Is it possible, by any stable method, to enable ReadyBoost on Windows Server 2008?

Question

I know the standard answer is No. However hear out the reasons for wanting it, and then we'll go for whether it is possible to achieve the same effect as ReadyBoost via either enabling (and installing) ReadyBoost or using third party software.

Reasons for using Widows Server 2008 as a development environment on a laptop:

1. 64-Bit, so you get the full use of 4GB RAM.
2. SharePoint developer, so you can run SharePoint locally and debug successfully.
3. Hyper-V, so you get hardware virtualisation of test environments and the ability to demo full solutions stored in Hyper-V on the road

So all of that equals: Windows Server 2008 (64) on a laptop.

Now because we are running Hyper-V, we require a large volume of disk space. This means we are using 5,000 rpm 250GB HDD.

So we are on a laptop, we are not able to use solid state HDD, and we only have 4GB of RAM and the throughput of a laptop motherboard rather than a server one... all of which means we are not flying... this thing isn't a sluggard but it's not zippy either.

Windows Server 2008 is based on the same code base as Vista. Vista features ReadyBoost, which enables USB 2 flash devices to be used as a weak cache for system files, which visibly increases the performance of Vista. As the codebases are similar, it should be possible for ReadyBoost to work on WS2008, however Microsoft have not shipped or enabled ReadyBoost in WS2008.

Given that we are running WS2008 on a laptop as a development environment, how can we achieve the performance gains of ReadyBoost through the use of flash devices in Windows Server 2008?

For the answer to be accepted it must outline an end to end process for achieving the performance gain.

Answers of 'No' will not be accepted as I understand some third party tools achieve some of the functionality, but I haven't seen a full end-to-end description of how to get going with them.

Answer 1

http://www.win2008workstation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=228

;D

Answer 2

• Is everything that's installed 64bit?
• Do you have hardware virtualization capabilities and is it turned on in the bios?
• Have you enabled superfetch?
• Turn of desktop experience.
• And last but not least, have a look at this article and see if it gives you any pointers.

Too add: It doesn't look like there is a reasonable way of using ReadyBoost on WS2008

Answer 3

With Virtual machines, the answer to "do you really need so much memory" is a resounding YES. Trying to run 4-6 virtual machines eacch configured with 512MB or more really stresses out the system.

The ability to use ANYTHING as additonal virtual memory is key.

Answer 4

OK, so this isn't quite ReadyBoost but the end result should be quite similar. Here is a video on youtube you can follow on how to do this on Vista - WS2008 should be no different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0bNFvCgQ9w

Also, you may want to upgrade the hard drive on your laptop:

Recommend ST9500420ASG 500GB 7200RPM 16MB SATA w/ G-Shock Sensor