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:
firefly Mark-XP1 # ls -la total 9291380 drwxr-xr-x 5 mark users 4096 Mar 8 06:05 . drwxr-xr-t 4 mark users 4096 Mar 7 15:53 .. -rw------- 1 mark mark 1593835520 Mar 8 09:41 564daa93-5e87-f134-7796-e68c82de64ee.vmem drwxrwxrwx 2 mark mark 4096 Mar 8 06:05 564daa93-5e87-f134-7796-e68c82de64ee.vmem.lck -rw------- 1 mark users 2147221504 Mar 8 09:41 Mark-XP1-f001.vmdk -rw------- 1 mark users 2147221504 Mar 8 09:41 Mark-XP1-f002.vmdk -rw------- 1 mark users 2147221504 Mar 8 09:26 Mark-XP1-f003.vmdk -rw------- 1 mark users 2147221504 Mar 8 09:41 Mark-XP1-f004.vmdk -rw------- 1 mark users 1048576 Feb 5 09:30 Mark-XP1-f005.vmdk -rw------- 1 mark users 526 Mar 8 06:06 Mark-XP1.vmdk drwxrwxrwx 2 mark mark 4096 Mar 8 06:05 Mark-XP1.vmdk.lck -rw------- 1 mark users 0 Feb 5 09:28 Mark-XP1.vmsd -rwxr-xr-x 1 mark users 1398 Mar 8 06:05 Mark-XP1.vmx drwxrwxrwx 2 mark mark 4096 Mar 8 06:04 Mark-XP1.vmx.lck -rw------- 1 mark users 263 Feb 5 09:27 Mark-XP1.vmxf -rw------- 1 mark users 8684 Mar 8 06:05 nvram -rw-r--r-- 1 mark mark 105208 Mar 8 05:38 vmware-0.log -rw-r--r-- 1 mark mark 106644 Mar 7 16:26 vmware-1.log -rw-r--r-- 1 mark mark 105163 Mar 7 13:55 vmware-2.log -rw-r--r-- 1 mark mark 103535 Mar 8 08:40 vmware.log firefly Mark-XP1 # 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. 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? 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? 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. Any ideas warmly appreciated. Thanks, Mark
