Improving VirtualBox performance

Thursday, September 25. 2008

Most people don't read User Manuals. It's a shame as they miss out on lots of great tid-bits.

One such nugget can be found on Page 66 of the VirtualBox User Manual:

Like a real SATA controller, VirtualBox’s virtual SATA controller operates faster and also consumes less CPU resources than the virtual IDE controller.

Interesting...

I thought I would give this a go.

I had an existing 32-bit Windows XP installation that used the traditional IDE interface, and found it used about 25% of my CPU when running (using an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600) when running under a 64-bit Linux installation.

Whilst it ran fine, dropping the CPU utilisation and speeding it up sounded like a great idea.
Once done, I compared the results... it was indeed 'zippier', and low and behold, the CPU utilization had dropped to around 5%! Now that's a big improvement!

So how did I go about it?

Start the Virtual Machine as per usual.

Download and install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (used to see the SATA interface).

Install the software.

Shutdown the Virtual Machine

Now create a temp virtual disk, and install this on SATA-1 on the virtual machine.

Boot back up and ensure you can see the disk (it won't be formatted, so you will probably need to look in the Disk Management utility found in the Administration Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management)

Hopefully you can see the newly added disk.

Shutdown the virtual machine.

Change your IDE disk to now be on SATA Port 0

Remove the temp disk you previously added.

Boot back up and you should now be on a SATA HDD, that now is more snappier and uses a lot less CPU.

You can also use the floppy disk drivers to install it directly using the 'F6' key during installation.

NB: For those using Vista - you'll find it supports SATA out of the box. (No need to install an additional driver)

So enjoy faster and less resource hungry virtual machines.

NB: Whilst this covers SATA under Windows based Virtual machines, it also applies to running Linux based Virtual Machines.

Posted by Matt in Apps, Hardware, Linux, Play, Windows, Work at 18:24 | Comments (25) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: apps, hardware, linux, microsoft, play, software, virtualbox, virtualization, windows, work

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Hi,

So, did you notice the performance gain after using SATA? and what is the difference?

#1 Alsan Wong on 2009-02-11 08:40 (Reply)

Hi Alsan,

Indeed. Moving to SATA I saw CPU usage drop around 20-25%. Disk access also seemed a lot faster.

Boot up time dropped by around 10 seconds as well.

#1.1 Matt (Homepage) on 2009-02-11 15:22 (Reply)

Holy crap. My XP/32 guest now boots in literally a few seconds, awesome tip!

#2 PodeCoet (Homepage) on 2009-02-25 23:51 (Reply)

Glad to help.

#2.1 Matt (Homepage) on 2009-02-26 00:12 (Reply)

Hi,

I've followed your instructions, but after than my virtual debian can't boot. It hangs on booting kernel. With IDE it works fine. Any thoughts

#3 Pet on 2009-03-10 23:10 (Reply)

Yes,

You need to ensure you have support in your kernel and your initrd image for the SATA controller.

Without it, it will not know where to find the root partition to mount.

#3.1 Matt (Homepage) on 2009-03-11 09:33 (Reply)

Hi, I'm confused as to how to do it under the 2 scenarios:

1. I already have Virtualbox AND a copy of Win7 installed on "stock, IDE" configuration and NOW wish to "activate" this SATA performance boost,

2. I do not have Virtualbox NOR Windows 7 installed, i.e. meaning I wish to activate this SATA support from a FRESH start.

Qn1. The thing is, for scenario one, how do I VERIFY IF I need to do step 2 and 3 of your guide above?

Qn2. for scenario two, well, anyway to enable this from the start for all my new VMs?

I'm a virtualbox newbie here, hope you can clarify my queires above. Thanks!

#4 Aaron Koh on 2009-04-30 12:09 (Reply)

Hi Aaron,

To answer your questions:

A1: You will need to do step 2 and 3.
Try the following URL to get the software:
Intel Storage Matrix Manager

A2: You can attempt to install it directly at install time. Notice I give reference to using the F6 option to install additional drivers.
You may find Win7 already has support for SATA disks (WinXP certainly didn't).

#4.1 Matt (Homepage) on 2009-04-30 12:41 (Reply)

Hi Matt, thanks for the speedy response. Even if Win7 has integrated SATA driver/interface support, if I were to start from scratch, how do I ENSURE the NEW "virtual hard disk" I create for it is "using" a SATA interface from the get-go instead of an IDE interface(which I believe Virtualbox will adopt by default, to play safe)?

