![]() I'm making a lot of assumptions that I don't know if they're even close to accurate, which is really why I'm asking if anyone has ever tried this on a larger scale.įrom the VirtualBox side, I guess I can run some tests on the VDI file itself while I have a guest OS running, and see how much the file changes as I perform minor tasks on the guest. ![]() Obviously the more files that get modified, and the larger the files are, the bigger this process becomes, which is where a small test would differ dramatically from a larger-scale test. Assuming the remainder of the VDI file remains unchanged, and again assuming Bitcasa's partial file upload works well, that would only mean about 200KB would need to be uploaded to the cloud, and assuming Bitcasa's local caching and queueing works properly, that upload would be deferred to the point where I wouldn't even see the delay. If I create a new 200KB file on my guest disk, that should add/modify 200KB of physical bits on the VDI file. ![]() but I'd expect that I wouldn't need to download the entire 20GB - assuming Bitcasa's partial file download and caching works well, and the guest knows exactly which pieces of the VDI it needs, it may only take (I'm pulling numbers out of the air here) 100MB of actual data transfer to start things up, which wouldn't be terrible. Obviously in order to start the machine I'd have to download enough of the VDI to boot to Windows and display the desktop, as well as to run the startup services, write to the event log, etc. The VDI file lives on Bitcasa's infinite drive. I guess it comes down to how the physical disk is accessed, and how the cloud disk provider manages the local cache.įor example: suppose I have a 20GB VDI file with a Windows XP guest. It makes sense, assuming I'd be using the physical disk a lot. Thanks, I expected this would be the case. But if the file is constantly moving bits around on disk as I'm working, then I'd expect it would be practically impossible, or use a ridiculous amount of bandwidth.īitcasa says they've never done any official testing, but expects that it should work as long as my connection is good enough.Īny stories or theories on this? I'm planning on trying it with a small VM, but I don't want to accidentally waste a TB of bandwidth attempting a larger one if everyone has been unsuccessful at it. But at the same time, I don't know anything about the VDI file structure - if it stays relatively stable and doesn't change a whole lot while it's running, then Bitcasa should be smart enough to only transfer the changed pieces, rather than the entire file every time. I'm thinking that it likely won't work well, because of all the bandwidth required to download and sync the VDI file. I'd like to try this so I can have lots of virtual machines without using local space, but I'm concerned about the performance of accessing a remote filesystem to read and write the VDI. If not Bitcasa, then DropBox or SkyDrive or other similar services. Does anyone have any experience storing the VDI file on a cloud drive? Specifically, I'm looking into using Bitcasa infinite storage, which stores data on the cloud only, and maps the cloud drive so you can see it like a regular disk (there's local caching and cool stuff like that, but the file basically lives on the cloud).
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