BTW, thanks critch. I havent ran any of these test yet, but your answer really helped me out with the decision. Mainly, you made a point that i didnt think about, which was the serving to a WAN and it being much slower than my (soon to be) gigabit LAN.. I am sure there are going to be times when the io speed is going to come into play (like when setting the server up to do what i want and such) but general operation is almost exclusivly going to be done out to a WAN, or in a development environment where it isnt that speed sensitive.
On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 8:06 AM, Steven S. Critchfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > > > ----- "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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
