Linux Virtualization Performance Of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Through Ubuntu 10.10

Earlier this month we delivered Ubuntu 10.10 benchmarks from some different hardware comparing the performance of this "Maverick Meerkat" release to that of Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04.1 LTS. The results were interesting, but since then we have had the time to complete additional tests. In this benchmarking roundabout, we decided to see how the performance of every release from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS through the new Ubuntu Linux release performs when tested in a virtualized environment using Linux's KVM virtualization. Here are the virtualized guest results for Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, 10.04.1 LTS, and 10.10.

The host system was comprised of an AMD Opteron 2384 Quad-Core CPU, 4GB of system memory, a Tyan S2927 motherboard, and an OCZ 64GB Agility EX SSD. This system was running Ubuntu 10.10 (x86_64) with the stock package selection, including the Linux 2.6.35 kernel. Upon performing a clean installation, virt-manager and the other packages needed for KVM virtualization were installed. When testing these past six Ubuntu releases in a KVM virtualized environment we allowed each VM a 30GB disk image, access to 2048MB of system memory, and all four CPU cores. We wanted to test even further back than Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS for these virtualized tests, but a variety of factors barred us from doing so. With each Ubuntu release we tested the 64-bit version and used the stock packages and settings. The host OS was maintained the same throughout the duration of the testing process.

Below is the key software information for the Ubuntu Linux releases tested.

Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS
OS: Ubuntu 8.04, Kernel: 2.6.24-26-generic (x86_64), Desktop: GNOME 2.22.3, Display Server: X.Org Server 1.4.0.90, Display Driver: cirrus 1.1.0, OpenGL: 1.4 (2.1 Mesa 7.0.3-rc2), Compiler: GCC 4.2.4, File-System: ext3

Ubuntu 8.10
OS: Ubuntu 8.10, Kernel: 2.6.27-7-generic (x86_64), Desktop: GNOME 2.24.1, Display Server: X.Org Server 1.5.2, Display Driver: cirrus 1.2.1, OpenGL: 2.1 Mesa 7.2, Compiler: GCC 4.3.2, File-System: ext3

Ubuntu 9.04
OS: Ubuntu 9.04, Kernel: 2.6.28-11-generic (x86_64), Desktop: GNOME 2.26.1, Display Server: X.Org Server 1.6.0, Display Driver: cirrus 1.2.1, OpenGL: 2.1 Mesa 7.4, Compiler: GCC 4.3.3, File-System: ext3

Ubuntu 9.10
OS: Ubuntu 9.10, Kernel: 2.6.31-14-generic (x86_64), Desktop: GNOME 2.28.1, Display Server: X.Org Server 1.6.4, Display Driver: cirrus 1.3.1, OpenGL: 2.1 Mesa 7.6, Compiler: GCC 4.4.1, File-System: ext4

Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS
OS: Ubuntu 10.04, Kernel: 2.6.32-24-generic (x86_64), Desktop: GNOME 2.30.2, Display Server: X.Org Server 1.7.6, Display Driver: cirrus 1.3.2, Compiler: GCC 4.4.3, File-System: ext4

Ubuntu 10.10
OS: Ubuntu 10.10, Kernel: 2.6.35-22-generic (x86_64), Desktop: GNOME 2.32.0, Display Server: X.Org Server 1.9.0, Display Driver: cirrus 1.3.2, Compiler: GCC 4.4.5, File-System: ext4

The benchmarks we ran using the Phoronix Test Suite on each of these virtualized guests included Apache, PostgreSQL, PostMark, FS-Mark, Gcrypt, OpenSSL, NAS Parallel Benchmarks, TTSIOD 3D Renderer, Bullet Physics, C-Ray, FFmpeg, x264, and 7-Zip compression.