Virtualization on home server

[tigerface]

Hi there, first-timer here hoping for some help!

I'm looking for some sort of solution to the idea that we would have one very powerful server central to our home network, which would use something like Sun's VDI to virtualize a desktop for everyone that logged onto another computer on the network. I have looked around the internet but everything seems to be business-led and nothing has the capacity to run games or larger programs, etc. Is this a limitation of the network cables? If so would it be possible to network with something like HDMI/Displayport cables, or even to set the display output of each virtual machine to a definite HDMI/DP/... port?

Lots of questions there, I hope you can understand what I'm after and answer a few of them!

[pinocchio]

The problem here isn't so much the processor virtualisation as the GPU virtualisation.

Using a central server for thin computing is pretty easy (especially if it's a multi core system) however if you want to run any type of games you then have to virtualise the GPU and somehow time split the workload.

If you're just running 2D desktop apps you can run that no problem using the CPU to emulate the 2D environment, however I'm not aware of any virtualisation software that will emulate one of the current top end GPU's.

[loki]

I believe VMWare Workstation supports GPU passthrough however how effective it is I have no idea.

How it would schedule the load would be beyond me although i assume it would work in a similar manner to the CPU. In which case you wouldn't so much get half the power of the GPU but you would get a delay in GPU access resulting in a lag effect on games.

[Splash]

VMWare Workstation is a client-side program - you can't run it server side for thin computing in the way that tigerface seems to be suggesting.

I'm not aware of anything that would allow for a terminal session that would allow for gaming tbh, though for general desktop usage then LTSP could well fill the requirements.

[Moby-Dick]

the newer versions of the vmware VDI solutions use a different protocol to RDP called PCoIP ( pc over IP ) which is better for video and I've seen HD video streams over it , however when it comes to gaming, I have no idea how it would perfom