Hey Folks -
I've not posted since March, as my real life took over. I thought I would post what I had done, in case its useful to anyone trying to solve the RAM problem.
My ultimate solution: I built a VMWARE server to run multiple virtual XP x64 machines, each of which is running FX-Teleport. All of the virtual machines feed their samples back over a Gigbit LAN to my main DAW.
The specs: I built a free-standing (not rack) server in a quiet case:
Lian Li PC-V1200S-Plus-II (Silver) Aluminum Tower Case (with Cooling Kit) ($200)
Intel Quad-Core Xeon E5345 2.33GHz 8MB cache box $937.00
Intel S5000PSLSATA Server Board Dual Xeon 5000/5100 FB-DIMM $500.00
This board can hold up to 32 GB of ram... but at 2GB each, it tops out at 16GB. 4gb FBDIMMS are very expensive. There is room for an extra quad-core processor, too.
I put 8GB of ram (4x2) in.
3Ware RAID card.
VMware is a bit tricky to use, but any savy person here could do it, because my skills are limited. I ran it on a Linux platform, which required me to compile my own drivers for the 1 TB RAID0 array (2x500GB).
This may not be a useful way to go for most, and I have yet to work out the kinks, but I can report the following findings:
(1) FXTeleport works fine in XP64, and the VSL Daemon looks like it can handle all 4GB as a 32-bit application inside XP64. (I learned this while running XP64 natively, not in virtualizatio mode)
(2) As each virtual machine has its own IP address, you need a Teleport license for each machine.
(3) VMware can only assign 3GB of RAM to each virtual machine, so you can't max out the capabilities of XP64.
(4) Each virtual machine needs its own VSL key!!! They can't share a USB hub.
(5) It pops and clicks. This is most likely due to hard drive signal path issues - I would trouble shoot it, but I haven't been working on it lately.
(6) There are some other issues (assigning the USB keys to the virtual machines in the VMware interface can misfire sometimes, and you have to go in and re-assign it, which takes 5 seconds)
VMware (the 'single user' version) is free, or at least it was 6 months ago. The company has since IPO'd.
I haven't pushed it, but the processor hardly looks tasked at all. The RAID array is delivering 120MBps sustain, with faster bursts, so disk bandwidth shouldn't be a problem.
So, why bother posting? Because I think that, for someone who wanted to have all of their samples on one shared RAID array, and one single machine that hosts all of the (virtual) 64-bit machines, this thing could be a 'single tower' server that could hold the whole library. I've had to bow out of working out the kinks, because of other time constraints, but I thought I would post it FWIW. I strongly suspect that, if I had time to trouble shoot it, I could get past most of these issues.
Hope that's useful for someone.
Best regards,
Eric
P.S. I tried Parallels, and it was SOOO slow. The reason I used Ubuntu Linux was to have the thinnest (free) OS that could support the VMware server. You still need a license for XP 64bit...
I've not posted since March, as my real life took over. I thought I would post what I had done, in case its useful to anyone trying to solve the RAM problem.
My ultimate solution: I built a VMWARE server to run multiple virtual XP x64 machines, each of which is running FX-Teleport. All of the virtual machines feed their samples back over a Gigbit LAN to my main DAW.
The specs: I built a free-standing (not rack) server in a quiet case:
Lian Li PC-V1200S-Plus-II (Silver) Aluminum Tower Case (with Cooling Kit) ($200)
Intel Quad-Core Xeon E5345 2.33GHz 8MB cache box $937.00
Intel S5000PSLSATA Server Board Dual Xeon 5000/5100 FB-DIMM $500.00
This board can hold up to 32 GB of ram... but at 2GB each, it tops out at 16GB. 4gb FBDIMMS are very expensive. There is room for an extra quad-core processor, too.
I put 8GB of ram (4x2) in.
3Ware RAID card.
VMware is a bit tricky to use, but any savy person here could do it, because my skills are limited. I ran it on a Linux platform, which required me to compile my own drivers for the 1 TB RAID0 array (2x500GB).
This may not be a useful way to go for most, and I have yet to work out the kinks, but I can report the following findings:
(1) FXTeleport works fine in XP64, and the VSL Daemon looks like it can handle all 4GB as a 32-bit application inside XP64. (I learned this while running XP64 natively, not in virtualizatio mode)
(2) As each virtual machine has its own IP address, you need a Teleport license for each machine.
(3) VMware can only assign 3GB of RAM to each virtual machine, so you can't max out the capabilities of XP64.
(4) Each virtual machine needs its own VSL key!!! They can't share a USB hub.
(5) It pops and clicks. This is most likely due to hard drive signal path issues - I would trouble shoot it, but I haven't been working on it lately.
(6) There are some other issues (assigning the USB keys to the virtual machines in the VMware interface can misfire sometimes, and you have to go in and re-assign it, which takes 5 seconds)
VMware (the 'single user' version) is free, or at least it was 6 months ago. The company has since IPO'd.
I haven't pushed it, but the processor hardly looks tasked at all. The RAID array is delivering 120MBps sustain, with faster bursts, so disk bandwidth shouldn't be a problem.
So, why bother posting? Because I think that, for someone who wanted to have all of their samples on one shared RAID array, and one single machine that hosts all of the (virtual) 64-bit machines, this thing could be a 'single tower' server that could hold the whole library. I've had to bow out of working out the kinks, because of other time constraints, but I thought I would post it FWIW. I strongly suspect that, if I had time to trouble shoot it, I could get past most of these issues.
Hope that's useful for someone.
Best regards,
Eric
P.S. I tried Parallels, and it was SOOO slow. The reason I used Ubuntu Linux was to have the thinnest (free) OS that could support the VMware server. You still need a license for XP 64bit...