From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Martin Vogt Subject: KVM benchmarks (compared to vmware) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:30:31 +0100 Message-ID: <492163E7.4050203@itwm.fraunhofer.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: kvm@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from mailgw1.uni-kl.de ([131.246.120.220]:59473 "EHLO mailgw1.uni-kl.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753298AbYKQMai (ORCPT ); Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:30:38 -0500 Received: from itwm2.itwm.fhg.de (itwm2.itwm.fhg.de [131.246.191.3]) by mailgw1.uni-kl.de (8.13.8/8.13.8/Debian-3) with ESMTP id mAHCUVMp011424 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NOT) for ; Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:30:31 +0100 Received: from mail1.itwm.fhg.de ([131.246.191.78]:42029) by itwm2.itwm.fhg.de with esmtps (TLSv1:DES-CBC3-SHA:168) (/C=DE/ST=Rheinland-Pfalz/L=Kaiserslautern/O=Fraunhofer ITWM/OU=SLG/CN=mail1.itwm.fhg.de)(verified=1) (Exim 4.66 #1) id 1L23FQ-0002Ba-HN for kvm@vger.kernel.org; Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:30:32 +0100 Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Hello list, I did some benchmarks over the weekend and compared kvm-78 on a 2.6.27.4-2-default against vmware server 2.0.0-122956 Host Machine: - Host E8400 (3GHz) 2GB RAM - virtual machines are on iSCSI or NFS - virtual machine is booted with -m 1024 and e1000 1. Bench ========= Installation of SuSE 11.1: (time to finish) 1. iSCSI kvm : 48 min 2. NFS kvm : 54 min (qcow image) 3. VMWare : 38 min 2. Bench ======== Booting of SuSE 11.1 beta4 (from grub to getty prompt) (with coldcache, http://linux-mm.org/Drop_Caches) 1. iSCSI kvm : 33 sec 2. NFS kvm : 44 sec 3. VMWare : 34 sec same, with "hotcache". 1. iSCSI kvm : 22 sec 2. NFS kvm : 23 sec 3. VMWare : 21 sec 3. Bench ========= Now the NIC performance from within the VM to the outer world, (measured with tcpspray--program writes to the discard service over tcp) VM->outer world 1. iSCSI kvm : 12 MB/s 2. NFS kvm : 12 MB/s 3. VMWare : 50 MB/s now the reverse: outer world->VM 1. iSCSI kvm : 50 MB/s 2. NFS kvm : 50 MB/s 3. VMWare : 100 MB/s but here the kvm results varies from 30MB/s - 70MB/s 4. Bench ======== Now iozone benchmarks, which measure the "virtual drive" of the VM: IOZone write a 2GB file to /tmp , writes it again reads it and reads it again. (Two runs with 2GB and 4GB file size) 1. iSCSI-kvm: KB write re-writeread re-read 2097152 24131 25349 44325 46055 4194304 25056 25419 44917 44654 avg: 24593 25382 44621 45354 2. NFS-kvm: KB write re-writeread re-read 2097152 7584 37846 43334 42654 4194304 12185 20558 37075 40029 avg 9884 29202 40204 41341 2a (because of qcow effect) second run: KB write re-writeread re-read 2097152 35980 33474 42010 43395 4194304 21675 20732 37976 39134 avg 28827 27103 39993 41264 3 VMWARE: KB write re-writeread re-read 2097152 56168 47829 12568 11688 4194304 47315 32088 10897 10801 avg 51741 39958 11732 11244 RESULT ======= As a result I would say, that the virtual NIC in VMware is much faster (if you see tcpspray as benchmark) And the write performace of VMWare is better 50MB/s againt 29MB/s in kvm. But VMWare seems to have a horrible read performance (11MB/s vs. 44MB/s) But in general VMWare is faster, at least during the installation benchmarks (38min vs 48 min with kvm) Maybe these benches could give an idea for future improvements, but I wont say that kvm is slow, its fast enough, but maybe has room for improvements. :-) regards, Martin