Re: NetBSD-5.1 running under Parallels VM on Mac OS X

[Kurt Schreiner <ks%ub.uni-mainz.de@localhost>]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:01:41PM -0700, Andy Ruhl wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Thor Lancelot Simon 
> <tls%panix.com@localhost> wrote:
> > VMware is the way. ?Even VirtualBox seems to be more reliable, and only
> > a little slower, than Parallels at this point.
> 
> A few general questions about this then, directed at anyone:
> 
> I've been using VirtualBox on OSX for a while now with both Windows XP
> and NetBSD/AMD64 as guest machines. There are a few things that annoy
> me but since it's free, I can't really complain. I've heard VMWare
> uses less memory and might be faster than VirtualBox, can anyone
> confirm this?

Just did a little "benchmark" on my iMac:

"build.sh ... -j12 ... distribution" for i386, -current source on (local)
Mac, nfs-mounted via "localnet" (Host Only w/ VMware and vboxnet0 w/
VirtualBox) to the virtual machines, obj and dest on local virtual disk,
both VMs configured w/ 4 processors and 2G RAM.


VirtualBox (3.2.12)
        make distribution started at:  Sat Dec 18 17:16:58 CET 2010
        make distribution finished at: Sat Dec 18 19:32:01 CET 2010
2 hours 16 minutes

VirtualBox (4.0.0Beta4)
        make distribution started at:  Sun Dec 19 10:17:43 CET 2010
        make distribution finished at: Sun Dec 19 13:12:09 CET 2010
2 hours 54 minutes

Maybe there's room for improvement, depending on network and disk
controllers choosen, disk controller configuration, disk-configuration
(large disk or 2G-pieces, like w/ Fusion) or processor features
configured. Test was done w/ virtual SAS controller (mpt0 at pci0 dev
22 function 0: Symbios Logic SAS1068) and Intel i82540EM 1000BASE-T
Ethernet (wm1 at pci0 dev 8 function 0: Intel i82540EM 1000BASE-T
Ethernet, rev. 2). I tried w/ IDE-disk first, but killed that after
3 hours and 7 minutes...


VMware Fusion (1.6.2)
        make distribution started at:  Sun Dec 19 13:30:38 CET 2010
        make distribution finished at: Sun Dec 19 14:06:48 CET 2010
36 minutes 10 seconds

Disk controller: "piixide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1: Intel 82371AB IDE
controller (PIIX4) (rev. 0x01), network: pcn1 at pci2 dev 5 function 0:
AMD PCnet-PCI Ethernet..

2 hours++ on VirtualBox vs. ~36 minutes  on Vmware Fusion! For me
thats well worth the ca. 70 Euros I hat to spent for VMware Fusion...

And for the records: Native build on iMac (Core i7, 2,93GHz, 12G RAM):
        make distribution started at:  Sun Dec 19 14:15:23 CET 2010
        make distribution finished at: Sun Dec 19 14:43:47 CET 2010
28 minutes 28 seconds (;-)

> Also, is there any NetBSD (guest) specific reason why I would want to
> spend money on VMWare Fusion instead of VirtualBox?
Hm, you can play easily w/ different disk and network controllers on
VirtualBox or change the virtual processor features. AFAICS theese are
fixed w/ Fusion...
And VirtualBox allows easy exporting a virtual machine, with Fusion you
need to download "ovftool" to create an ovf-"package"...

Hope this helps
Kurt