I/O performance in virtual machine

[dontwantwindows]

Hi there,

I have been a mac user all my life, but a new job requires me to use a program (SAS) that does not exist for MAC OS. I would run it on Win7x64 instead. As I will be building a completely new system, I am facing the choice....But I would really like to avoid switching to windows. BootCamp is probably not an option as I will be using the windows program very frequently and at this point might just go with a PC to begin with

Virtualization might be an alternative. From what I read on this forum, CPU and other performance will be sufficient for my needs, but my work will be very I/O intensive. I am currently looking at external RAIDs with 8 drives, and a throughput well in excess of 600MB/s (Raid 0). I have been eying the LSI 9280 Raid controller.

Does anybody have any experience or insight of what kind of throughput I could expect in the virtual environment? And what kind of setup will give me the highest transfer rates?

Thanks

[vbox4me2]

Look into iscsi/lun solutions.

[dontwantwindows]

Thanks vbox4me2,
I had a feeling it would come down to something I don't know anything about. I will run the iscsi idea by the IT people to see if its doable financially. After all, its just to support my personal preference...