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May 31, 2013, 10:23:50 PM |
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Not sure best forum to put this... more of an information request, more of a software-ish question...
I have a machine at home I use as an vmWare vSphere (ESXi) 5.1 server. Core i7 3770, 32GB RAM... all running on desktop (gaming) grade hardware. I run a full Windows domain on this, have about 10 different VMs running on it for various functions (ranging from domain controllers to torrent clients to Exchange server to NZB indexer and others.) I _REALLY_ want to maximize my density per machine if at all possible/
-As to video, I know I can't pass through a 7950 virtualized to a VM and then try to mine with that. Trust me, I've tried... and its a shame, as I'm sacrificing some very nice looking PCIe 16x and 1x ports for that. (Only way would be to run OpenZen, and then run ESXi under that, as well as a mining VM under OpenZen... not really good option performance wise.)
-So, my current model of thinking is "virtualized USB". I know this works... done it with printers on a VMware workstation, and pretty sure you can pass through USB-attached devices under ESX. My question is, how well is this as an option for mining devices (FPGA/ASIC)? I have a couple BFL devices on order, due to ship sometime in the year 2525. If I grabbed a couple ASICminer block eruptors (which theoretically you could get in a couple weeks), could I pass them through to a VM running CGminer/BFGminer? How about FPGA's?
Its a thought... I've got plenty of capacity available on my other machines, just wanted to see if this was a possible option in the future as well. Nothing in hand, and won't have anything in hand for a while, so this is more of a thought exercise than anything.
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