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 1Noied-0004i6-Ln for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:30:15 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 88A50E09E7; Mon, 8 Mar 2010 19:29:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: from comanche.vervehosting.com (comanche.vervehosting.com [75.126.59.91]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 60205E09EB for ; Mon, 8 Mar 2010 19:29:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:49528 helo=comanche.vervehosting.com) by comanche.vervehosting.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Noidl-0007C5-IV for gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:28:57 -0500 Received: from 65.51.48.134 ([65.51.48.134]) (SquirrelMail authenticated user lists@rwaltman.com) by comanche.vervehosting.com with HTTP; Mon, 8 Mar 2010 14:29:21 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <5bdc1c8b1003080954r336928darbfecc4b3875f7fc9@mail.gmail.com> References: <5bdc1c8b1003080954r336928darbfecc4b3875f7fc9@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 14:29:21 -0500 Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Best file system type for running vmware images? From: "Roberto Waltman" To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.19 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 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - comanche.vervehosting.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - lists.gentoo.org X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - rwaltman.com X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir: Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 43db6504-e7b4-4eab-a669-894d4a65dbe0 X-Archives-Hash: a4d19947f2a8607e448e44ab3e2a7734 Mark Knecht wrote: > 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: > >... > > I suppose that as Windows is operating within this image Windows > thinks it is reading or writing to what it considers a file but vmware > gets in the middle to somehow map where a small file is within this > larger 2GB entity. Correct. > My usage model is heavily read dominated. I write stock data into a > file once and then read it hundreds of times to do work. I'm > investigating RAID striping to increase read speed but no matter what > the files appear to always be 2GB so I suspect XFS, Reiser or > something other than ext3 that I'm currently using would possibly make > a difference? The 2GB limit can be set at virtual disk creation time. Older versions of NTFS can not deal with bigger files, so VMWare gives you the option of splitting a larger disk image into 2GB segments. As far as I know, you can not change this after a virtual disk is created. > But would it be a big difference? How would I test it? Run iozone ( http://www.iozone.org/ ) > Any ideas warmly appreciated. > Mark You can create a new virtual disk as a single segment and copy your data into it. The disk read/write performance may not change much... You can also give the virtual machine direct access to a partition or physical disk, bypassing the host file system. Again, this may or not be better (speedwise) Roberto Waltman