7-Way Linux OS Comparison With KVM
Complementing our recent Amazon EC2 Linux cloud distribution benchmarks, here are some fresh test results when comparing various Linux distributions when benchmarking them as guest VMs with the KVM hypervisor.
The Linux distributions tested this round included:
CentOS 7 Linux
Clear Linux 19780
Fedora Server 27
openSUSE Leap 42.3
openSUSE Tumbleweed 20171218
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Daily 20171220
This provides a current look at how these popular Linux distributions are performing when running virtualized with KVM, how Ubuntu/EL/openSUSE are comparing when seeing their current stable releases against the latest development/rolling counterparts, and also how well Intel's Clear Linux is running when under KVM without real hardware access for trying to squeeze maximum performance.
The system where this KVM benchmarking was happening was the Intel Core i9 7980XE box running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS but with upgrading to the Linux 4.15 Git kernel and running KVM with virt-manager. Each VM was tested consecutively and each time the virtual machine had access to all of the system's 36 CPU threads, 9GB of the system's 16GB of DDR4 memory, and a 25GB virtual disk.
Each of these seven Linux operating systems were tested out-of-the-box with details as listed below: