Running MP Server in a Virtual Machine (1 Viewer)

[MooseBoys]

Is it possible to run MP or MP2 server in a Hyper-V VM? If so, are there any special considerations or requirements I should be aware of? I'll be using it in conjunction with a Ceton InviniTV Eth6.

Additionally, if people do have experience running with a VM, and if I want to also run Plex server on the same physical machine, do you recommend running them in the same VM? I was considering running one for each so I could set the MP VM to a higher priority.

 

[breese]

I have done it... Never was able to get the TV Tuner to work under a virtual.
That was almost 2 years ago now.
Server 2012 with Hyper-V

 

[mm1352000]

Is it possible to run MP or MP2 server in a Hyper-V VM?

Because your tuner is a network connected tuner, you may have a better chance of success than somebody using a PCI, PCIe or USB tuner. However I still wouldn't recommend it. The hardware abstraction increases the chance of problems, particularly with increased or variable network and disk access latency.

If so, are there any special considerations or requirements I should be aware of?

As above increased and/or variable network and disk access latency. This may (or may not - you won't know unless you try) cause problems (eg. glitches, pixelation) with time-shifting and/or recording.

 

[gpnash]

Yes, the ceton eth6 makes running under a hyper-v vm possible. USB ceton didn't work at all (might have had a better chance trying it with 1.15.0)
As mm1352000 says though, network latency, disk access latency and the hyper-v timeslicing get in the way big time.
The machine I run is an i7 with 24G of memory and I could barely run MP1.15.0 or MP2. I am running hyper-v under windows 10 pro.
I'm going to try it again later next month using nanoserver and containers. my goal is to try mp1 server as a container and connect my workstations to it.
It's purely a *gosh* can-I-do-this project, I don't expect it to be a viable production or even test environment.
I set up my virtual machine with 4 virtual processors starting with 8G of memory but allocating it dynamic in the 4G to 12G range.
I've got sql server 2016 running there as well and the machine hovers at 7 to 9G under load.
The network hardware assists are turned on but I still have some issues with the client talking reliably to the server; which is why I wouldn't recommend this.
I don't think the issue is within MediaPortal. I think a displaycard upgrade and using remotefx would help. my display card doesn't quite support that.
but serious work would need to be done in checking the different network card options if anyone is going to try this for real.

 

[Cordraconis]

Haven't tried it yet. (see my specs) But I guess the main issue will be parsing the TV card into a VM.
I was thinking of running server 2016 with GUI and TV card on the metal, and then connecting to a client inside a VM.

It is a shame, since win 2016 Core would be way better, but I fear MP2 server won't run without a GUI.

With a USB stick or similar I suspect you'll have more success, as you can usually parse this into a VM without needing to run it inside the host.

I have way more other issues now to play around with this, but these were my toughts and considerations. And the setup I have now (VM workstation inside win7) "just works" for now.

 

[gpnash]

When I tried this running win 2012 dc w/gui on my HS21xm blade dual E53450 3G w/64G memory and 1T ssd I found there wasn't anything to be gained in running without the GUI interface. Aside from being available in a free version there wasn't enough performance or footprint difference between the two to warrant not having the GUI around. the added complexity of core just wasn't worth it.
As of 2012 there is no way to pass thru cards to the virtual machine and I'm fairly certain the ability is not in win server 2016 either. I was using a ceton eth 6 which gave me 6 network tuners outside of the server. I guess I don't understand what you're really trying to accomplish here.
I'm currently running MP1.16 using the ceton eth 6 for tuners on the homet machine listed in my profile under windows 10 without any issues.
I have MP1.16 client running on my homew machine connecting back to homet to watch tv in the kitchen.
The biggest problem with using a virtual machine is actually network latency but I was using Hyper-V in all my testing. We tested hyper-v vs. VM-Esx where I work and converted everything to Hyper-v because of overall performance, complexity and support issues. Hyper-V won hands down in all categories. At home I couldn't find a version of vm-esx that would work on my hardware.

 

[AberDino]

I virtualised my MP TV Server a number of years back on a Dell PE T320 running VMware ESXi (I use this server for a number of other VMs). It does have the 'higher end' H710p RAID controller card and I've dedicated a RAID 1 array to the MP TV Server. I use TBS USB tuners (1x dual DVB-T2 and 2x DVB-S2), connected to a dedicated USB PCIe card, which is passed though directly to the VM (VMDirectPath). This is working fine for me without any (latency) issues. However, I did have latency issues when I enabled the snapshot feature, so I don't use that anymore.

 

[Cordraconis]

@gpnash: Core would be for the smaller attack surface (and maybe save some GB on the SSD) but indeed probably it isn't worth it.
GPU pass-trough was possible I thought in 2016 (haven't checked it again) but other things will probably have to use USB or network, as seems to be evidenced by the other experiences in this thread.
I choose the virtualisation setup so I could add machines/devices as needed (like cacheguard appliance) and vith VM's and RDP/VNC it would be cheaper than replacing perfectly fine 7-8 year old laptops in the family. Not to mention vastly superior performance/hardware utilisation than with brand new separate laptops.

Cool you do this for a job! I realized already doing this stuff requires several hours a day every day to do it smoothly. Doing this in my free time is actually more than I can chew...

Interesting about the latency: I suspect I have this issue with my current setup, aldough inside a VM MP2.1 clients run a lot more smooth than on the native host. (My guess is now that the host mp2.1 client uses one of the wrong network interfaces. It works, but with severe sync and blockyness issues.)

 

[allanp81]

I've tried it with a win7 VM on Unraid and always have latency issues when tuning channels (far worse on HD channels for some reason).

 

[Nervesagent]

I have my tv server running on Virtualbox Windows 10 for a while now, mainly to make it easier to transfer to different hardware when it may crash,
Running on Amd FX6300 with 8gb and networktuners only.