KVM Virtualization Performance With Linux 2.6.31

The NAS Parallel Benchmarks also use OpenMP and again KVM taking advantage of AMD-V virtualization led to similar results as its host in a Linux virtualized environment.

Like many of the other CPU-bound tests, the OpenSSL performance was also similar.

Looking at how well a ray-tracing engine can run in a virtualized environment, we ran Tachyon. The Tachyon performance was effectively the same in both environments.

The disk benchmarks took a large hit when running Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" within a virtual machine using KVM, but that is to no surprise considering the setup. SQLite though did extremely well in a virtualized setting due to a bug within EXT4 / Linux 2.6.31. Benchmarking Apache with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine took a huge performance hit, but experiencing smaller losses were the timed Apache compilation, dcraw image conversion, timed MAFFT alignment, and NAS Parallel Benchmarks. Running at about the same speed between the host OS and the KVM guest was Crafty, LAME MP3 encoding, GraphicsMagick, John The Ripper, OpenSSL, and Tachyon. Stay tuned for more Linux virtualization tests, or run your own using the Phoronix Test Suite.