 We've done a lot of content using LimeTek's Unraid operating system over the last little while. Some of it was focused on the safe, redundant storage features of it, like this one about repurposing older computer hardware to build a more robust NAS, while some of it was more focused on the virtualization features of Unraid that allow multiple virtual computers, we've demoed as many as seven discrete gaming rigs, at a time to live on top of that safe, redundant storage. But while we've discussed how cool that is, and demonstrated really strong performance with these VMs or virtual machines, we haven't quantified apples to apples, how they compare with running the operating system software directly on the hardware or the bare metal. So let's do that today then, shall we? The GTX 980 Ti VR Edition from EVGA provides an industry-leading graphics experience as well as a 5.25-inch bay with easy access inputs for your VR device. Learn more at the link in the video description. So I think we should open with a primer on what this word, virtualization, really means. Those of you who are intimately familiar with it can skip ahead, because Taron gave me a hard time after we filmed the quadruple your networking speed video about not really explaining what I was talking about, and I was kind of like, well, it's kind of like SLI for networking, and he's like, well, why didn't you just say that in the video? So let's start with an analogy. This is a gigabit network interface card or NIC. It's physical because I can hold it in my hand, and it's a network interface card because it connects whatever it's plugged into into a network and allows those two things to communicate or interface with each other at a speed of 1 gigabit or about 110 megabytes per second. Pretty straightforward. A virtual NIC is inherently more abstract, while it does still require some hardware. I mean, without a physical cable plugged into something, it can't connect to a device outside of the machine on which it resides, and in most cases, it presents itself to the operating system as though it is a piece of hardware. It's actually just some clever software pretending to be hardware, which gives it some cool functionality, not the least of which is that it is able to share its resources. So back to our physical NIC again. It's got that gigabit connection speed I talked about before. Well, by creating two virtual NICs, we can actually share that speed between virtual devices, like I did in the gaming NAS video, where we had both a file server and a gaming machine using the same network connection. So this is a very flexible solution because it means that either of these devices can use anywhere from 0 all the way to 100% of the available resources, sharing them dynamically. And thanks to some really cool tech from Intel and AMD, this can even be done on things like CPUs, meaning that you can create entire virtual computers full of virtual devices that share physical resources with each other for better overall efficiency. Cool, Linus, but what was up with that big asterisk a minute ago? Well, the KVM kernel-based virtual machine project at Red Hat, which is what Unraid is using to power its virtualization, is some pretty freaking impressive software. But virtual devices do not have 100% of the performance of the physical devices because while the days of emulation, that's a very slow way of doing this virtual device stuff, are basically over, there is still some overhead involved, which, thank you for your patience by the way, brings us finally to the topic for today. How much of our raw or bare metal performance are we giving up when we do a project like Gaming NAS or 7 Gamers 1 CPU? So for this test, I actually ended up using my personal rig because I had to work on it at home and I left my test bench at the office. But the good news is that with its 5960X, RAMPAGE 5 Extreme X99 motherboard, GTX 980 Ti and 64 gigs of Dominator memory, my rig is pretty much the same as my usual test bench. So I started then by establishing my baseline performance. I ran my test suite with all eight cores active, then I used the BIOS to turn off one of the physical cores on the CPU, making it effectively a seven core. This was done because for the best performance on Unraid anyway, in games, it's best to leave a core aside for Unraid to use and give everything else to your virtual machine. And while gaming actually didn't end up being affected negatively at all, I mean, these results are within my margin of error for these tests, this was expected since games are not very CPU bound these days and the video card itself is actually passed through as a physical device to the virtual machine. Cinebench also showed the same results. Our virtual seven core and our bare metal seven core performed the same, leaving the only test that showed a dramatic difference being the synthetic memory and cache test in AIDA64. So depending on the workload, it is possible that these extra nanoseconds of additional latency could be a problem. But from looking at performance in consumer oriented workloads, it seems like we are pretty darn close to a VM being a solid alternative to running straight on the hardware. Now then, it's just got to get a little bit easier for everyday people to do because while some of the benefits, virtualizing servers to consolidate functionality, are more applicable to the data center, there is some really cool stuff that I can envision for a consumer facing product like Unraid as well. With the gaming NAS we did a little while back being just the tip of the iceberg. TunnelBear is the easy to use VPN app for mobile and desktop. It lets you tunnel, so to speak, into up to 20 different countries, allowing you to browse the internet and use online services as though you are in a different country. So, you know, let's say for example, you want to access a website that is blocked in your country or you want to access a service that is just plain not available in your country due to licensing or whatever else. Ha! Screw that because they've got apps for iOS, Android, PC and Mac and they also have a Chrome extension. They're super easy to use, just pick a country, press the friendly looking button and boom! Your connection gets encrypted, which by the way, TunnelBear doesn't actually log any of your activity, which is very cool, and your public IP address gets switched. So you show up as though you're in a different country. And the best part of TunnelBear is that your first 500 megabytes is absolutely free. Woo! And after that, the unlimited plans are very reasonably priced. So check it out at the link in the video description. And by the way, you can save 10% by using that link. That's tunnelbear.com slash LTT. So thanks for watching guys. If you disliked this video, well, you know where that button is. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon, instructions up there, by buying a cool shirt like this one, or by joining our community forum. You can answer people's questions, you can get your questions about tech answered or you can just hang out and chat. Now that you're done doing probably all of that stuff, or at least some of it, you're probably wondering what to watch next. So click that little button in the top right corner to check out this video where I am doing something really cool, or Luke is, I'm not sure. I don't know which video we're teasing.