[vbox-dev] Updating network interfaces list speed-up

[Alexey Eromenko]

Okay, I have created 70 host-ifs, and attached each VM to a different host-if.

more commands:
creating host-ifs:
for i in `seq 1 70`; do VBoxManage hostonlyif create; done
attaching VMs:
for i in `seq 1 70`; do VBoxManage modifyvm "HostifrVM Clone $i"
--hostonlyadapter1 vboxnet$i; done
adding it all to /etc/network/interfaces :
for i in `seq 1 70`; do echo "iface vboxnet$i inet dhcp" >>
/etc/network/interfaces; done

VBoxHeadless - 70 VMs:
Starting 70 VMs:
$ for i in `seq 1 70`; do VBoxManage startvm "HostifrVM Clone $i"
--type headless; done
Stopping 70 VMs:
for i in `seq 1 70`; do VBoxManage controlvm "HostifrVM Clone $i" poweroff; done

(unpatched)
25 sec... 25 sec (2nd run)
(patched)
23 sec. ... 25 sec (2nd run)... 25 sec (3rd run)

Good news: boot time is reduced from 150 sec to 25 sec (6x) when going
from GUI to CLI (headless VMs). 25 seconds is what it takes to start
70 VMs in headless mode.

I decided to test headless this time to feel effect from network code
better, rather than from GUI code.
Still, performance is the same between patched and unpatched versions.

-Technologov