virtualbox.org

I am testing VirtualBox on an a
Intel server 2600 with dual octal core
Boot drive 2 x 500GB boot (raid 1)
Main disk 4 x 2TB disks in a Raid 5 config (6TB),
Host is Ubuntu desktop 9.04
Client is Server 2003 x32

I have been restoring a 300GB Acronis True image file on to a separate 500GB (D:) dynamic VDI, so far it has taken 24 hours to restore (80%). ie it is very slow.
The Acronis image is on the same Raid 5 drive that the VDI file is on and is accessed using a VB Shared Folder
The Acronis is installed on the Client using Server 2003 as the operating system.
The Client Controller is set to IDE, if I set the controller to SATA will I get a better performance out of the client ?
If I set to SATA which sata drivers do I use the Intel motherboard drivers or is there a set of generic drivers I should download and from where.

Use samba which is alot faster the Vbox SF. I find Sata speed best using IDE with Sata toggled on (on a SATA Host).

As stated above, Samba is a lot faster. For restoring, and general speed, SATA is a bit faster than IDE. The drivers you need, are the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. Don't grab the latest version, that doesn't work well. Use version 7.8 if possible. At least I know that that version works. Older will work too, don't know about newer, but don't tempt fate . There's a link in the Windows Guests forum, or find it with Google. Should be on Softpedia or similar sites.

This is puzzling though - when I did my recent physical to virtual experiment I used Acronis: i.e. first ran Acronis on physical PC than an ISO of the Acronis bootable CD ran inside a VM for the restore (I had to put the disk images into another ISO to make them available to the VM). I don't remember exactly how long the restore was, but it was nothing out of the ordinary (otherwise I would have remembered the experience!). I restored it onto a IDE drive, in fact I had to since I don't think SATA drives are recognized if you boot from the Acronis CD. (Referring to Acronis True Image Home 2009, VBox 2.1.4. PUEL).

You mentioned what you are restoring to, but what kind of media are you restoring from? Media I would recommend avoiding are USB, shared folders, and of course SATA drives. Media I'd recommend are ISO images or maybe a temporary second VDO. I've never tried big transfers off the physical host DVD.

Restoring to SATA drives are no problem, Acronis finds them just fine.
I'm suspecting that the TS is restoring an image through an existing virtual OS onto another VDI using shared folders. Booting a new VM where the restoration needs to take place will be a lot faster, because you're forced to use Samba shares, or a different VDI with the image on it.

mpack wrote: You mentioned what you are restoring to, but what kind of media are you restoring from? Media I would recommend avoiding are USB, shared folders, and of course SATA drives. Media I'd recommend are ISO images or maybe a temporary second VDO. I've never tried big transfers off the physical host DVD.

From My first post above I stated that the Acronis .tib file is on the same raid drive as the VB VDI file. ie I created a VB Virtual share to the same drive so this is purely a protocol issue somewhere and not a USB transfer issue. The Acronis program was running from the 2003 C: drive operating system and not from an Acronis image, although I will be testing to see that performance as well . And just for the record it took approx 36 hours to restore a 276GB file. I am going to make the recommended changes and test again. Watch this space.

moored99 wrote:From My first post above I stated that the Acronis .tib file is on the same raid drive as the VB VDI file.

Sorry, I must have been tired or rushed when I read your post, because there were a couple of things I didn't spot, first is the thing you mentioned, and I also failed to notice how huge your .tib file was (and that's compressed!). My .tib was only 11GB, and even that I resented!

I do work some with uncompressed video, so I have humungous data to back up too, but I keep all that stuff on a separate drive so that simple file copies work well for backups. I keep the system drive containing only apps and small data files - incidentally making for manageable Acronis images. Horses for courses, but the point is that I'm not sure what the size limit is for an ISO, so that option may also be ruled out (I assume you wouldn't want a large number of spanning disks). That leaves a temp VDI drive. I can't comment on Samba shares - never tried it.

mpack wrote:I can't comment on Samba shares - never tried it.

If the file is stored locally, and you use an Intel NIC, the speed is very good. One could say it's as fast as your hard drive (~40 MB/s, depends on the mechanics and age). I suggest using the Host-Only option, as that's always available and doesn't use a physical adapter (NAT can be done, as it uses the loopback of the Host when connecting to 10.0.2.2, but might be a bit slower).

Sasquatch wrote:

mpack wrote:I can't comment on Samba shares - never tried it.

If the file is stored locally, and you use an Intel NIC, the speed is very good. One could say it's as fast as your hard drive (~40 MB/s, depends on the mechanics and age). I suggest using the Host-Only option, as that's always available and doesn't use a physical adapter (NAT can be done, as it uses the loopback of the Host when connecting to 10.0.2.2, but might be a bit slower).

>I suggest using the Host-Only option

This may be a better option for me, just for the purpose of restore I will give it a try.