[besson3c]

Up to version 3.2 of Virtualbox the default disk controller for new VMs was IDE, it has since been changed to the faster SATA controller. If you setup your Virtualbox VMs in a prior version you probably attached them to an IDE controller, you can confirm this by putting your mouse over the disk icon in the status bar of one of your VMs which is located at the bottom of the window.

If you'd like to migrate your VMs to use the faster SATA controller it isn't terribly hard to do so. I've come up with a set of instructions for doing so that covers Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux guests.

If you aren't using Virtualbox, you should! It is generally considered much faster than VMWare, supports several features that it doesn't. You can use the commercial version of Virtualbox that supports RDP and USB free for personal and/or evaluation use, or otherwise try to obtain or compile Virtualbox OSE (open source edition). OSE does not support USB, but as of version 3.2 you can compile in support for VNC rather than RDP. Using either RDP (and the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection client) or VNC (several OS X clients available) is handy for accessing your OS remotely.

It has been a while since I used Fusion, but I know that many of the VMWare products tend to default to using a SCSI controller with LSILogic driver. As detailed in the above article, I haven't tested this thoroughly yet, but I suspect that running several SCSI controller driven VM guests simultaneously on SATA disks can lead to some I/O saturation and load/responsiveness problems. Learning how to switch disk controllers - say from VMWare's SCSI to a more conservative IDE within the guests ought to be handy if you use VMWare or some other VM host...

Hope these instructions are useful to some, many people have reported overall more responsive VMs using the SATA controller rather than the IDE one.

[Cold Warrior]

Thanks besson.

Since you mentioned Fusion, I'll add that the latest version, 3.1, claims significant performance gains, and based on my usage so far, I'm seeing a big boost, especially in Windows 7.

But I also have Virtualbox and am pleased with it. I'll have to try your SATA suggestion.

[besson3c]

Cold Warrior:

You're welcome! Just out of curiosity, what disk controller options are available in Fusion? What is the default? My Fusion evaluation period is up and I don't intend to buy it.

[Cold Warrior]

SCSI and IDE. The default appears to be SCSI for my VMs (at any given time I have between 4-6 VMs), except my boot camp partition, which is IDE in the VM settings (also the default for Fusion BC VM, I suspect).

[ghporter]

Interesting, but I can't get the XP SATA driver to install. It says something about "this computer does not meet the minimum requirements for this software..." I'm going to play around a little and see what I turn up...

Oh, and this really belongs in the Alternative OS forum, so I'm going to move it there.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior 

SCSI and IDE. The default appears to be SCSI for my VMs (at any given time I have between 4-6 VMs), except my boot camp partition, which is IDE in the VM settings (also the default for Fusion BC VM, I suspect).

That's what I expected, these are the same two options for VMWare Server. Thanks for the confirmation!

I'll report back my findings here, but what I'm hoping and expecting is that under high I/O activity my load averages will go down dramatically downgrading from SCSI to SATA.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior 

Thanks besson.

Since you mentioned Fusion, I'll add that the latest version, 3.1, claims significant performance gains, and based on my usage so far, I'm seeing a big boost, especially in Windows 7.

3.1 speed improvements are HUGE.

-t

[besson3c]

What was done to achieve these improvements Turtle?

A new and interested feature in Virtualbox 3.2 is memory ballooning, which allows you to dynamically take unused memory away from one VM and assign it to another. I have no idea whether this is the same technique used by VMWare products, although in my experience this feature is very slow in VMWare to the point of not being terribly useful.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

What was done to achieve these improvements Turtle?

Improved Overall Performance - 35% Faster than VMware Fusion 3.0
*Reduced time for suspending virtual machines
*Faster Windows application launch times
*Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with Mac OS X 10.6.3

2D/3D Graphics Improvements - Up to 5X Better 3D Graphics than VMware Fusion 3.0
*OpenGL 2.1 for Windows Vista
*OpenGL 2.1 for Windows 7
*Greatly improved graphics performance
*Aero is much faster on Windows Vista and Windows 7
*Some games up to 10x faster than VMware Fusion 3.0 with VMware Fusion 3.1 and latest Mac OS X release
*Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with Mac OS X 10.6.3

Unity Improvements
*Minimizing Unity apps to the dock now shows app contents
*Works with Exposé and Dock Exposé

USB "EasyConnect"
*Easily assign USB devices to virtual machine or Mac when connected
*Remember USB device assignment between Mac and virtual machine restarts

Bigger, More Complex Virtual Machines
*8-way SMP
*2 TB virtual disks

VMware Communities: VMware Fusion 3: New Features

from my experience so far, the speed improvement is really enormous.

Good job, VMWare

-t

[besson3c]

Good for them indeed! It's time they made up for the performance deficiencies with their products (or at least the ones I've tried, namely Server, Fusion, and a little bit of ESXi).

[Atheist]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

from my experience so far, the speed improvement is really enormous.

Good job, VMWare

-t

Unfortunately, I haven't seen any noticeable improvement with Fusion 3.1.