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multiverse
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Fusion + Xserve + RAID Block Size: are IDE files like video files?

I have a Fusion virtual guest with an IDE file of 5 GB. I'm putting it onto my Xserve that has RAID I in place. General consensus is that one would use 128 K block sizes on a filesystem used for video files. What would you use? 32 K, 64 K, 128 K, 256 K?

For the time being I'm going to use 128 K, but some feedback would be useful.

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Wes_W_
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Enthusiast

For the time being I'm going to use 128 K, but some

feedback would be useful.

Here's a good read: http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=AppleRAID2-in-Depth&mode=print

For the record, I went with a 256k block size on my RAID 1 which is a $HOME AV stuff (lots of files 2Gb+ each) and not a boot partition. As you might imagine, the Fusion VMs reside here also and perform quite well.

I'm also a fan of Solaris and the ZFS filesystem, so if ZFS is available as R/W in Leopard, my RAID 1 will quickly become a ZFS RAID 1.

Your best bet for improved performance over block size is to have your VM use a virtual SCSI disk instead of virtual IDE.

HTH.

multiverse
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks very much for the feedback and link. Cheers!

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