Vagrant: Support host IO cache on SATA, and, optionaly, SSD-aware features

Michal Nowak

2017-06-11 f6ec4f3e9ed7f5b17507cb43eb8daf941152d7f3

Vagrant: Support host IO cache on SATA, and, optionaly, SSD-aware features

Host IO cache: trade IO speed for security on e.g. host power failure,
more here: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#iocaching.

`--nonrotational` (optional): This switch allows to enable the
non-rotational flag for virtual hard disks. Some guests (i.e.
Windows 7+) treat such disks like SSDs and don't perform disk
fragmentation on such media.

`--discard` (not implemented): This switch enables the auto-discard
feature for the virtual hard disks. This specifies that a VDI image
will be shrunk in response to the trim command from the guest OS.

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html#vboxmanage-storageattach

 Vagrantfile

@@ -60,6 +60,20 @@

    v.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--memory", mem]
    v.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--cpus", cpus]
    v.customize ["storagectl", :id, "--name", "SATA Controller", "--hostiocache", "on"]
    # Enable following line, if oi-userland directory is on non-rotational
    # drive (e.g. SSD). (This could be automated, but with all those storage
    # technologies (LVM, partitions, ...) on all three operationg systems,
    # it's actually error prone to detect it automatically.) macOS has it
    # enabled by default as recent Macs have SSD anyway.
    if host =~ /darwin/
      v.customize ["storageattach", :id, "--storagectl", "SATA Controller", "--port", 0, "--nonrotational", "on"]
    else
      #v.customize ["storageattach", :id, "--storagectl", "SATA Controller", "--port", 0, "--nonrotational", "on"]
    end
    # Should we ever support `--discard` option, we need to switch to VDI
    # virtual disk format first.
    #v.customize ["storageattach", :id, "--storagectl", "SATA Controller", "--port", 0, "--discard", "on"]
  end

  # Once vagrant is able to chown files on OpenIndiana, chown line should be

 doc/vagrant.md

@@ -47,6 +47,12 @@

  And restart.

* If your VirtualBox home directory, usually `~username/VirtualBox VMs/`, is on SSD disk, enable `--nonrotational` configuration option in `Vagrantfile` in `oi-userland/` directory by uncommenting the respective line:

  ```
  v.customize ["storageattach", :id, "--storagectl", "SATA Controller", "--port", 0, "--nonrotational", "on"]
  ```

* Start the VM by running:

  ```