Improving I/O throughput on a Vagrant VM

[Roberto Aloi]

Hi all,

I'm having really bad performances on a Vagrant machine when it comes
to i/o. Basically, what happens is that as soon as I launch a tar
command on the VM, "waiting time" for i/o (I monitor it with top)
jumps to the roof (~98%) and:

* The tar commands takes long time to execute
* All other tasks on the VM slow down

Are there any guidelines on how to improve i/o throughput on a Vagrant VM?

Cheers,

Roberto Aloi
---
Website: http://roberto-aloi.com
Twitter: @robertoaloi

[Marco De Bortoli]

Hi Roberto,

what files are you trying to compress? They are local files or shared files? If the latter how they are shared? vboxsf mount or nfs?

Thanks,

Debo

[Roberto Aloi]

They are local files to the VM. I put them outside of the shared
folder because that would take longer.

Roberto

--

[phunehehe]

I'm not sure if this is it, but enabling "Use host I/O cache" will
help with IO. Sometimes that is off by default (caused me problem with
OSX Lion).

On Nov 30, 6:50 pm, Roberto Aloi <prof...@gmail.com> wrote:
> They are local files to the VM. I put them outside of the shared
> folder because that would take longer.
>
> Roberto
>
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Marco De Bortoli
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> <marco.pk.debort...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Roberto,
> > what files are you trying to compress? They are local files or shared files?
> > If the latter how they are shared? vboxsf mount or nfs?
> > Thanks,
> > Debo
>

[Roberto Aloi]

Is this option something I can set directly in Vagrant (rather then
doing it through VirtualBox)?

[Marco De Bortoli]

No, that is a part of the VM settings, you set them during the VM creation process as far I remember.

[Roberto Aloi]

Yes, with VBoxManage storagectl. Trying it right now.

[Marco De Bortoli]

However that options is going to improve reading performances rather then writing.

[phunehehe]

No actually it will help with both, and writing will be improved just
like reading. This is at the cost of memory, and some people say it's
a waste of memory (because the guess OS will have its internal cache
in memory anyway). However I think it's well worth it. On a mac of my
coworker, vagrant could not get pass provisioning without Host IO
Cache being on.

On Nov 30, 9:50 pm, Marco De Bortoli <marco.pk.debort...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> However that options is going to improve reading performances rather then
> writing.
>

> On 30 November 2011 14:45, Roberto Aloi <prof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Yes, with VBoxManage storagectl. Trying it right now.
>
> > On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Marco De Bortoli
> > <marco.pk.debort...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > No, that is a part of the VM settings, you set them during the VM
> > creation
> > > process as far I remember.

> > > On 30 November 2011 12:33, Roberto Aloi <prof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >> Is this option something I can set directly in Vagrant (rather then
> > >> doing it through VirtualBox)?
>