anybody run virtual machines from an SD card?

[holden j caufield]

I run 3 or 4 vms and it's getting a bit slow. I was thinking about buying a 32gb SD card and putting my vm files on it. Anybody run anything like that? Noticeable improvement?

 

[Chiefcrowe]

It's worth a try. I think that RAM is also a factor in VM speed.

 

[imagoon]

I run 3 or 4 vms and it's getting a bit slow. I was thinking about buying a 32gb SD card and putting my vm files on it. Anybody run anything like that? Noticeable improvement?

I only use the SD card to boot ESXi. I wouldn't expect SD cards to offer all the much better performance over a normal HDD especially if it is usb attached.

 

[Emulex]

if its esx you need scsi to run vmfs datastores or a controller that willl present as scsi. sd sounds like bad mojo.

 

[Leros]

Aren't SD cards pretty slow?

 

[yinan]

You dont NEED SCSI to run VMs off of. I have run them off a plain old SATA drive.

 

[imagoon]

You dont NEED SCSI to run VMs off of. I have run them off a plain old SATA drive.

ESX(i) requires SCSI but since some SATA controllers presents them as SCSI it works. Different systems have different requirements.

 

[holden j caufield]

I've run vmware vms off of external usb drives, but I thought maybe running it off of the built in memory card reader on my laptop would alleviate some of the work off the disk. I wish I could put my swap file on the SD card instead. I can't imagine SD class 10 would be slower than the HD.

 

[imagoon]

I've run vmware vms off of external usb drives, but I thought maybe running it off of the built in memory card reader on my laptop would alleviate some of the work off the disk. I wish I could put my swap file on the SD card instead. I can't imagine SD class 10 would be slower than the HD.

Laptop readers are almost always USB so it is likely much slower than the internal disk.

 

[Chiropteran]

IMO just use regular SATA drives. An SD card is going to be slower and lower capacity, no real advantage. An SSD drive would be fast, but lacking on capacity and very expensive. Best performance/capacity at a reasonable cost IMO is to just put each VM on a separate drive, for example I have a Dell T110 with a 160GB drive, a 500GB drive, and 2 old 32GB raptors. Using old drives for individual VMs (such as the old 32GB drives I have) can be faster than sharing a single shared drive for multiple VMs. Performance on a shared drive just crawls when more than 1 VM is trying to read or write to the drive at the same time.

Also, as of ESXi 4.1, you can install the hypervisor onto a USB stick, assuming your computer supports booting from USB. I am doing this because it means I can replace any and all of my drives without having to reinstall. The t110 has an internal USB socket which is perfect for this.