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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: BOINC Agent Support
Thread: BOINC in a virtual environment? |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 5
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Dark Enigma
Cruncher Canada Joined: Sep 18, 2011 Post Count: 5 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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So I've read here and there that processing work units on Linux performs better than on Windows. I was thinking then that I could install Linux on a virtual machine here on my Windows 7 desktop PC and have BOINC run in the VM instead. I'm thinking of using Oracle's VirtualBox which is bundled with BOINC. Note: I barely know how to use Linux much less anything to do with virtualization.
Basic plan: 1. Install VirtualBox on Windows 7 64-bit PC. 2. Create a Linux virtual machine, specifically with openSUSE 13.1 3. Install BOINC in VM and run work units from World Community Grid. 4. PROFIT! So is all this worth it? Is it even possible? Am I just talking crazy? Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. |
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Paul Schlaffer
Senior Cruncher USA Joined: Jun 12, 2005 Post Count: 279 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Running inside a VM will introduce additional overhead and inefficiencies, and therefore is not a good idea for this task in my opinion. All my CEP tasks are running on Win7 x64.
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Crystal Pellet
Veteran Cruncher Joined: May 21, 2008 Post Count: 1412 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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So is all this worth it? Is it even possible? Am I just talking crazy? Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. It's possible and surely it's worth it as long as you crunch FAAH Vina's (FAHV) in your Linux VM, because those tasks really benefit from Linux OS. Not just a bit, but up to 50% faster. The overhead Paul Schlaffer meant is negligible to the improvement. |
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Dark Enigma
Cruncher Canada Joined: Sep 18, 2011 Post Count: 5 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Yeah, I expected some overhead but I wasn't sure how much it would negate the performance advantage on Linux. FAAH Vina runs up to 50% faster on Linux eh? Wow. That's a major boost. I currently run all WCG projects which I guess is just 3 to 5 of them at this time.
I'll just try running BOINC on a Linux VM and see how different it is compared to Windows. It's not like I'll break my already somewhat unstable computer. Hopefully. |
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KLiK
Master Cruncher Croatia Joined: Nov 13, 2006 Post Count: 3108 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Isn't it better than to make one Linux machine with USB based Linux & WCG BOINC on it...and setup it only for crunching FightAIDS@home...that makes more sense to me! Ain't it?
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