I know boot is not supported yet. But, I do have some questions:
1) I assume it's not very hard to boot w/o a hard drive to linux. Like booting off of a usb or SD Flash. Do you have any suggestions?
2) What about windows? Is it possible to bootstrap windows from SD flash, and have the windows syOS run from an IO Drive?
Hi,
Lets talk through your questions.
1) Linux can do a pivot root from a starting media to a secondary media once the driver is loaded. The only issue with doing so is that you are at the mercy of the originating media for boot speed. Paths are swapped in memory, and the pivot process does its thing. We are not supporting this means of boot at this time, although we do know it is possible.
2) Windows is a tougher situation. Windows bootstrap requires the same primary partition remain accessible with Windows loaded into memory. It doesn't have a mechanism to pivot like Linux does.
In either case we are working on a boot solution for Fusion-io products.
We're open to your ideas also.
Hope that helps, and keep the questions coming.
-Chris
Chris,
I just purchased a Mac Pro. This machine has Intel Xeon 5500 series Nehalem board with two 3.33GHz W5590 processors added( We replaced the two 2.93GHz processors ). NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 Ultra-High Performance PCI-Express Video Card for the Mac Pro. We are adding (8 - 8G DDR3) for a total 48GB SDRAM. The board claims 8 slots with 4GB each, totaling 32GB, but we are maxing it out. We will be completing this machine with the addition of the io-Extreme Pro that we purchased from Fusion-io to run our OS. We have installed Parallel in order to run Windows. Our trading platform software looks to be Windows based or Linux.
How can we properly configure the io-Extreme Pro to take advantage of the highest performance? Should we install io-Extreme Pro to run the Mac OS X or configure it to run the Windows 7 application and Proprietary Trading Platform software?
Dane
Hello Dane,
Congratulations on your Apple Mac Pro and Fusion-io ioXtreme purchase. Lets start with a couple of clarifications and talk about options.
The MAC Pro is a mighty workstation, and can be loaded well. By default it will be running Apple OSX, Leopard or Snow Leopard. At this time the ioXtreme does not support OSX directly. OSX drivers are on our roadmap, and will be announced when available.
The solution you have described, Host OS: OSX Snow Leopard, Virtual Machine SW: Parallels, Guest OS: Windows 7 is not a supported solution at this time. Unfortunately, Parallels v5 or v4 Extreme does not provide direct hardware access to storage media via the guest operating system, Windows 7. Parallels does provide direct access to CPU, Video, and Network cards. Direct hardware access would be necessary in order to use the ioXtreme.
A potential solution would be to use BootCamp and create a Windows 7 partition. Using Bootcamp will allow you direct access to the hardware. I will follow-up with QA and find out if this solution has been tested. The only negative is that this solution may not meet your needs if you are trying to use OSX Snow Leopard.
How can we properly configure the io-Extreme Pro to take advantage of the highest performance?
- Default installation will provide the best performance for a majority of solutions.
Should we install io-Extreme Pro to run the Mac OS X or configure it to run the Windows 7 application and Proprietary Trading Platform software?
- Unfortunately, the ioXtreme does not support OSX at this time. Your best solution at this time would be to attempt using the ioXtreme in a BootCamp Windows 7 installation. I am unfamiliar with what you mean by Proprietary Trading Platform software, but if you can discuss it's IO (input and output mechanics) I'm sure we can discuss.
I hope you found my response helpful.
Best regards,
Hi you have raised an good question.
I think that is possible in windows.
Hi forumid123,
Can you elaborate for us?
Have you been successful in booting Windows via a bootstrap Windows from SD flash, and have the Windows syOS run from an IO Drive or other drive?
We appreciate your feedback.