Disk performance issue with shared folders

[mpack]

A performance issue with GA shared folders? No argument there, because performance has never been the point of that feature. If you want performance then configure a true network share, ideally using VirtIO-net. But I guess all that was in the benchmark results.

[socratis]

pat1498, that was a really good article that you linked (http://mitchellh.com/comparing-filesyst ... l-machines). Developers and others have often asked for "real data" when someone complains about performance. Mitchell Hashimoto's analysis is very good and if the developers want to address the issue, it's an excellent starting point.

[NamedNick]

A performance issue with GA shared folders? No argument there, because performance has never been the point of that feature. If you want performance then configure a true network share, ideally using VirtIO-net. But I guess all that was in the benchmark results.

You are obviously very knowledgeable and I heard the term VirtIO-net the first time now. I did some research and found this mentioned in https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html but I'm unable to connect the dots: using a Windows host and a Linux guest, could this be used to have a shared-folder equivalent with better performance?

The documentation mentions that "virtio" is available for the Linux guest but then I wouldn't understand the connection to be able so use shared folders that way.

Sorry if this sounds unclear,

thx

[Martin]

Virtualbox shared folders are not designed to be used programatically and also not for perfomance.
It is a very simplified file system implementation just to copy files from/to the guest.
Many applications produce errors using shared folders, because they expect advanced features like file locking or access controls which don't exist for shared folders.

[NamedNick]

I understand but currently it seems I've not much choice on Windows host/Linux guest to share information and I'm trying to understand whether the comment from mpack would imply there's another way to share folders in this scenario without the performance impact of the vboxfs .

[mpack]

If you want performance you would:

1. Configure a true shared folder just like you would between two physical PCs. Google for generic networking walkthroughs. The VBox GA shared folders API (vboxsf, and the "Shared folders" part of the VM settings) would not be used.
2. Use a Virtio-net adapter in the VM network settings. This is a paravirtual device, meaning that it provides a driver level API inside the guest, but it "knows" that it's a virtual device and hence talks directly to the VirtualBox host - it doesn't need to go through the overhead of virtual register I/Os and IRQs.

Of course you'll need a VirtIO-net driver for your guest. The KVM project has drivers for Linux and Windows guests (XP and later), no doubt they are available for Mac as well.

[pat1498]

There is a great plugin for Vagrant/VBox NFS on Windows that solved my problems: http://www.jankowfsky.com/blog/2013/11/ ... r-windows/

I don't know if this will work for people needing advanced file system methods, but it works for me serving apache2.2.4

[chrispitude]

If you want performance you would:

1. Configure a true shared folder just like you would between two physical PCs. Google for generic networking walkthroughs. The VBox GA shared folders API (vboxsf, and the "Shared folders" part of the VM settings) would not be used.
2. Use a Virtio-net adapter in the VM network settings. This is a paravirtual device, meaning that it provides a driver level API inside the guest, but it "knows" that it's a virtual device and hence talks directly to the VirtualBox host - it doesn't need to go through the overhead of virtual register I/Os and IRQs.

Of course you'll need a VirtIO-net driver for your guest. The KVM project has drivers for Linux and Windows guests (XP and later), no doubt they are available for Mac as well.

Some time passes...

I've also been desperate for a way to improve the performance of shared folders, and from this thread it appears the solution is not to use them.

For a linux host with Win7 guest, would the right solution be to serve a samba share on the host, then reference it from the guest by IP address using Virtio-net? Will referencing it by IP address keep share traffic entirely on the host machine, without going out on the LAN?