[Cialug] Virtual Box and NAS

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Dave Hala Jr <dave at 58ghz.net> wrote:

> I really doesn't appear that there is much differance between the
> Readynas 1500 and the entry level Powervaults.
>
> My intent is virtualize about 6 servers and most likely launch the VM's
> from a central location. They are mostly low-medium traffic webservers.
>
> I'm not against building a server, but ya know, if I can just buy one
> and plug it in, that's not always a bad thing.  I was hoping to stay
> around the 1500-3k range. How many people actually build there own rack
> servers anymore?
>
>
I totally agree. I would expect that a GigE connection to a RAID array (with
presumably fast seek times) should be able to approach an IDE drive's
performance. I don't know much about these NAS's you're mentioning but I've
seen a low cost consumer device that can NOT saturate the GigE port and seem
to be bandwidth limited by internal architecture. (<$200 units)

According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Comparison_to_other_interfaces it
suggests that IDE bandwidth just slightly exceeds 1Gb/s. Considering TCP/IP
overhead that means you should probably expect slow-ide like performance at
best. Probably not a great plan if your VMs need much i/o bandwidth. Fibre
channel looks like a better choice if you can get it.

I'll show my inexperience with this question: Is GigE 1Gb/s each way (total
2Gb/s) assuming you have a full duplex connection? If so then maybe IDE-like
performance isn't unreasonable to expect.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin and twitter

♫ You're never fully dressed without a smile! ♫
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