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Todd Baginski's SharePoint 2003 and MOSS 2007 Blog » Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
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Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout

This blog has moved.  Click here to open this post on my new blog.

During my preparations for the the MSDN Webcast I'm presenting tomorrow I realized the eSATA
drive I purchased was not performing as fast as I thought it would.  I decided to see exactly how
fast my external hard drive runs a virtual machine when it is connected via USB 2.0 vs. the eSATA
interface. I also threw in a test to see how the virtual machine runs on the host machine's C:\.  It's
been a couple of years since I benchmarked a SharePoint virtual machine, so I thought I would
share the results with everyone.  Hyper-V is the virtual technology I used to run the virtual machine
in this series of tests.

Host Machine:

Dell Precision M6300 Laptop
Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5Ghz
8GB RAM
Operating System: Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64

External Hard Drive:

Seagate 2.5" SATA II Hard Disk – 7200RPM 8MB Cache
INEO 2.5" External Hard Drive Case (Supports USB 2.0 and eSATA) - $29.95
eSATA Express Card 54 - $29.95

Virtual Machine:

Windows 2003 Server R2 – Standard Edition
Domain Controller
Application Server
SQL Server 2005 – Standard Edition
MOSS 2007 Enterprise
VS.NET 2008
SharePoint Designer
Office 2007
Memory allocated to virtual machine: 2548MB

Test results in mm:ss format:

Test

USB 2.0

eSATA

C:\
Boot the virtual machine. Test complete when the press ctrl-alt-delete screen appears.

01:26.1

03:00.0

01.27.5
Load the SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration web site from the Start Menu for the first time.

01:06.1

01:03.1

00:44.8
Load the home page of the Adventure Works Travel Site in another instance of IE for the first time.

01:07.9

01:02.1

01:03.0
Open Windows Explorer for the first time.

00:04.0

00:02.1

00:02.5
Open VS 2008 for the first time.

00:05.3

00:05.3

00:04.0
Shut down the virtual machine.

00:51.3

00:51.5

00:50.1
Totals

04:40.2

06:04.1

04:11.9

* The tasks were performed in identical and sequential order for both the USB 2.0 and
eSATA interfaces.

* I should note that while these tests were run I had the following applications open on the
host machine.

  • 3 Instances of Internet Explorer
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Microsoft Office Communicator
  • Windows Live Messenger
  • Hyper-V Manager
  • Windows Explorer

The results are quite interesting.  A few years ago virtual machines running on external hard drives
ALWAYS out-performed virtual machines running on my laptop's C:\.  However, as these tests
indicate, with the technology advancements in laptop processors, memory, motherboards and
hard disks an external hard disk no longer provides a significant performance gain, if any.

It's also important to note that although the eSATA interface does not offer a significant
performance boost for virtual machines, it does offer a significant performance boost associated with
copying large files (such as virtual hard disks) and performing system backups.  I was able to use
the built in Windows Server Backup to back up my C:\ (74.8GB of data) in less than 20 minutes.
The same backup operation took over an hour with USB 2.0.

What about you?  Have you seen the same behavior in your experiences?

This blog has moved.  Click here to comment on this post on my new blog.

Posted 12-01-2008 3:22 PM by tbaginski

Comments

sata interface | Digg hot tags wrote sata interface | Digg hot tags
on 12-02-2008 6:26 AM

Pingback from  sata interface | Digg hot tags

Bertrick Karsten wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 12-02-2008 7:48 AM

Ever thought of adding a second physical hard disk to your laptop and running your virtual image from that second drive. I believe that running from a different physical disk is better for the performance.

With what tool did you clock your tests?  

tbaginski wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 12-02-2008 9:26 AM

Yes, I have used two internal drives in the laptop before.  In that case performance is usually much improved.  Once my XPS M1730 shows up later today I'll run the tests again on that machine and also test the extra internal drive scenario.

I used my iPhone to clock the tests.  :)

windows home server | Digg hot tags wrote windows home server | Digg hot tags
on 12-02-2008 7:26 PM

Pingback from  windows home server | Digg hot tags

Brad Maust wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 12-04-2008 4:23 PM

I have a new HP dv7 1020us with an internal 320 GB drive.  The connection options include eSATA and I have a Western Digital 500 GB eSATA.  My VMs with the 33 HOL from MOC 50064 (Advanced SharePoint Administration and Development) load faster than on my HP XW8000 with 15K SCSI drives.  The HP notebook is more than adequate for development with x64 Vista and 4GB RAM especially after the JIT warm-up scripts run.

Links (12/4/2008) « Steve Pietrek - Everything SharePoint wrote Links (12/4/2008) « Steve Pietrek - Everything SharePoint
on 12-04-2008 7:51 PM

Pingback from  Links (12/4/2008) « Steve Pietrek - Everything SharePoint

AC [MVP MOSS] wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 12-06-2008 2:48 PM

Are you use your eSATA ExpressCard is connecting to the southbridge via the PCIe or USB2 connecion? Many laptops' ExpressCard are connected via both PCIe & USB2 to the machine's southbridge. The card itself is what dictates if it uses the USB2 or faster PCIe connection.

For instance, on my MacBook Pro, I wanted to get an SSD ExpressCard. All of them connected via the USB2 connection, but I found one (albeit expensive) connected via PCIe and the performance difference from the USB2 versions was very noticeable.

SupermarioVA wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 12-10-2008 12:09 PM

Very interesting post. I have pretty much the same config as you (m6300, w2k8, 8GB ram, etc) but I have the 3.5 external hd. I've used the usb before and haven't noticed any difference between it and eSata.

tbaginski wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 12-11-2008 5:27 PM

AC,

I remember those SSD drives we tried out a while back; 30 minutes to boot.  Ouch.

I threw out the package for the card, is there a program you know of that will tell me how it's connecting to the southbridge?

tbaginski wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 12-11-2008 5:29 PM

Based on the comments it looks like the need for an external hard drive is starting to become a thing of the past.  I can live with that!

Andy B wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 12-24-2008 3:45 AM

Well, with my 3 year old laptop (Dell D800), the external drive is nearly essential. I did benchmark it against USB and eSATA, and the eSATA (through a PCMCIA card) was about 40% quicker.

Performing the same test at the same time on another (more recent) Latitude gave very little difference between the two.

And the Dell XPS that I got to play with recently, well, it was more than adequate just working off it's internal drive; like you say, external drives are becoming less of an issue for speed (though space is still a factor!)

Travis Moore wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 01-15-2009 4:05 PM

What happens when you want to run multiple apps on your host machine with Hyper-V running your Sharepoint "farm"?  Don't you run into a lot of disk contention that slows down your laptop?  Have you tested running your VM's from a NAS device yet?  

tbaginski wrote re: Hyper-V SharePoint Development Image: USB 2.0 vs. eSATA vs. C:\ shootout
on 01-19-2009 11:38 AM

Hey Travis,

I don't see any performance degredation when I run the entire farm on the host machine's hard disk.  If I had a large load of users in the farm then I suppose I would, but for development purposes it works great.  I haven't had the chance to test with a NAS device yet.

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