Dmitri on Virtualization

I finally managed to run my Subversion Virtual Appliance off the flash drive. It took a lot of trying and learning. The bottom line is it runs! and runs better then I dared to expect.

I use 4GB Kingston USB 2.0 jump drive. Performance was a biggest challenge to overcome. With trials and errors I settled down to using a single large .vmdk and formatting USB drive to NTFS, and performance boosted.

Now it works like this. I insert USB key. Few seconds - removable storage got connected.  Launch VMWare - another 5 seconds. The Subversion VM is kept suspended on the flash drive. Resume! - takes 15 seconds to bring it back up. At this point it is fully functional.

Rebooting VM is slightly slower,

Testing CheckOut: I  and got all 80 files (55Mb) to a new folder in 10 sec, exactly as when VM was running of the laptop harddrive.

The pay-off for NTFS is that now it takes time for the file system to commit the changes. So I need to wait for about a minute before the system allows me to “safely remove” the flash.  But I don’t mind.

The way it works now is absolutely exciting My source control appliance lives in my pocket, doesn’t pollute the system, run off any other computer, and easy to back up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 12:47 am and is filed under Subversion, Virtual Appliances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.