A while back I experimented with install NASLite as a guest on VMware. For me the benefit was server consolidation but I did not want to pay a price of less performance like with my last experiment. Here's the thread.
http://www.serverelements.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3196On a whim I decided to install NASLIte-M2 x64 v1.65 on a new VMware ESXi 5.0 host. The only real difference between the old NASLite server and the new server is that I now have a dual core AMD vs a single core Intel P4. I also went from a 3ware 9500S to a 3ware 9650SE RAID card. Memory and networking are unchanged.
I now see sustained transfer rates of 78MB/s vs the 45MB/s on the previous P4 server. I suspect the new RAID card being PCIe is making a big difference and that the same hardware on a bare metal NASlite install would be even faster.
I was satisfied with the ~40MB/s of my old setup so the surprise of 78MB/s plus the added benefit of virtualizing NASLite makes this successful project.
-John