[Discuss] VirutalBox VMs on NVME?

[Rich Pieri]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2021 17:08:34 -0400
"Greg Rundlett (freephile)" <greg at freephile.com> wrote:

> 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?

I used to do something similar with VirtualBox before switching to
Hyper-V (which IMO is vastly superior to VBox).

A few caveats:

First is that you wasted your money on that NVMe drive and enclosure.
Even though the most recent USB 3.2 revisions have the theoretical
throughput, I/O running through VirtualBox's stack and the host OS
will tank performance. This is not to say the VMs wouldn't be usable.
You simply won't get anywhere near the performance you paid for.

Second is that raw partitions is a pain. Different host OS, different
way to identify devices. Bite the bullet and just use an image file for
data. You lose almost nothing in terms of performance (the bottleneck
is the host OS and hypervisor, not the drive I/O) while gaining host
portability.

Third is that if you're on Apple Silicon then you are kind of SOL
because ARM64. Can't virtualize x86 on ARM. Currently no plans for
VirtualBox running on Apple Silicon. VMware Fusion is ARM64 VMs only;
no x86 at all. QEMU can emulate x86 but it's slow.

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