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[MrHaugen]

Anyone tested running MC server on a virtual server. Either Hyper-V, VMWare server or workstation. The reason I ask is because of the problems I have with duration on video not updating. I have a feeling that it's related to running on a MS 2008 server, and I'm planning on moving the MC library server to a Win7 virtual machine instead as a test.

The only thing I'm afraid of is the lack of direct access to GPU and real Sound Card, and the speed with for example conversions for Andorid units. As long as I manage to give MC access directly to the underlaying raid array, the disk speed should not be a bottle neck. I'm more concerned of the potential GPU and sound issues. Will it be able to run the videos and pick up the correct tags, and will it be able to run Theater View at all?

[lowjoel]

I'm not sure if this is the case, but it is possible you are missing the Windows Media components: Server doesn't come with it installed by default. IIRC, you'll need the Desktop Experience Feature.

AFAIK, the lack of a sound card should not be an issue if you are not actually playing any music on it, since the audio paths are sound card independent, to the best of my knowledge. I'm not sure how much of MC relies on a GPU, either, especially for conversions. Short of the new Intel encoder, I don't think anyone's implemented h264 encoding in hardware (bearing in mind h264 decoding is proving challenging enough)

If you are afraid that things get I/O bound, and they do, a virtual machine is probably not for you. I see good virtualisers (VirtualBox) with I/O overheads of using 1 physical core, delivering less than 30MB/s read/write.

[lowjoel]

Of course, you probably should take my programmatic analysis with a pinch of salt. 

[MrHaugen]

I'm not sure if this is the case, but it is possible you are missing the Windows Media components: Server doesn't come with it installed by default. IIRC, you'll need the Desktop Experience Feature.

You might be right. I did not think that was necessary as I could actually play the videos fine after I turned sound services and such on. I'll look more into it when I get home.

If you are afraid that things get I/O bound, and they do, a virtual machine is probably not for you. I see good virtualisers (VirtualBox) with I/O overheads of using 1 physical core, delivering less than 30MB/s read/write.

This should not be a real problem. You can map raw physical drives to virtual machines. So it should be about as fast as the host. It's at least what I've been told.

[lowjoel]

Even without going through the disk stack and raw disk access is given, the CPU still has to marshal the data from the host to the guest address space... DMA just doesn't exist in the case of a virtual machine. I see my guests get really CPU bound when I/O is heavy.

I don't know about how VT-d does it, or if it actually implements that.

[MrHaugen]

Yea. I suppose you have a good point there. My hopes is that VT-d might fix that. But I'm not sure at all how that works yet.

Anyway.. It seems like I don't really have to go this way. It would be interesting to try. I like to get everything possible away from the physical servers. But it's rather unnecessary right now because the "Desktop Experience" feature solved my problem with missing duration and dimensions on ALL my video files. Thank you so much. This really saved me a lot of problems and time!

I guess that there is a deeper connections with directx or what not, to be able to determine the duration and dimension in videos.

[BartMan01]

I run MC under VMWare Fusion, and use the server functionality to share the library out to two HTPCs without any discovered issues.