Virtualization question

Thank alkolkin, for the information.

Windows VPC is very likable, too. Personally, I use it for all my VMs. (Although, W8 DP is running on VirtualBox but, that will likely be changing soon).

Thanks, Mike, you saved me a lot of writing, lol.

Drew

The concept of virtualization goes well with cloud computing as the users are able to enjoy greater number of resources along with effective utilization too.

Originally Posted by djwnaz

could i use portable HD for the OS's?

Yes, you can. But it would be best of the port were either USB3 or eSATA. USB2 isn't as fast, and it's very noticeable running VM's through this port. I've tried it, twice, using both VBox & VMWare Player, USB2 just doesn't cut it.

USB2 has an advertised, or theoretical speed of 480Mbps. But that's it's max output, and is easily slowed by bottlenecks, many users never see this speed. When using Macrium Reflect to backup my USB2 desktop, it does good to hit 300Mbps, and that's an occasional burst. While USB2 was a good option years ago, eSATA was much better, and in more recent years, USB3 became the gold standard, having the potential of reaching 4.8Gbps, but most users will never see that either. A realistic speed is 400MB/sec.

USB 3.0 Speed

Still, that's far faster than USB2, and should be quite fine for running VM's on. I have a HDD that I place in a docking station that I run Ubuntu 11.10 on (not a VM), and speeds are just as fast as though the drive were installed. What I like about running Ubuntu like this is that it's not dependent on a particular computer install, it'll run on any working USB3 port (USB2, at slower speeds).

Cat