[gentoo-user] Best file system type for running vmware images?

[Mark Knecht]

Hi,
   I'm wondering if anyone has opinions (on this list? Right...) as to
the best file system type for running vmware images of Windows XP. As
best I can tell an 8GB C: drive shows up as 4x 2GB files and 1.5GB
DRAM is modeled in a file of its own:

firefly Mark-XP1 # ls -la
total 9291380
drwxr-xr-x 5 mark users       4096 Mar  8 06:05 .
drwxr-xr-t 4 mark users       4096 Mar  7 15:53 ..
-rw------- 1 mark mark  1593835520 Mar  8 09:41
564daa93-5e87-f134-7796-e68c82de64ee.vmem
drwxrwxrwx 2 mark mark        4096 Mar  8 06:05
564daa93-5e87-f134-7796-e68c82de64ee.vmem.lck
-rw------- 1 mark users 2147221504 Mar  8 09:41 Mark-XP1-f001.vmdk
-rw------- 1 mark users 2147221504 Mar  8 09:41 Mark-XP1-f002.vmdk
-rw------- 1 mark users 2147221504 Mar  8 09:26 Mark-XP1-f003.vmdk
-rw------- 1 mark users 2147221504 Mar  8 09:41 Mark-XP1-f004.vmdk
-rw------- 1 mark users    1048576 Feb  5 09:30 Mark-XP1-f005.vmdk
-rw------- 1 mark users        526 Mar  8 06:06 Mark-XP1.vmdk
drwxrwxrwx 2 mark mark        4096 Mar  8 06:05 Mark-XP1.vmdk.lck
-rw------- 1 mark users          0 Feb  5 09:28 Mark-XP1.vmsd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 mark users       1398 Mar  8 06:05 Mark-XP1.vmx
drwxrwxrwx 2 mark mark        4096 Mar  8 06:04 Mark-XP1.vmx.lck
-rw------- 1 mark users        263 Feb  5 09:27 Mark-XP1.vmxf
-rw------- 1 mark users       8684 Mar  8 06:05 nvram
-rw-r--r-- 1 mark mark      105208 Mar  8 05:38 vmware-0.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 mark mark      106644 Mar  7 16:26 vmware-1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 mark mark      105163 Mar  7 13:55 vmware-2.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 mark mark      103535 Mar  8 08:40 vmware.log
firefly Mark-XP1 #

   I suppose that as Windows is operating within this image Windows
thinks it is reading or writing to what it considers a file but vmware
gets in the middle to somehow map where a small file is within this
larger 2GB entity.

   My usage model is heavily read dominated. I write stock data into a
file once and then read it hundreds of times to do work. I'm
investigating RAID striping to increase read speed but no matter what
the files appear to always be 2GB so I suspect XFS, Reiser or
something other than ext3 that I'm currently using would possibly make
a difference?

   But would it be a big difference? How would I test it? I.e. - not
that XFS is or isn't a good file system but that it actually helps
with vmware operation?

   My current system is AMD64, 4GB DRAM, i5 Core which is 4 processor
threads. Target machine is AMD64, i7 Core or possibly dual XEON, 16GB,
4-6 monitors and multiple 1TB+ drives in some sort of RAID mainly for
speed, and then additionally an external RAID for backup.

   Any ideas warmly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mark