[Discuss] Using raw host hard disk in virtual client

[guy1gold at gmail.com (Guy Gold)]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Jerry Natowitz <j.natowitz at rcn.com> wrote:
> I may not have been specific enough in what I want to do.  I want the Linux client to be able to directly mount ext4 >partitions, not to do raw I/O to partitions.

Jerry,

You stated that you need 'better performance' , and that is why you
need to mount direct ext4.
AFAIK, if the host can see the drive, the guest can see it, so, you'll
need Win7 to see the ext4.

I work with KVM and VirutalBox, for the home setup, I would go with
Virtualbox. Because,  it provides a better experience when working
the guest via the host console (as in, double-click the name of the
machine, and have control over it, as if you're sitting in-front of it
,as opposed to a network connection to the guest machine).

Xen is no longer the 'hypervisor of choice' for most Linux Disotros
that I know, KVM is, KVM is superior to Vbox in most aspects, besides
the one you refer to , - getting e 'real' PC feel - when working on
the host console ( KVM is more for production servers, not for 'user'
work, as far as I see ) .
If you have Vbox running on Win 7, and you get a clunky feeling from
the Linux guest,  Would you care to note the hardware specs of the
host system ? , once booted into Linux, the
output of

'free'
'lscpu'
'cat /proc/cpuinfo  |grep -m1  flags'

?

-- 
Guy Gold