SSD and VMWare Server 2... spicy!

["i_lowe" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I know many folks run a home server, and quite a few have experimented
with VMWare's free server product.

A few weeks ago, mine popped a disk - no problem, as I was using Windows
Server 2008 R2, and the software raid is easy enough to recover (if a
little slow). I decided to take the chance to swap my 5 X 500Gb drives for
3 X 1Tb drives instead.

big mistake. whilst the setup was a lot quieter and used less power, the
VMs now ground the machine into the floor. Clearly, the disk subsystem was
the problem.

After a bit of interweb research, I decided to give an SSD a whirl and
purchased an OCZ Vertex 2 solid state drive. I fancied a bit of space, so I
got a 240Gb one (about 340 quid).

Shut down the server, installed the SSD (easy, as it uses the same SATA
interface as a regular hard drive), and rebooted. initially, I'm not seeing
any change, as I'm copying everything from the spindle disk...

but as soon as I restarted the Virtual Machines, running from the SSD. Holy
crap. talk about smelly stuff off a shiny shovel...

I host an exchange server, a general database devvy server, an ISA server
and a file server for all the home files/profiles etc.

Folder on the file server now pop open so fast it's eye popping. treesize
across the folders completes in 4 seconds (previous best - 6 minutes).

The Server that's acting as a host for the VMs is now nicely responsive,
and accessing my media files there is refreshingly snappy.

All in all, you *have* to try one of these if you run virtual machines.
it's crazy fast.



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