#4.1.1 Aaron Koh on 2009-05-01 06:35 (Reply)

Hi Aaron,

I understand you now.

Basically you need to do the following:

1. Create you VirtualBox guest.
2. Once created. DO NOT START IT!
3. Hit Settings, and change to the HardDisk area.
4. Enable the SATA controller.
5. Change the IDE interface of your HDD to 'SATA 0'.
6. Once this is setup, you can now start.
(Refer to the image located at http://matt.bottrell.com.au/uploads/VirtualBox-Disk-Settings.png).

More info on VirtualBox Harddisks.

#4.1.1.1 Matt (Homepage) on 2009-05-01 09:17 (Reply)

Awesome tip .. Thank : )

I did this for Windows 2k8 R2... Speed improvement is enourmous.

One thing you should mention in the steps is the reason why a temp disk is necessary (step 5)... that is so that Windows can install the drivers and see the virtual disk once its configured to SATA port 0 otherwise it'll say cant find windows and load the repair... (whats what I went through)

Cheers! very happy

#5 Jase on 2009-10-10 19:16 (Reply)

"Download and install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (used to see the SATA interface)."

Download link broken

#6 Pet on 2009-10-10 20:39 (Reply)

Pet,

See comment #4.1 for the correct link.

#6.1 Matt Bottrell (Homepage) on 2009-10-11 13:01 (Reply)

Hi,

I am a big Virtualbox fan as I've been using it for over a year now and found this very interesting - BUT:

My configuration:
Host OS – Win2k3, SP2, fully patched, Dual XEON 2.66 GHz, 4GB RAM
VirtualBox 3.0.10 r54097
Test guest OS – WinXP SP3, fully patched, running of an IDE disk image

1) Installing the Intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager ver 8.9.0.1023 as described in step 1,2 and 3 will fail if there is no SATA disk already attached to the Guest OS. You need to shut the guest down, attach the new raw disk as SATA, power up, install the driver - then shut guest down, change master (system disk image) from IDE to SATA and power up again.

2) Now everything looks good, my test XP guest machine is flying, Host CPU utilization is between 2-4 % when searching for any file named ‘a’ on guest (50 GB of data files) but be careful, do not try to “Find new hardware” on guest as it will crash into Blue Death!!!

I'll be looking into this today afternoon, but it's down to the driver collision.

I’ll try and install a clean XP directly on a SATA dist image and point to the SATA driver during installation on the floppy image, or Slip stream it with nLite.

At this moment I do NOT recommend applying this on a “live” guest as it destabilizes it, but it’s OK if you first create a snapshot, play around with it and then discard it ?
Will let you know.

#7 Jan Batka on 2009-11-05 02:13 (Reply)

Hi Eveyone,

to my previous post - I spent 5 hours now fiddling out how to "replace" (migrate from) the old IDE driver with the new SATA one for Win guests OS XP32 Pro, Win2k3 without crashing into "blue death" after hitting "refresh Hardware" and no luck

Hmm I wonder why, I even deleted the old IDE driver once installed the SATA one - didn't reboot and made sure nothing was left behind - no, rebooted and "Blue Death"!! You can read more here
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=187776

It's a good guide for those who don't have any experience with HW/Win OS but they have a different problem -> they need to clone a physical disk from IDE to SATA (we VirtualBox fans can just switch over by a setting parrameter

)

I've done more testing on the SATA disk IO access and is it just amazing!! I work as a VS2008 developer and have SQL Server on one of my guest Win2k3 systems, develop on an other Win2k3 guest system and test it all from a XP guest all via VirtualBox's local LAN. SQL responses with the new SATA driver over a 20 GB DB are just so much better to just leave it "as it is"!!! Only if it was stable

Anyway this just too good to be get ignorered as most of us have been just comparing VM products and then once decide for a product, install a guest "defaultly" and get the work done. But there might be some of us like me who use their guest systems as a Production system and would be happy to improve disk IO.

PS: Just in case anybody would be interested: I am working on an project to get VirtualBox Guest systems running as an Windows NT Service without the need having to login on to the host system and manually power up the quests as they are all Win NT profile bassed :-(( I have spent hours on the net but nothing out there waits to power down the guest safely before shutting down the host system - Win OS!!

Will keep this link up-to-date as thank you VERY MUCH for the INFO avbove

Cheers,
Jan

#8 Jan Batka on 2009-11-05 06:16 (Reply)

Install worked well. Thanks to everybody's notes.

