Addressing more than 192GBs of RAM...

[BadBigBen]

We have a customer, who claims that one of our competitors said that they can deliver Workstations with Windows 7 installed that would address 256 GB RAM, using a patch.

Does anyone know of a kernel patch that would allow this to be done, and this surely cannot be legal or is it? (purely academic )

I know that Win8, 2k8r2 Enterprise/Datacenter and later, can address higher amounts of RAM, but these do not come to play due to the restriction of the Software in use, they do not work with Win8 and Enterprise/Datacenter etc. are too expensive even to be considered...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[rclarke250]

The only thing I could find, was that Windows 8 will allow 128Gb and Windows 8 Pro and Enterprise will allow for 512 GB of ram. but found no patch, or mention of a third party upping the limit for any flavor of windows 7. Unless someone is hacking in windows 8 code into windows 7 to allow it, but that would be crazy.

 

[Sympology]

Have a look here

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

 

[BadBigBen]

@RC,

quite correct that that would be crazy... got a little more info, and I am just devastated by what that representative told our customer, he had said, "I worked on a Windows 7 Workstation with more that 192 GB installed." and "HP sells Workstations with a BIOS patch that would allow 512 GB to be seen by Windows.", are they that daft!

Oh, man - basically exactly what I told him, except that from those 512GB only 192GB are usable by Windows 7 due to MS limitations.

@Sympology,

I know that Win8, 2k8r2 Enterprise/Datacenter and later, can address higher amounts of RAM,

with that already said, it wasn't necessary to post a link that I was already aware of, and I will post an interesting link about the 32bit Windows and using more than 4GB of RAM in return...

http://www.geoffchappell.com/notes/windows/license/memory.htm

My question was if someone was aware of a patch or mechanism that would allow Windows 7 to use more than the allotted memory then what MS had conceived for the OS.

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[rclarke250]

That is very interesting.

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

I think your competitor is fulla sh*t

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[Sympology]

Ah there is a way, sort of, but not exactly Win7

I've actually seen this sort of thing done.

http://www.win2008r2workstation.com/

or for Win8

http://www.win2012workstation.com/

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

http://alvechurchlounge.org.uk

 

[zelgar]

Well, wouldn't it be possible that they'd be using the extra ram as a ram-drive?

 

[BadBigBen]

@HSM,

I totally agree!

@Sympology,

I already knew that someone worked on that... but remember what I had written earlier,

I know that Win8, 2k8r2 Enterprise/Datacenter and later, can address higher amounts of RAM, but these do not come to play due to the restriction of the Software in use, they do not work with Win8 and Enterprise/Datacenter etc. are too expensive even to be considered...

...

@Zelgar,

Well, wouldn't it be possible that they'd be using the extra ram as a ram-drive?

probably, but they still would not be able to use the extra RAM for running simulations on thermodynamics, which is why they wanted a Workstation with Windows 7, so that the Software in usage would work, one works with Win8/Server2012 the other does not and will not until it gets updated...

----------------------

They already received the Workstations from us, originally installed with Windows Server 2008R2 Standard (as they wanted to also cluster them when needed for those extra beefy simulations), but due to the RAM limit of 32 GB the OS was replaced with Windows Server 2012 which can address the whole 256 GB RAM that is installed. The software in use one worked with the OS the other did not, thus the customer wanted to pressure us a bit about what he had been told by the competitor.

We've come up with a compromise and that is to install Windows 7 under HyperV, for that single simulation software that only works with Win7. Basically it boiled down to "Who will foot the Bill" for the extra license costs of Windows 7, since they chose the original OS and the hardware, you can guess who is paying, especially since we already upgraded them at no extra costs.

Thank you all for your input, some constructive and some amusing...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[cdogg]

Ben,
Just curious, but what workstation are you using that support 256 GB? I know in the past you said you've maxed out an HP Z800 at 192 GB.

 

[BadBigBen]

These WS are custom build, and we use Supermicro Server Mainboards Dual Socket CPUs...

as to the HP, well no wont touch them if I can help it...
HP sells these with the max 192GB of mem, if you want to install Win7 as the OS, with the launch of Win8, I am assuming that HP will follow up and sell WS with more RAM in the future...


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"