# Has anybody used VMware for a host computer running VI plugins?



## Nekrokefali (Jul 7, 2020)

I've being considering of building a couple of workstations or even servers for running VMware to run VI plugins, for scaleability, safety from catastrophic failures as you can just dump the virtual machine folder on another computer running vmware, and for the ease of upgrading hardware without loosing everything. 
I wanted to know if anyone had done it, any feedback, suggestions and basically if they had any issues performance wise, latency and or hardware issues.
I was considering building a NAS with Raid 10 to run the plugin and for storing the projects, but I just saw a refurbished older Dell server with dual hexa (6) core Xeon server with 6 HD bays for both SAS and SATA drives to run Raid 10.
The cost of the server is about the price and a little more expensive than a 4 drive bay Synology NAS. 

Any ideas, suggestions, or advice?


----------



## MartinH. (Jul 7, 2020)

Nekrokefali said:


> I've being considering of building a couple of workstations or even servers for running VMware to run VI plugins, for scaleability, safety from catastrophic failures as you can just dump the virtual machine folder on another computer running vmware, and for the ease of upgrading hardware without loosing everything.
> I wanted to know if anyone had done it, any feedback, suggestions and basically if they had any issues performance wise, latency and or hardware issues.
> I was considering building a NAS with Raid 10 to run the plugin and for storing the projects, but I just saw a refurbished older Dell server with dual hexa (6) core Xeon server with 6 HD bays for both SAS and SATA drives to run Raid 10.
> The cost of the server is about the price and a little more expensive than a 4 drive bay Synology NAS.
> ...



Before you buy any hardware for it, I'd try to run it locally on your system, see if it works, and compare where your project caps out performance-wise between the VM and your native OS on the same hardware.


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 7, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Before you buy any hardware for it, I'd try to run it locally on your system, see if it works, and compare where your project caps out performance-wise between the VM and your native OS on the same hardware.


The problem with native systems is that you're locked on the hardware for life.
I have a workstation that I built for Gigastudio years and years ago, and I can't upgrade hardware, and the Gigastudio is discontinued. I have a backup identical motherboard, CPU, and the boot drive is imaged, just in case I have to rebuild it. But now the hardware are so old.
Besides, if the virtual machine gets overloaded, then I can just add another computer, copy the vmware virtual machine to that computer and be up and running in minutes. Repeat the process when necessary.

I think for stability we need to move away from native operating systems.
I've being using Apple products for my main DAW since 1992 but I've being very disappointed with the hardware direction, support, customer service, (you name) with Apple and I'm in the process of dropping the OSX platform all together, even the iPhone. 
With OSX you could image a drive and put it to another Mac, but I need PCIe for my UAD Quad card, and Apple is more interested in looking good and slim, rather than providing ports and serious hardware.
Where did the Mac Pro go?


----------



## telecode101 (Jul 7, 2020)

..


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 7, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> What is the server model? There are old Xeon dual CPU Dells that are slower than modern i7 CPUs. They just have more cores and more slots for more slow RAM. A statistical application or code that is parallelized can utilize it to run a job faster, but it's not ever going to perform like a fancy Razer gaming system.
> 
> 
> I am an IT guy and work on VMware and clusters. GUI heavy OS's like Windows work fine on it and there are helper software that you install on the OS to get better and more seamless integration for graphics and USB deices. But those systems just run business applications. There are no devices (like fancy printers/scanners or midi controllers or audio interfaces ) connected directly to them. Everything that is connected is connected via TCP/IP.
> ...


Thank you for the reply buddy!!!
You're just the person I'd like to talk to

I'm an ex-systems engineer and I used to own and run a dedicated hosting company in the past, so we can talk tech!
The questions that I have regarding the old Dell server is whether it would work as a NAS and fast enough streaming to multiple vi clients. It could handle the Audio hardware and MIDI is a joke 10 bit (8 really + start and stop bit), but the server will be a storage device running Raid 10.
Now if it could handle a vmware session running vi as well... that would be nice.

