[Discuss] VirutalBox VMs on NVME?

[markw at mohawksoft.com]

I know I'm coming off like a Linux/QEMU fan boy, but QEMU is really
f&^%king awesome.

Want to make a new drive? Want performance? Want thin provisioned?

touch system.raw
truncate -s 1T system.raw

On Linux, that one TB file takes almost no space if you use EXT[2,3,4],
xfs, zfs, or some number of supported file systems, NOT FAT. Its actually
faster than qcow2. This, surprisingly, doesn't work on Mac because their
file system (last time I looked) didn't support sparse files.

You can use that as a drive to your VM and install into it. I do it all
the time. And, you can mount it on your host system (with a loop-back
device) if something goes wrong and you can't boot.

Plus, "libvirt" allows full scripting and is much easier than VMware.

Our whole build machine strategy at my last company was based on QEMU. We
had Windows, BSD, RedHat, solaris, and HP-UX VMs all running on QEMU.

> Yeah that’s interesting.  I’ve not needed the functionality yet but
> good to know.
>
> I found Richard’s comments quiet valuable as well.
>
> Learn something everyday, hopefully.
>
> Eric C
>
>
>> On Oct 25, 2021, at 8:40 PM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
>>
>> Yup, that was my problem. It won't use a raw file. It will only work
>> on
>> partitions or hard disks. Which, IMHO, is just stupid.
>>
>>> https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html#rawdisk
>>> Eric C
>>>>> On Oct 25, 2021, at 5:23 PM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
>>>> Does virtualbox allow images in raw format? I recall having issues
>>>> with it
>>>> on my company mac.
>>>> I find VirtualBox too limited, if you are on a Windows box, try
>>>> HyperV,
>>>> if
>>>> you are on Mac, use VMware's Mac product (not sure I know what its
>>>> called
>>>> these days.)
>>>> If you run Linux, KVM/QEMU is the way to go.
>>>>> I recently purchased a 500GB NVMe memory stick and put it into an
>>>>> enclosure
>>>>> with a USB-C interface.  The idea was to format half NTFS (for
>>>>> Windows)
>>>>> and
>>>>> the other half EXT4 (or similar) so that I could create two VMs out
>>>>> of
>>>>> my
>>>>> old physical Windoze machine and my old Ubuntu workstation. Assuming
>>>>> that
>>>>> is possible, the idea is that I'd be able to plug the thing into my
>>>>> MacBook
>>>>> (having VirtualBox), and be able to use my Linux and Windows machines
>>>>> (as
>>>>> VMs in VirtualBox).
>>>>> Is this possible? Any suggestions?
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>> Greg
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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