Migrating off Vmware-Server, but where to?

[adler-wRvlPVLobi1/31tCrMuHxg at public.gmane.org (Stephen Adler)]

On 12/02/2010 11:03 AM, Rich Braun wrote:
> Derek Atkins asked about migrating off VMware Server 2.0.  (I used that for a
> while last year).  Check out VirtualBox, as I noted earlier: it directly
> addresses at least 6 out of 8 questions posted, and it'd be easy to craft
> scripts and a wrapper page to address the first 2.
>
> Matthew Gillen asked for clarification about my benchmark comparing ext4 vs.
> LVM storage:  I'd guess one minor performance penalty of ext4 is its blocksize
> (4K) vs. that of LVM (4M is default), but that can't be the full explanation
> for the substantial difference I saw (and that any of y'all should be able to
> observe).  When I create a vm, I always preallocate its storage, and yes,
> VirtualBox does support the alternative (growable).  I wouldn't know anything
> about ext3-compatbility mode; my ext4 volumes are generated under OpenSuse via
> 'mkfs -t ext4'.
>
> Alas I haven't tried KVM so I can't comment on the comparison with VMware
> Server (which sux and as noted is end-of-lifed), VMware ESXi (which is solid
> and high-performing but more of a full-time engineering job to administer,
> costs money, and doesn't provide a standalone UI), and VirtualBox.
>
> -rich
>
>
I've recently started using partitions for my disk devices with VMWare and
KVM. They work well, (as in no problems yet.) My original KVM setup hosting
a windows vista client, had extreemly poor disk IO performace. The disk 
device
was defined as a file on my OS. When I switched to using a partition on 
a free
disk I had, the disk IO improved dramatically.

Steve.