I want to run Kontakt libraries e.g. from other workstations in wmware 
My experience with old wmware networks in audio/video environments, was the video latency.
But I don't care about refresh rates, as I'll be triggering the sound libraries with MIDI, and the workstations would output the audio through the audio interface that would be directly connected to the workstation.
I've managed an Avid Unity server in the past with dual Fibre channel switches connecting Avid and protools clients with dual 4Gb Celerity Fibre channel network cards to several JBODS.
The need for Fibre Channel though was because the video editing requires a lot more streaming capabilities than just audio, and also we were feeding several video editing suites.


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 7, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> What is the server model? There are old Xeon dual CPU Dells that are slower than modern i7 CPUs. They just have more cores and more slots for more slow RAM. A statistical application or code that is parallelized can utilize it to run a job faster, but it's not ever going to perform like a fancy Razer gaming system.
> 
> 
> I am an IT guy and work on VMware and clusters. GUI heavy OS's like Windows work fine on it and there are helper software that you install on the OS to get better and more seamless integration for graphics and USB deices. But those systems just run business applications. There are no devices (like fancy printers/scanners or midi controllers or audio interfaces ) connected directly to them. Everything that is connected is connected via TCP/IP.
> ...


Server Dell PowerEdge R710 - 2x Hexa Core Intel Xeon E5645 - 16GB RAM - 2x 300GB HDD - 2x PSU
O Dell PowerEdge R710


----------



## iMovieShout (Jul 7, 2020)

I think VMware is overkill unless you're going to be using unstable server platforms.
We have Dell servers in our studio running Windows Server 2012R2 with Vienna Ensemble Pro 7. They were assembled by us and commissioned a couple of years ago, and haven't been down once, except for maintenance, upgrades and holidays. 
With VEP7, the less running on a server the better as you need as much processing power and memory as you can, in order to maximise performance (assuming you are running a large DAW template and/or just want all instruments available at the touch of a button).
Each of our Dell Servers is a C6110 with 4 modes (we have 3 of these C6110's). Where each node is setup as a standalone server, each running just Windows Server 2012R2 and VEP7, and Microsoft Security Essentials, with 192GB RAM, x2 Xeon 5660 CPUs, a single 128GB SSD, and connected by 10GBE Ethernet to a Dell file server with all our sample libraries, etc (also running VEP7).
We trialled VMware at the start of the build, but decided it wasn't worth the extra hassle and overheads.

Hope that helps.


----------



## telecode101 (Jul 7, 2020)

..


----------



## telecode101 (Jul 7, 2020)

..


----------



## iMovieShout (Jul 7, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Can you get the service tag from it and lookup the specs on Dell support. You need to check what sort of PERC controller it has. Thats what determines how storage will work. High end PERC controller with more on board RAM = better performing and more stable storage.


Unless you're using NVMe or SSD storage in which case the PERC controller will tend to become a bottleneck. Thats what we found. I'd have thought a cheap Samsung EVO 860 SSD would do the job and far outperforms HDDs with a PERC controller, though we found 3 or more SAS drives (10k RPM) in RAID0 actually can be a little faster than even a good SSD.


----------



## telecode101 (Jul 7, 2020)

..


----------



## MartinH. (Jul 7, 2020)

jpb007.uk said:


> I'd have thought a cheap Samsung EVO 860 SSD would do the job and far outperforms HDDs with a PERC controller, though we found 3 or more SAS drives (10k RPM) in RAID0 actually can be a little faster than even a good SSD.



Faster for sequential read/write or faster for random reads like samples library playback?


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 8, 2020)

jpb007.uk said:


> I think VMware is overkill unless you're going to be using unstable server platforms.
> We have Dell servers in our studio running Windows Server 2012R2 with Vienna Ensemble Pro 7. They were assembled by us and commissioned a couple of years ago, and haven't been down once, except for maintenance, upgrades and holidays.
> With VEP7, the less running on a server the better as you need as much processing power and memory as you can, in order to maximise performance (assuming you are running a large DAW template and/or just want all instruments available at the touch of a button).
> Each of our Dell Servers is a C6110 with 4 modes (we have 3 of these C6110's). Where each node is setup as a standalone server, each running just Windows Server 2012R2 and VEP7, and Microsoft Security Essentials, with 192GB RAM, x2 Xeon 5660 CPUs, a single 128GB SSD, and connected by 10GBE Ethernet to a Dell file server with all our sample libraries, etc (also running VEP7).
> ...


