[dba-VB] [SPAM] Create and Use a Virtual Hard Disk on Windows 7 and Windows 8

Doug Steele dbdoug at gmail.com
Mon Dec 3 15:01:39 CST 2012


Arthur, I think you are making one bad assumption - that hardware is 'way
faster than any VM'.  From a practical point of view (I have to say that
because I can't be bothered running tests) I cannot tell the difference in
speed between Windows 7 running on hardware and in a VM (Parallels in this
case).

For about $700 I just bought a Mac Mini.  That gives me a bitchin' OSX
system, a bitchin' Office 2003/Windows development system, a bitchin'
Office 2010 Windows development system, and any other bitchin' computer I
feel like setting up :)

Doug


On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 12:08 PM, Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>wrote:

> Ok, maybe I am getting something absolutely wrong here, but I fail to
> comprehend the VM thing. It seems to me that given the plummeting price of
> hardware, VMs have no reason to exist. For example, all you need for a
> bitchin' Linux box or XP box or Windows 7 box is about $500 or less. Said
> box would run way faster than any VM, and if you have a KVM then you have
> about 4 or 5 boxes all running at once, and push a button to switch from
> this one to that one. Granted, there is also the consumption-of-electricity
> issue to to factor into this, but even granting that, I still don't get it.
> So let us suppose that I want two Linux boxes, onw XP box, one Windows 7
> box, a dedicated server, and although I don't yet have the money, a Windows
> 8 box. The XP and Linux boxes think 2GB is wealth. The Win7 and Win8 prefer
> a tad more, and the server more than a tad more. But my point is, why not
> just buy a separate box for each task? We're not talking about huge amounts
> of loot here. And the gain is that everything runs as quickly as it can!
>
> So maybe I'm missing something important here; in which case, please
> educate me.
>
> A.
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 5:17 AM, Salakhetdinov Shamil <mcp2004 at mail.ru
> >wrote:
>
> > Hi Stuart and John --
> >
> > Thank you for your comments.
> >
> > Yes, I do remember MS DOS Stacker etc. but I have never used virtual hard
> > disks in MS Windows: I have asked about performance hit because I have
> > found that when setting a "map network drive" share from VM to a host PC
> > virtual harddisk it takes some time even to create and save via
> notepad.exe
> > a small text file. During that time notepad.exe becomes "frozen". When
> you
> > restart VM with "map network drive" share automatically remapped then
> such
> > a "performance hit side effect" disappears...
> >
> > Anyway I'm going to try using virtual hard disks to keep the source files
> > and test databases for my customers projects...
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > -- Shamil
> >
> > Mon  3 Dec 2012 13:36:06 от "Stuart McLachlan" <stuart at lexacorp.com.pg>:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > >I did some testing a while ago with Access  and VirtualBox.
> > >
> >
> > >
> > There was no appreciable difference when writing  and reading large test
> > datasets between
> > >
> > Access running directly in Win 7 and  running in a VirtualBox
> installation
> > with a virtual HD.
> > >
> >
> > >
> > Certainly nothing a user would notice.
> > >
> >
> > >
> > Except in one instance where I created a new virtual machine and told it
> > to create a
> > >
> > "dyanically allocated" disk rather "fixed size" - that really slowed down
> > the initial writes :-)
> > >
> >
> > >
> >
> > >
> > --
> > >
> > Stuart
> > >
> >
> > >
> > On 2 Dec 2012 at 20:28, jwcolby wrote:
> > >
> >
> > >
> > > Is the average Windows 7 desktop user going to notice the overhead of
> > reading and writing to a
> > >
> > > virtual disk?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > John W. Colby
> > >
> > > Colby Consulting
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > >
> > dba-VB mailing list
> > >
> > >dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com
> > >
> > >http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb
> > >
> > >http://www.databaseadvisors.com
> > >
> >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > dba-VB mailing list
> > dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com
> > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb
> > http://www.databaseadvisors.com
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Arthur
> Cell: 647.710.1314
>
> Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
>   -- Niels Bohr
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