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At least two people here need to chill---NOW. If this thread has any more acrimony and personal attacks, it will be closed + any other appropriate action.

Pixellany, as I said, as of yesterday I have been ignoring him. If you see further personal attacks, they will not be answered by me.

Isn't the following a PC form factor?

I'm having difficulty finding stuff on that site, where does it say 1 GB/s or so on a PCIe card?

It was an employee of VMware. Actually a paid external collaborator.

Or use the 1999 second PC I already have. But it seems neater to have just one computer on. And I think youtube on VMs uses the host hardware for video acceleration in Workstation, but not in ESX/i.

Shouldn't one start from stating the end goal, and then come up with approaches that can reach that goal? My end goal is to learn higher things while minimizing exposure to technical trivia that become obsolete in 10 years, ie to get on with doing and learning the higher things that really matter, like political video editing, metaphysics research, etc. For life is too short to waste it memorizing which fan fits which cpu.

The SSD product I mentioned is not a PC form factor, it is an external rack mount appliance that connects via single or dual PCIe bus extenders. I have not used this latest generation (saw it in development basically in bread board format) and it was very impressive performance wise. I got some information and hands on tests with the previous generation while working with some of the higher up company officials. Fair warning though it is for extreme performance and priced for that market.

I don't really get what you are trying to do that you would care about video acceleration on a VM. I have only really used them in a corporate server setting where it is all CLI only, so it doesn't matter. I guess the question of which setup is "neater" depends on how you are defining the term. By physical hardware sure a single PC form factor box that does everything looks better. But from a system management perspective I think that ESX + a management station is neater. You can also use your everyday PC for management, it doesn't need to be a dedicated machine. It is just an application which you install on any workstation.

I guess if your end goal is a system to do something else and you don't care about technology that explains everything. I do this sort of thing for a living, so I do keep up on it and don't set myself to anything and try to make the parts fit. If the end goal is a system capable of copying a 10GB file in 1 second, then I will seek out the hardware and software that will let me do that. If it ends up being to large/expensive/complex then I need to re think the initial requirement.

You assemble PCs and servers for a living?

By the way, I have asked vmware people too who work with servers for a living, and been recommended a particular complete server. To which one can install ESX as you are suggesting and control it from another computer. Missing the video hardware acceleration that Workstation gives would probably not hurt too much nowadays that CPUs are so fast, but why might I need video acceleration on a VM? To play high definition online videos from youtube, vimeo etc. And to preview my edited videos before publishing them back to youtube etc. Since even encoders can be infected and malware can hide in videos, I better do the entire video edit on the VM.

By the way, my hosts do not have internet access at all. That's for security - infected VMs are disposable, you just duplicate a clean VM and back to step one.

Well said.

Even if it wasn't for my avoidance for technical knowledge and not caring about technology, I urge you to reconsider this part of your rationale:

Say you successfully come up with a combination of hardware components that achieves the 1 GB/s transfer. And say someone else like you comes up with a combination of hardware that also achieves the 1 GB/s transfer. Then you both go out shopping online (lots of shop prices are automatically compared for you so you get the optimal price for each component and give it to the client). Now what are the chances that your total price is exactly the same as the other assembler's? I think very small. One of the two will achieve the 1 GB/s goal for less money.

Therefore for a particular client who only cares about disk transfers and not the cpu or anything else, one of the two solutions is better value for money. Another ten assemblers could do the same, and the winner would probably come up with an even lower price.

Now should this client build your combination of hardware that achieves 1.1 GB/s for $4000, or the winner of the competition of 12 assemblers that achieves 1.15 GB/s for $3500?

In short, an optimal shopping decision requires lots of hardware combinations to be benchmarked and compared, which can only be done by someone paid for it. Such as a magazine. Or whoever else can do benchmarking for a living.

Manufacturers probably do it. And they can assemble PCs with robots on a large scale for economies of scale, possibly beating all competitors in value for money if they want to. Ultimately only benchmarks plus price comparisons make the winner.

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You can still use a ram drive. They make ram drives that fit in pci-e and pci-x slots that are way faster than ssd's.

See these for what may be the very fastest around. http://www.fusionio.com/products/

I recommend close it because Ulysses_ is like Thermite. It is going to go on forever. I edited all posts because Ulysses_ is disrespectful.

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