----- "Evan Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > OK, the discussion about virtualization has gotten me thinking. I have > an > old box here that i use as a home server and such.. the hardware is > dying on > it.. (900 mhz AMD K7 and other hardware of that era) so i am buying a > cheap > barebones kit to replace it. I have been wanting to play around with > some of > this virtualization and migrating between machines (this new server > and my > desktop) KVM's website says that it can be done if the image is stored > via a > NFS share.. which i can do through my ReadyNAS.. The question is.. > even with > it being a gigabit network.. is it insane to try and run a VM and use > a NAS > for the storage of the actual machine? Will the file IO be noticably > slow > and end up being something i have spent some extra cash to get going > and > then end up not using?
The question about file IO is a simple math game. Is your network to and from the NAS the same one that you will use for serving out the work product to your home network? If so, how much munging of the data happens before you return it to the network after retrieving it from the drive? Is your work the same thing repetitive such that caching will save most of the IO given enough memory? If so, will you spend the money on the memory to fix the IO problem with caching? Since you already have a NAS, and at least one computer, try a quick speed test, see how long it takes to read some file off the NAS and dump it to /dev/null. Make sure it is a large file and not something you might have cached. This should give you your max network file IO and compare that with the speeds you expect from a local drive. So once you know the speed of your network drive, and then think about if your "server" will be making files perform a u turn as soon as retrieved from the network to you on the network. If you are serving it out over a wan, you may find that the speed is acceptable as the wan is so much slower than you local storage. -- Steven Critchfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
