Crunch, crunch, crunch - VMs on the same disk as my OS?

[blizeH]

Hi guys,

I used to run a few VMs on the same hard disk as my main operating system (Windows fwiw) but after doing some reading up, I realised this probably wasn't the best idea, and it'd speed things up too, right?

Well... I've moved everything onto a different drive now, and a few weeks on I'm not really sure it's any quicker, and I've noticed that whilst the drive is normally silent, it really crunches like mad when loading up the virtual machine(s).

With that in mind, what would you guys recommend doing? Is it okay to run four or five VMs simultaneously from the same drive as my OS? I could be wrong but I think it's slightly faster, and certainly less noisy than having it on a separate drive.

Thanks

[continuum]

Always try to spread the disk-activity on a much disks as possible - maybe your second disk is a rather slow one - normally this should be faster than running the VMs from the system-disk

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VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

[Rockapot]

I doubt the performance of your system is going to be affected to badly with a few VM's running off the same disk however as continum noted you should spread the workloads on different disks.

The is the same concept as that of the VM's to VMFS datastore debate on ESX.

I would anticipate that a factor you will notice before disk issues on a PC would be memory contention first.

Carl

[Scissor]

How is your "different drive" connected to your Host computer? Is this second drive much older than your boot drive -- (older drives are sometimes just slower)?

[blizeH]

Many thanks for the replies guys, they're both SATA drives (one Western Digital, one Maxtor) and both on the same cable - not sure if that's a good idea?!

For some reason running two VMs seems to be just as bad as running five VMs - no idea why!

For what it's worth I've allocated 256mb to each one, and they all use 8GB of space... not sure if that'd make much difference.

Even something small like loading Firefox for the first time seems to take a long time, and causes a lot of crunching.

[Scissor]

Many thanks for the replies guys, they're both SATA drives (one Western Digital, one Maxtor) and both on the same cable - not sure if that's a good idea?!

SATA drives typically have a dedicated connector back to the motherboard. Not sure how they can both be on the same cable?

For some reason running two VMs seems to be just as bad as running five VMs - no idea why!

Are any of your VMs configured with more than 1 vCPU?

For what it's worth I've allocated 256mb to each one, and they all use 8GB of space... not sure if that'd make much difference.

How much RAM is installed in your Host?

What OS is your Host running? What OS are your Guests Running? What AntiVirus and/or firewall software are you running on your Host? Any other "security" software installed on your Host?

[blizeH]

SATA drives typically have a dedicated connector back to the motherboard. Not sure how they can both be on the same cable?

Thanks Scissor - you're right! They're seperate cables... I was just being silly I think, d'oh.

Are any of your VMs configured with more than 1 vCPU?

They're all configured just to have the one CPU (default setting) - should I change that?

How much RAM is installed in your Host?

What OS is your Host running? What OS are your Guests Running? What AntiVirus and/or firewall software are you running on your Host? Any other "security" software installed on your Host?

My system has 4GB (or rather 3.25GB!) RAM, and each system has 256mb allocated to it. All of the operating systems (host and guests) are running Windows XP.

I use Windows Firewall, some sort of protection in my router and for anti-virus I use AntiVir... that's it I think.

Thanks again