Best filesystem for virtual machine running SQL Server

(part 1)

I need to run SQL Server in a VM on top of Linux (Ubuntu 10.10) using VirtualBox ('cause getting VMware Player running is just not worth it!).

I have two 640GB WS6402AAEX disks (fairly quick) and the OS is installed in a (software) 64 GB RAID1 partition.

In fact, to be clear:

- /dev/sda1 is 16GB SWAP

- /dev/sda2 is 64GB RAID1 (software)

- /dev/sdb1 is 16GB SWAP

- /dev/sdb2 is 64GB RAID1 (software)

The base machine is a quad core CPU i5 760 (2.80 GHz) with 16GB RAM (purchased from those great people at http://pcspecialist.co.uk/.

The question is, which is the best setup for virtualising SQL Server? My plan is to install a single Server 2008 64Bit VM with 12GB RAM (leaving 4 for the Ubuntu 10.10 host). That VM will have 48GB for the OS and 64GB for SQL Server data files. It will also have IntelliJ 8 (don't ask) configured to run a development job which sucks data from one database and sticks it in another database. The same configuration (using Windows 7) takes about an hour to run when installed directly onto the hardware.

I plan to test the following scenarios:

- guest OS on /dev/sda3 (XFS), data on /dev/sdb3 (XFS) i.e. no RAID

- guest OS and data on RAID 0 (XFS)

- guest OS and data on RAID 1 (XFS)

*remember* - the host OS is running on a RAID1 partition on the same disks.

part 2 will show some meaningless synthetic tests and part 3 will show the results of the real test.