, do all the installation, create a proxmox backup, upload to a GCP bucket, and restore at your GCP proxmox instance!

I do have gpu passthrough working on proxmox at home, so there's nothing preventing one from doing the same at GCP. In theory, it should just work and you would have a Windows VM with GPU at GCP, runnin on a linux instance, at the price of an linux instance! (no extra cost for windows server license!)

and running it preemptive, it's as cheap as you can get!!

unfortunately I have no time to implement it myself on your gcloudrig project... but if you want the bits and bobs on how to setup the proxmox image, or maybe I can even give you my already done proxmox image if you want... ready to go! ;)

let me known...

-H

[deekue]

sounds interesting, if you can share the setup process here I'd love to see it.

[RafaTGG]

Hi!
could you give me that image?

[putty182]

Thanks for the info @hradec!

I'm actually currently running gcloudrig using a Windows 10 Pro image that I transferred over from Azure (and then purchased an appropriate licence); originally this was because I thought a certain R* game was refusing to run on Server editions of windows, but it seems like it's acutally detecting part of GCP's virtualisation (or failing poorly designed anti-cheat/anti-piracy checks). Game works fine on Azure... and Stadia... sigh.

In it's current state, gcloudrig's setup scripts will also happily use a custom windows image as it's base just by tweaking the following in globals.sh#L12:

# base image?
IMAGEBASEFAMILY="windows-2019"
IMAGEBASEPROJECT="windows-cloud"

We could add a prompt that lets you provide a custom GCP-ready image (already uploaded to a storage bucket), and then describe it as a "linux" or "windows" based VM. Blatant assumption would be if you pick "Linux" that we enable all the relevant nested KVM flags, instead of the windows-specific ones (e.g. --guest-os-features="WINDOWS")

The downside is that linux running a virtualised windows instance is unlikley to pick up on GCP-native features, specifically our project's startup scripts (powershell), password resets, etc. (unless proxmox handles this?)

[putty182]

From some quick digging, it looks like GCP did natively support Windows 7 x64 with GPU support and BYO licencing:

• GCP - Windows client support
• GCP - Importing virtual disks

[SwiftWinds]

By the way, I followed this guide and was able to create a Windows 10 VM on GCP without any sole-tenant node (there was one hiccup; I had to enable the cloud build API manually or it would error out). I can share the image if you don't want to upload your own ~20 GB .vmdk file. Perhaps this can even be extended to Windows Server 2019 (or LTSC since that one is even more lightweight). In any case, this method would allow one to forgo Windows Server licensing fees if one has one's own Windows 10 license.

[kakawait]

@SwiftWinds I'm interested by the win 10 image, any way to share it?

[SwiftWinds]

@SwiftWinds I'm interested by the win 10 image, any way to share it?

Sorry for the huge delay! Sure, I can share it. Let me look into how to do it, and I'll get back to you :)