i came across that today:
see http://www.invirtus.com/
Virtual Hard Drive Optimization:
Virtual machine platform technologies have the ability to transform the way people derive value from computing, especially in scenarios such as demonstrations or rapid solution prototyping. One of the limitations in this paradigm, however, can be the size of a virtual machine virtual hard drive. Specifically, large virtual hard drives are difficult to share and move around. Invirtus has developed VM Optimizer to address this challenge. VM Optimizer can reduce your virtual hard drive(s) by a factor of up to 10x although 5x reduction is more common. This means a 5 gigabyte virtual hard drive may reduce to 1 gigabyte. If you are archiving or sharing virtual hard drives, using common archival compression such as WinRAR® (see our article on rar archival) can create further reductions of up to 50%. A scenario on a 5 gigabyte virtual hard drive is: Use VM Optimizer on your core vmdk or vhd and, if archiving or sharing, use WinRAR. The result can be a virtual hard drive as small as 500 megabytes - easily small enough to fit onto a single CD.
Guest Operating System Optimization:
In a guest OS scenario your operating system will not operate as quickly as it will in a host OS scenario. Instead of direct communication with a kernel mode driver for system access (hard disk, memory, video, networking, etc) a guest OS must communicate with a virtual machine which, as an application, translates operation requests to the host OS. Although technically it isn't thunking you can think of it like thunking. In any event, a guest OS does take a performance hit which leaves room for improvement. Invirtus has applied its research into increasing the performance of Windows* in a guest OS scenario and has included the results into VM Optimizer. In general, virtual machines optimized with VM Optimizer will have quicker boot times, faster run-time responsiveness and overall increased performance.
mhhhh - i'm very sceptical about this.
sounds like that typical sort of "hey - get rambooster for $99 and double your ramsize and performance"
roland
see http://www.invirtus.com/
Virtual Hard Drive Optimization:
Virtual machine platform technologies have the ability to transform the way people derive value from computing, especially in scenarios such as demonstrations or rapid solution prototyping. One of the limitations in this paradigm, however, can be the size of a virtual machine virtual hard drive. Specifically, large virtual hard drives are difficult to share and move around. Invirtus has developed VM Optimizer to address this challenge. VM Optimizer can reduce your virtual hard drive(s) by a factor of up to 10x although 5x reduction is more common. This means a 5 gigabyte virtual hard drive may reduce to 1 gigabyte. If you are archiving or sharing virtual hard drives, using common archival compression such as WinRAR® (see our article on rar archival) can create further reductions of up to 50%. A scenario on a 5 gigabyte virtual hard drive is: Use VM Optimizer on your core vmdk or vhd and, if archiving or sharing, use WinRAR. The result can be a virtual hard drive as small as 500 megabytes - easily small enough to fit onto a single CD.
Guest Operating System Optimization:
In a guest OS scenario your operating system will not operate as quickly as it will in a host OS scenario. Instead of direct communication with a kernel mode driver for system access (hard disk, memory, video, networking, etc) a guest OS must communicate with a virtual machine which, as an application, translates operation requests to the host OS. Although technically it isn't thunking you can think of it like thunking. In any event, a guest OS does take a performance hit which leaves room for improvement. Invirtus has applied its research into increasing the performance of Windows* in a guest OS scenario and has included the results into VM Optimizer. In general, virtual machines optimized with VM Optimizer will have quicker boot times, faster run-time responsiveness and overall increased performance.
mhhhh - i'm very sceptical about this.
sounds like that typical sort of "hey - get rambooster for $99 and double your ramsize and performance"
roland