I'm using a Mac OS host, and windows is the guest. Just an observation (no metrics), XP guest booting doesn't seem to be too much zippier than prior to the update. There is a noticeable increase in speed loading apps, that's for sure.

Mike

#9 Mike on 2009-12-02 22:27 (Reply)

Hi Everyone,

OK, some time has passed by and I’m back with my feedback on VirtualBox, Win XP/2K3 and SATA driver installation/upgrade.

To make it easy I will first tell you what worked out for me after hours and hours of testing and at the end list a short description of what I went through with no luck.

HOST Configuration
HW - Dual XEON 2.66 GHz, 4GB RAM
OS - Windows 2k3 Standard Edition, SP2, fully patched
VirtualBox - 3.1.0 r55467

GUEST Configuration
HW - N/A (SATA controller enabled!!)
OS - XP, SP3 - fully patched

So here comes the trick

You simply MUST use the following driver:

Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller
Intel® Matrix Storage driver ver. 7.8.0.1012, Dated 9/29/2007

You can download the driver from Intel’s website but be sure you get the correct driver version as NOTHING after works!!!

You can upgrade/convert your current bootable IDE VDI to SATA by adding a SATA VDI (or enable SATA controller) to the Guest OS, install the driver and then switch over from IDE to SATA

Or

Slipstream the driver (I used N-Lite) and install the OS directly on and SATA disk (do integrate SP2/SP3 to XP, I had some BSOD on the core installation)

Or

Create a Floppy disk image and copy the driver files to the root A: and during the installation press F6 for add additional SCSI/RAID Drivers.

That’s it – nothing else worked for me.

I’ve tried all combinations of VirtualBox vers and the Intel® Matrix Storage driver vers and nothing worked out to be stable enough.

VirtualBox-3.0.8-53140
VirtualBox-3.0.10-54097
VirtualBox-3.0.12-54655
VirtualBox-3.1.0-55467

In combination with

Intel® Matrix Storage driver 8.6
Intel® Matrix Storage driver 8.7
Intel® Matrix Storage driver 8.8
Intel® Matrix Storage driver 8.9

Everything resolved in a BSOD sooner or later.

Hope this helped.

Cheers,
Jan

#10 jan batka on 2009-12-09 07:05 (Reply)

Great post - thanks for the info.

I did my setup a little differently though:
- In the virtual XP I installed the Intel Matrix Storage driver
- Right clicked My Computer and went Manage | Devices, then deleted the IDE ATA/ATAPI entries (avoids blue screen on boot with a direct IDE to SATA change in VirtualBox settings)
- Turn off the virtual machine and switch the virtual drive over from IDE to SATA
- Boot up the virtual machine, windows thrashes a bit and says it's found and config'd new hardware, plz reboot
- On final reboot we're hot to trot

Just thought you/your readers might want to know a way of switching IDE to SATA without creating a temporary HD, although it's not really much of a hassle to do so.

Cheers!

#11 r3dux (Homepage) on 2010-01-05 17:45 (Reply)

Can you do something similar with Linux (Ubuntu) guests?
Thanks

#12 R on 2010-02-03 10:33 (Reply)

An alternate solution is to shut down the virtual machine, add a SATA controller to the VirtualBox configuration for the VM and then boot Windows. Windows should pick up the new device and automatically install the SATA drivers. Then shutdown the VM , move the boot disk to the SATA interface and start the VM again.

#13 Hein on 2010-05-17 23:42 (Reply)

Great post- got everything working. Unfortunately my system in SATA mode is 30% slower than in ID mode. Any ideas why that would be happening?

#14 marc on 2010-05-18 02:16 (Reply)

You have installed the Guest tools successfully?

#14.1 Matt Bottrell (Homepage) on 2010-05-18 07:24 (Reply)

Never even thought that would help- trying now. I see the drive under the intel SATA controller so i figured why install guest editions. Let u know what I find.

#15 marc on 2010-05-18 07:56 (Reply)

Hi I have an AMD Athlom 64 Processor 3000+, do you know where I can download the SATA controller to install on my guest machine? I´m trying to improve my virtual machine on virtualbox.

Thanks!

#16 JP on 2010-08-21 07:19 (Reply)

Hi JP,

You can use the same software. Intel refers to the internal SATA disk controller in the virtual machine, not in relation to the CPU in your host.

#16.1 Matt (Homepage) on 2010-08-21 07:34 (Reply)

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