<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><DIV>yes, it's the speed reason. In theory, virtstor is supposed to be fast. However, since vbox is already doing so well on disk, I am not sure how much further can be improved.</DIV>
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<DIV>In theory, virtstor bypasses many calls, and goes directly to the cheese, i.e., block i/o data transfer. The performance depends how well the mechanism for the transfer between vm and host, which is why I mentioned share folders. (btw, I know the difference between file sysem and block driver, I do that for a living). What I mean is that we can use the same large data transfer mechanism if shared folder's performance is very good. </DIV>
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<DIV>for example, a user app wants to write 10k data to the disk, it goes to the virtio driver after a few calls in windows, if the virtstor driver can efficiently (directly) transfer the buffer to the host, perhaps through memory sharing, or pinned physical pages, this should improve the performance.</DIV>
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<DIV>About the guest drivers, windows 7 and vista sp1 introduced some new models that should be even faster than kvm's implementation.<BR><BR>--- On <B>Mon, 10/18/10, Liang Suilong <I><liangsuilong@gmail.com></I></B> wrote:<BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid"><BR>From: Liang Suilong <liangsuilong@gmail.com><BR>Subject: Re: [vbox-dev] is virtstor being implemented?<BR>To: "Alexey Eromenko" <al4321@gmail.com><BR>Cc: vbox-dev@virtualbox.org<BR>Date: Monday, October 18, 2010, 10:21 PM<BR><BR>
<DIV id=yiv1785707445>Virtio-blk is good at a lot of small files. If you need to read or write a lot of small files, virtio-blk has lower latency and a little better performance comparing with SATA port. Virtio-blk can decrease CPU usage.
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<DIV>[non-related] Has drag-n-drop and copy-n-paste done? I am waiting for it. I think these two features will be kller features in the next major version of VirtualBox. <BR><BR>
<DIV class=yiv1785707445gmail_quote>On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Alexey Eromenko <SPAN dir=ltr><<A href="http://us.mc343.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=al4321@gmail.com" target=_blank rel=nofollow ymailto="mailto:al4321@gmail.com">al4321@gmail.com</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
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<DIV class=yiv1785707445h5>On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 3:56 AM, Huihong Luo <<A href="http://us.mc343.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=huisinro@yahoo.com" target=_blank rel=nofollow ymailto="mailto:huisinro@yahoo.com">huisinro@yahoo.com</A>> wrote:<BR>><BR>> I know the virtio for network is implemented in vbox, are there any plans implementing that for storage?<BR>><BR>> If not, I can contribute to this, as we are very familiar with virtua disk stuff, as we do in our VBoot technology, which boots a real pc using a virtual disk, and it's close to native performance.<BR>><BR>> What I am thinking is to use a virtual PCI device, and provide guest drivers. The PCI needs to be very performing in passing disk blocks.<BR>><BR>> Not sure if current shared folder implementation is good enough, if so, we can easily pass the read/write using the current shared folder service to read/write the virtual disk
file.<BR>><BR>> - Huihong<BR>><BR><BR></DIV></DIV>1. So far there is no clear evidence that VirtIO-blk is any faster<BR>than emulated SCSI controller.<BR>The reason to implement it is speed ?<BR><BR>2. Windows-guest drivers exist (binary+source code)<BR><A href="http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers" target=_blank rel=nofollow>http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers</A><BR><A href="http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/bin/" target=_blank rel=nofollow>http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/bin/</A><BR><BR>So regarding drivers, the maximum effort needed is to WHQL them (along<BR>with other VBox drivers).<BR><BR>3. Current Shared Folders is a FileSystem.<BR>Making a block device out of it may not work, because how will it<BR>sync, if the host updated files ? (guest assumes that a block-device<BR>is a wholly-owned disk)<BR>How can it
work?<BR><BR>4. [non-related] We would _really_ like to see you contribute<BR>drag-n-drop code, so this can be tested and released with the next<BR>major version of VirtualBox.<BR><FONT color=#888888><BR>--<BR>-Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"<BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>vbox-dev mailing list<BR><A href="http://us.mc343.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=vbox-dev@virtualbox.org" target=_blank rel=nofollow ymailto="mailto:vbox-dev@virtualbox.org">vbox-dev@virtualbox.org</A><BR><A href="http://vbox.innotek.de/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev" target=_blank rel=nofollow>http://vbox.innotek.de/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev</A><BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR clear=all><BR>-- <BR>Fedora && Debian User, former Ubuntu User<BR>My Page: <A href="http://www.liangsuilong.info/" target=_blank rel=nofollow>http://www.liangsuilong.info</A><BR>Fedora Project Contributor -- Packager && Ambassador<BR><A
href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Liangsuilong" target=_blank rel=nofollow>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Liangsuilong</A><BR></DIV></DIV><BR>-----Inline Attachment Follows-----<BR><BR>
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