My concern is not the stability of the server platform, but the portability to other hardware.
You mentioned the Vienna Ensemble Pro 7, well funny enough, the reason that I'm considering VMware, unless there's another solution that I'm not aware of is, the VSL with Gigastudio.
I've being running GS (gigastudio/gigasampler) with VSL and some other libraries for years, on Win XP Pro, and over the years I did some upgrades to the hardware without issues. When I was purchasing the hardware components on my last hardware upgrade following a catastrophic motherboard failure, I made sure to purchase a spare motherboard and cpu. That was nearly 20 years ago.
But if I want to change hardware, the Gigastudio platform is not supported anymore, and there's not a license server that can manage the license transfer to the new hardware.
If I had GS in vm, I could transfer the vi and be done.
Because companies go belly up, change directions or for whatever reason, their products are obsolete, I have to go out on a buying sprint and flush down the toilet a lot of money, not to mention loosing your favorite go to sounds etc...
It may be worth the performance hit to maintain portability.
You thoughts on that?


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 8, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Can you get the service tag from it and lookup the specs on Dell support. You need to check what sort of PERC controller it has. Thats what determines how storage will work. High end PERC controller with more on board RAM = better performing and more stable storage.


It's using the PERC 6/i with 256 MB


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 8, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> FWIW.. VMware isn't much of a big deal or hassle to manage itself. It gets to be PITA when you need to setup vSAN e.t.c. It's just that you are accumulating performance hit for nothing. It makes sense as a solution if you want to run 5 to 10 servers of varying OS platforms as VMs. But to install it to just run one OS is make little sense.


See my reply to jpb007.uk.
And considering that I have a lot of software purchases from companies that went belly-up.
Does anybody remember BIAS Inc?
I had purchased their entire suit of software, Peak, Soundsoap, etc and several paid upgrades for years.
Peak was my go-to waveform editor.
They went out of business, and the license server no longer exists.

Unless there's another solution that I'm aware of.
Besides the server that I'm considering most likely will be used as a NAS and if it can handle a vm session kudos!!!!
The server refurbished is 550€ and a decent Synology with 4 drive bays comes to 400 € +/-.


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 8, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Should be fine for a server. Note: those 300gb drives may be SAS and may be expensive as hell when you start to add up $ per GB storage. You would need to fill all those slots to get decent usable space. Also, that server is a rack server, going to use lots of power and will be loud in a room.
> 
> Good luck


I'm building a rack network closet as we're speaking and I plan to house there the server and workstations. I just finished putting a 16 amp (220V european AC) power line/fuse and installed the Furman P-3600 ARG that converts the 220 VAC to 120 VAC with 30 amp at 120 VAC capacity.
The closet is also for thermal management, also to store the power supply of my Soundcraft Ghost 32 console, which is also noisy and can alternatively be used as a residential heating solution, and with the Furman power conditioner they can create global warming.
Today I'm terminating CAT 6 runs from the closet to the studio.


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 8, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> What is the server model? There are old Xeon dual CPU Dells that are slower than modern i7 CPUs. They just have more cores and more slots for more slow RAM. A statistical application or code that is parallelized can utilize it to run a job faster, but it's not ever going to perform like a fancy Razer gaming system.
> 
> 
> I am an IT guy and work on VMware and clusters. GUI heavy OS's like Windows work fine on it and there are helper software that you install on the OS to get better and more seamless integration for graphics and USB deices. But those systems just run business applications. There are no devices (like fancy printers/scanners or midi controllers or audio interfaces ) connected directly to them. Everything that is connected is connected via TCP/IP.
> ...


I think you just gave me the solution with Oracle VirtualBox. I can run linux as my native OS and lower the overhead. Maybe run X11 with X-forwarding and configure it with SSH to run GUI apps.
????????? Anyone?


----------



## telecode101 (Jul 8, 2020)

..


----------



## telecode101 (Jul 8, 2020)

..


----------



## EgM (Jul 8, 2020)

Tried virtual machine audio hosting solutions a few times, VMWare/Oracle/Parallels, and all of them have the same problem—Latency. The audio output is just too slow/unstable for live or low latency audio sadly.

