Ubuntu 12.04 KVM/Xen Virtualization: Intel vs. AMD

All testing was facilitated by the Phoronix Test Suite so that all testing was fully automated and easily reproducible in a turnkey manner with results then being hosted on OpenBenchmarking.org. These results are within the OpenBenchmarking.org 1203269-SU-KVMVIRT9501 result file, so from the Phoronix Test Suite if you wish to reproduce these tests or see how your system's bare metal or virtualization performance compares to this Sandy-E and Bulldozer hardware, it's just a matter of a command as simple as phoronix-test-suite benchmark 1203269-SU-KVMVIRT9501.

With the results in this article, all of the data was normalized against the bare metal results for each system to show how the virtualization performance compares in a relative, higher-is-better format. (Those wishing to look at the raw results or to manipulate the data in other means, all of the original results are obviously available via OpenBenchmarking.org.)