Any advantage to enabling VT-d for running Excel or CAD on a virtual machine?

wolfv · 12-03-2021, 10:23 PM

I want to run Excel and CAD on Windows 10 hosted on a Linux KVM virtual machine.
The hardware will be a stand-alone PC with Intel VT-x, VT-d technology and one SSD.
Is there any advantage to enabling VT-d in this scenario?
I don't know a great deal about Virtulization and was hoping someone on here could offer some advice.

jefro · 12-04-2021, 03:42 PM

At one time vm's were generally fully software copies of real hardware. Over the years people figured out a way to use the hosts real hardware. The closer you get to real hardware the faster it will go.

If I wanted to run a VM for intense work I might look at the server or workstation to see how well it integrates with a VM. Some systems are well supported for this task.

https://www.tenforums.com/virtualiza...able-well.html

wolfv · 12-04-2021, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro

look at the server or workstation to see how well it integrates with a VM.

Thanks for the information.

I am hosting KVM on a Fedora 35 workstation.
But I don't know what needs to be integrated to improve performance of Excel macros and CAD graphics.

jefro · 12-04-2021, 05:41 PM

The answer may lie in how your pci devices can affect the use.
I'd think that attaching video to the cad might help especially if the software is able to use the video card directly. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_pas...bvirt_qemu_kvm

The excel will only benefit from typical processing and memory and maybe data speed techniques.

wolfv · 12-04-2021, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro

The answer may lie in how your pci devices can affect the use.
I'd think that attaching video to the cad might help especially if the software is able to use the video card directly. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_pas...bvirt_qemu_kvm

Thanks for the link. The page says, "At least two GPUs".
My PC only has one GPU: Intel HD Graphics 5000 integrated in the Intel Core i5-4250U CPU.
I don't think there is anything in it's PCI slot.

So I am leaning towards not enabling VT-d.

jefro · 12-06-2021, 02:30 PM

I'd think having it enabled is better.

wolfv · 12-08-2021, 10:54 PM

I enabling VT-d and installed Windows 10 guest. VT-d did not cause any problems.

Thanks.