I am trying to set up an Infiniband link between an Asus esc4000fdrg2 server running Windows Server 2008 R2, and a workstation running Windows 8.1. The server has a built-in Infiniband FDR port. I installed a Connectx-3 PCIe card in the workstation. An Infiniband FDR optical cable connects the two. I want to use the Infiniband direct link without a switch to combine the resources of the server and the workstation for rendering. There seems to be no Mellanox driver support for Windows 8.1 so I am wondering how to get around that. Is there a way to compile the drivers for Windows 8.1? Is there a way to get Windows 8.1 to 'talk to' a virtual machine on the workstation, and then use the virtual machine to communicate with the server?
I am new to networking and virtualization. If there's something obvious that I am missing please point it out. Thanks for your help!