Speed up Linux on VMWare Server

I was succeeded to speed up Linux on VMWare Server by moving the VMWare configuration files to a fast HDD.

I guess that the memory assigned to the guest OSs is actually a memory mapped file located in the same directory to the configuration files. So we must put them on the fast HDDs because the speed of memory accesses is slow if you have memory mapped file of VMWare on slow HDDs.



I have Linux as a VMWare guest OS on WindowsXP. My WindowsXP PC has 2 HDDs. One is fast for the OS. One is slow for the video capturing.

And I've distributed two VMWare image files into 2 HDDs for the tolerance because of that NTFS of Windows is weak for invalid sectors of HDDs. And I've convined two images by the software raid1 of Linux.

But the VMWare configuration files set is one and I've put it on the slow HDD.

Yesterday my slow disk was full and it prevented VMWare to suspend. Suspend file seemed to be created on the same directory to the configuration files. So I decided to move the configuration files to the faster one which has enough space.

Configuration files are:

• nvram


• *.vmx


• *.vmsd

But I don't know exactly.

And I had to change UUID of the configuration set(we don't have to change it if we choose the "always keep" selection from the pop-up promotion.) and ethernet address of the setting on the guest Linux.

At last it succeeded to move the configurations to the fast HDD. And I found that a file is created when the guest Linux booted, whose size is the same to the size of the guest OS memory allocated by the VMWare configuration.

I was aware that VMWare used a memory mapped file for a guest OS. And the file was created on the same HDD to the configurations.


So we must uses the VMWare configurations on HDDs as fast as possible!