Hello everyone,
I’ve been pricing out different specs for a replacement for a while now. I’ve increasingly been using Virtual Machines for mostly work related purposes (Sharepoint development, network testing, but also for running older versions of some reasonably intensive Adobe software that I only use occasionally and don’t want cluttering up my main registry). So, my question is, would running say two or three VMs concurrently benefit substantially from higher disk throughput such as that afforded by a RAID0 array, or is disk performance not a limiting factor for VMs?
The options are:
4x 500GB Samsung SpinPoint F3 in RAID0 (R: 302MB/s, W: 273MB/s) [
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts...hmarks,9.html]
2x 1TB Samsung SpintPoint F3 in RAID0 (R: 153MB/s, W: 155MB/s) [
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts...hmarks,9.html]
1x 2TB Hitachi Saturn 7K2000 (R: 99MB/s, W: 100MB/s) [
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts...marks,50.html]
As noise is also a big consideration, I am leaning way from the 4x 500GB towards either the 2x 1TB or the single 2TB. I am aware of the possible damagers of RAID0, but have a nightly backup to externals. Primary OS will be run from a Sandforce controlled SSD. As there is only a £25 difference between the cheapest and most expensive, cost is not a major consideration.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!