Dedicated VM drive advice

[Zillatech]

I need to purchase a dedicated drive to run my Virtual Machines on and I'm having trouble deciding on one. I already have (2) 300GB VR's in my box so this new drive would be the 3rd Drive. I have a couple of different scenarios.

1. I could get a Intel 80GB SSD for about $214.00 and re-install my OS on that, freeing up one of my existing 300GB VR's for my VM's

2. I could get a new 600GB VR200M Drive for $280.00 and use that for my VM's

3. I could get a WD 7200rpm Black drive for about $100.00 and use that for my VM's

Money is not a huge issue but I don't want to over-spend to get good performance from my VM's. They will be used for a Virtual Lab for Server 2008 and Workstation testing. I'll be running 2-3 VM's at once and I have plenty of RAM and CPU already so disk space and disk performance is what I'm looking to accomplish with this purchase.

Any thoughts or advice would be very helpful ~

 

[theevilsharpie]

I'd get an SSD for your VMs unless you're planning to work with a data set that won't fit on a typical SSD.

 

[Zillatech]

That was the other option I was thinking about doing but SSD's are little expensive and I think the 80GB drive might be a little small. I have 25GB of VM data right now with (3) workstations w/ expandable hard drive options (XP, Vista x64 & 7x64).

I can get the Intel 160GB OEM SSD for $414.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-017-_-Product

Would you suggest that with the idea of keeping my VM Hard Drives "dynamic" as to stretch the 160GB's as far as possible?

 

[theevilsharpie]

Would you suggest that with the idea of keeping my VM Hard Drives "dynamic" as to stretch the 160GB's as far as possible?

Yes. VMs don't generally require much disk space but do generate a lot of random IO's, which is where SSD's shine.

You didn't specify which virtualization software you're using (or you did and wasn't paying attention enough to see it :awe: ), so if you're not already, you'll want to consider using software that supports linked cloning or a similar type of functionality.

 

[Zillatech]

VMware Workstation 7 is what I am using. I'll have to review the Linked Cloning option again to see how it helps me with disk space.

Thanks for the input ~

 

[yinan]

The linked clone option in Workstation 7 is real nice. I have a set of base VMs that are patched/sysprepped then when I need a new machine I just create a linked clone from there. The test environments are then very small.

This approach also makes backups much more efficient.

 

[Zillatech]

Ok, that makes sense now. Sounds like I'm ready for my first SSD

 

[alyarb]

even if you can get low on space, other disks that lie outside the VM can be mapped as network drives and the performance is still ok.