From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NojU7-0004tg-Gi for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:23:29 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 86A5FE0BA5; Mon, 8 Mar 2010 20:23:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from out1.smtp.messagingengine.com (out1.smtp.messagingengine.com [66.111.4.25]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 707D3E0BA5 for ; Mon, 8 Mar 2010 20:23:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from compute1.internal (compute1 [10.202.2.41]) by gateway1.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D417E2506; Mon, 8 Mar 2010 15:23:02 -0500 (EST) Received: from heartbeat2.messagingengine.com ([10.202.2.161]) by compute1.internal (MEProxy); Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:23:02 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=messagingengine.com; h=message-id:date:from:reply-to:mime-version:to:subject:references:in-reply-to:content-type; s=smtpout; bh=YdgoA4vehhEsRf7FMkRp3gJgskA=; b=XvQjdLi4luse5jUBZhXwaZHj4OojMEiaOO8HvgWL2/yMI7N1ShI4ZBhUEdxLi0MGNKVFY9Byx56KiVYti3h2MWUXl7vHMt50/ma9I1lV+dcSeaCNm2gwEAaXcVpFosEjvolVWsyDpR0Q9TQAkBpxxcbd/kSWpDEtnHBQYsTMjI0= X-Sasl-enc: cjEPxi8zAlkw435wfTML/dJTt0+XgzqxmCXo7R4o8DNR 1268079780 Received: from [192.168.5.10] (lvps83-169-5-6.dedicated.hosteurope.de [83.169.5.6]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 13B511FC01 for ; Mon, 8 Mar 2010 15:22:59 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <4B955C9B.5000508@f_philipp.fastmail.net> Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:22:51 +0100 From: Florian Philipp User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20100307) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Best file system type for running vmware images? References: <5bdc1c8b1003080954r336928darbfecc4b3875f7fc9@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <5bdc1c8b1003080954r336928darbfecc4b3875f7fc9@mail.gmail.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.7 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="------------enigE342584BB414D4642763362B" X-Archives-Salt: 5ef0abbb-ee5b-40f9-b6eb-e67cc06c87b8 X-Archives-Hash: a7adc6fc0d62347a576f9000fed64178 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enigE342584BB414D4642763362B Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mark Knecht schrieb: > Hi, > I'm wondering if anyone has opinions (on this list? Right...) as to > the best file system type for running vmware images of Windows XP. As > best I can tell an 8GB C: drive shows up as 4x 2GB files and 1.5GB > DRAM is modeled in a file of its own: >=20 [...]I suspect XFS, Reiser or > something other than ext3 that I'm currently using would possibly make > a difference? >=20 > But would it be a big difference? How would I test it? I.e. - not > that XFS is or isn't a good file system but that it actually helps > with vmware operation? >=20 > My current system is AMD64, 4GB DRAM, i5 Core which is 4 processor > threads. Target machine is AMD64, i7 Core or possibly dual XEON, 16GB, > 4-6 monitors and multiple 1TB+ drives in some sort of RAID mainly for > speed, and then additionally an external RAID for backup. >=20 As an educated guess, I would say that ext4's usage of extents should improve the performance on large files by a measurable margin. As one of the last filesystem drivers which still use the Big Kernel Lock, I would also guess that Reiserfs might not scale well to heavily multithreaded usage or multicore CPUs. However, I cannot say if this has any kind of noticable effect on 4-8 core machines. As Roberto Waltman already suggested, benchmarking is the way to go. By the way, as you mention RAID. Note that on pure read operations, a RAID1 can be as good or even better than a RAID0 because read operations can be distributed freely among the disks since all of them contain all data. Hope this helps Florian Philipp --------------enigE342584BB414D4642763362B Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkuVXJ8ACgkQqs4uOUlOuU+nnACeMJ1gk1lYRtY+uKQ90eIAuAwM 9yEAn38HLD6txiOBxrtN+Un9C+mQGcsx =NBQX -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enigE342584BB414D4642763362B--