Experiment(s) with VBox storage
Posted: 3. Feb 2013, 23:19
Hi,
I've been kind of curious how VBox would perform when the virtual disks are stored on something other than a "normal" internal hard drive.
To begin with, my guests are using pre-allocated, non-growable VMDKs.
Thus far, I've tried:
1) VMDKs on an SSD (128GB Crucial M4) in an external USB 3.0 enclosure
2) VMDKs on a 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive
Before doing this, I did some ran some tests with both (1) and (2), to get an idea of their comparative speed.
The M4 SSD in the USB 3.0 enclosure was quite fast, with ~285MB/s burst, and ~270MB/s average read speed, with almost 0 access time.
The USB 3.0 flash drive that I have, a "Topram 32GB" was about half the speed of the M4 SSD+USB 3.0 enclosure combo, but even at that, the USB 3.0 flash drive is faster than my internal hard drive, a 750GB 7200 RPM drive.
The VMDKs that I used had a Win2K3 guest, with an Oracle 11gR2 database installed.
After getting this guest running, both on (1) and (2):
a) The guest on the M4 SSD is noticeably fast. Much faster (e.g., boot time) than when running the same VMDKs/guest off of the internal hard drive.
b) However, I was surprised that the guest on the USB 3.0 flash drive (2) is really quite sluggish... noticeably slower than when the sane guest/VMDKs were on the internal hard drive. Everything is slower, e.g., boot time, opening a command prompt window, running an sqlplus command, etc. Also, with the guest on the USB 3.0 flash drive, I noticed that the access indicator/LED is constantly flashing.
One of the reasons that I've been doing these experiments is that I'm looking for ways to "carry around" some of my guests, e.g., for demo purposes, etc. While the SSD+external enclosure is not bad from a portability standpoint, being able to run the guests, with reasonable speed, from a USB flash drive would be even better.
Has anyone here done stuff like this? If so, do you have any hints about improving performance, esp. with the USB 3.0 flash drive?
Thanks,
Jim
I've been kind of curious how VBox would perform when the virtual disks are stored on something other than a "normal" internal hard drive.
To begin with, my guests are using pre-allocated, non-growable VMDKs.
Thus far, I've tried:
1) VMDKs on an SSD (128GB Crucial M4) in an external USB 3.0 enclosure
2) VMDKs on a 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive
Before doing this, I did some ran some tests with both (1) and (2), to get an idea of their comparative speed.
The M4 SSD in the USB 3.0 enclosure was quite fast, with ~285MB/s burst, and ~270MB/s average read speed, with almost 0 access time.
The USB 3.0 flash drive that I have, a "Topram 32GB" was about half the speed of the M4 SSD+USB 3.0 enclosure combo, but even at that, the USB 3.0 flash drive is faster than my internal hard drive, a 750GB 7200 RPM drive.
The VMDKs that I used had a Win2K3 guest, with an Oracle 11gR2 database installed.
After getting this guest running, both on (1) and (2):
a) The guest on the M4 SSD is noticeably fast. Much faster (e.g., boot time) than when running the same VMDKs/guest off of the internal hard drive.
b) However, I was surprised that the guest on the USB 3.0 flash drive (2) is really quite sluggish... noticeably slower than when the sane guest/VMDKs were on the internal hard drive. Everything is slower, e.g., boot time, opening a command prompt window, running an sqlplus command, etc. Also, with the guest on the USB 3.0 flash drive, I noticed that the access indicator/LED is constantly flashing.
One of the reasons that I've been doing these experiments is that I'm looking for ways to "carry around" some of my guests, e.g., for demo purposes, etc. While the SSD+external enclosure is not bad from a portability standpoint, being able to run the guests, with reasonable speed, from a USB flash drive would be even better.
Has anyone here done stuff like this? If so, do you have any hints about improving performance, esp. with the USB 3.0 flash drive?
Thanks,
Jim