In the end I decided it was not worth the trouble.


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 8, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Should be good and post pics when you are done.
> 
> So the only thing to be aware of those old Dell servers is, they have been probably sitting somewhere in a data center running 24/7 for a few years. Their fans get flakey. Meaning they either stop spinning normally, accumulate dusk and crap in them, get loud or fail. Getting a new one from Dell is going to cost an arm and a leg. Get ye some WD40 and pickup spare fan from one of those refurb server stores for that model if you can find it.


Fortunately this place that sells the server gives you a two year warrantee and the go through it and it looks brand new. 
Better to get a machine from a server room rather than an office though, will bread crumbs stuck in every cravage of the case, ok, forget the keyboard... 
I won't even touch those nasty things.

Ok fresh pix!
It's a thermometer in Celsius and the temperature went even higher...


----------



## Nekrokefali (Jul 8, 2020)

There's lots more...
Actually this is my auxiliary/satellite setup. I have a more synth setup in another location where I spend more of my year.
And I had to let go double that because of a continental move.


----------



## MartinH. (Jul 8, 2020)

Nekrokefali said:


> Peak was my go-to waveform editor.
> They went out of business, and the license server no longer exists.
> 
> Unless there's another solution that I'm aware of.



All the stuff that you can't use anymore because of dead license servers, did none of them ever release any official fix/workaround/drm-free versions? Iirc that happened when the Albino3 synth was discontinued.
If the answer is no, have you checked if there are cracked versions of these tools that would still run? 

This "planned obsolescence through DRM" issue bothers me to no end, so I understand your desire to avoid that very well. But what if on the software-side something goes wrong and inside your VM something loses its activation? I've heard that happens a lot with the Engine libraries, which was one of the reasons I never bought one. 

And speaking of linux, would some of this stuff maybe run faster in wine?


----------



## Dex (Jul 8, 2020)

This is a cool idea, but does the licensing thing actually work? Some companies use simple text files for licensing, but most licenses are hardware-locked. If you took a VM that you had Kontakt and some machine-locked ilok plugins licensed in, for instance, and put that VM on a new machine, would the plugins still function?


----------



## Kabraxis (Jul 9, 2020)

Just chiming in to say, some modern soft-licensers doesn't play well with VMs. I tried to use a Hyper-V and VMWare for sandboxing some lightweight server stuff, and both interfered with Waves, Steinberg eLicenser and Best Service soft-licensers. It has something to do with virtual ethernet devices changing MAC addresses often. Waves and eLicenser didn't recognize my pc at all, and Best Service licenses got reset every launch.


----------



## tjf (Jul 9, 2020)

When you say VMware what do you actually mean? Fusion? Workstation? vSphere (vCenter + ESXi)?

vSphere works very well for low latency application, Telcos use it for Network Functions Virtualization of Data Plane applications. You can specify arbitrary MAC address for your virtual NICs that matches whatever the licensing server requires.

Obviously it is an enterprise grade software expensive with support & subscription costs. It requires compatible hardware and skills to manage it.


----------



## telecode101 (Jul 9, 2020)

..


----------



## tjf (Jul 9, 2020)

The low latency stuff and anything above 32 GB RAM requires paid version.

Edit: actually it seems the 32 GB is no longer there. 8 vCPU limit for VM which might be OK.


----------



## Kabraxis (Jul 9, 2020)

tjf said:


> When you say VMware what do you actually mean? Fusion? Workstation? vSphere (vCenter + ESXi)?



Fusion and Oracle Virtualbox.


----------



## tjf (Jul 9, 2020)

The problem with Fusion is that it is Type 2 hypervisor and sits above the base OS which adds processing overhead. ESXi runs on bare metal.


----------



## Kabraxis (Jul 9, 2020)

Well, Hyper-V was Type 1, right?
My problem wasn't the performance, I was still using plugins on my standart OS. It's VM's existence on the PC, where some soft-licensers link themselves to network devices, and adding a Virtual one (a bridge for the VM) breaks that process.

I didn't tried using plugins _inside _a VM, but I'll go with extra precautions if I ever do.


----------



## telecode101 (Jul 10, 2020)

..


----------

