vSphere vs. Hyper-V Metron Performance Showdown

Objectives Architecture Available metrics Challenges in virtual environments Test environment and methods Results, conclusions, and caveats

vSphere Architecture Small hypervisor footprint

Hyper-V Architecture Windows OS required - Larger footprint

vSphere Memory Management Features Transparent page sharing Memory borrowing Memory compression …and Paging

Hyper-V Memory Management Feature Dynamic memory for enlightened Windows VMs

Key Performance Metrics vSphere CPU Avg. CPU Usage in MHz CPU Ready Time Memory Avg. Memory Usage in KB Balloon KB Swap Used KB Consumed Active I/O Queue Latency Kernel Latency Device Latency Hyper-V CPU Hypervisor Logical Processor % Hypervisor Virtual Processor % Memory Dynamic Memory Balancer Dynamic Memory Pressure VM Vid Partition I/O Virtual Storage Device Virtual Network Adapter

Challenges in Virtual Environments - Clock skew - NUMA (non-uniform memory access) scheduling - Pass-through I/O - Workload definition - 32 versus 64 bit OS and applications - Where to use solid state I/O devices - Storage tiers - Hidden overhead - etc...

Test Environment -AMD Phenom II 3.3 GHz -8 GB RAM -1TB Hitachi 7200 RPM HD SATA 2 interface -1GB Onboard network interface -vSphere 5 -Hyper-V role installed on Windows 2008 R2 SP1 -2 x Windows 7 SP1 VM with integration services -2 x CentOS 6.2 VM with integration services v3.2 -Simple custom benchmarks using ActiveState perl v5.14 -cpu.pl, disk.pl, mem.pl, net.pl

Testing Methods Virtual Machines win_25, win_26 centos_11, centos_12 512MB64GB 2GB Win7 VMs configured with 512MB min, 64GB max dynamic memory. Centos VMs 2GB. 2 vCPU VMs _25, _12 configured with 2 vCPU * No Pass-Through Hyper-V Hostname Hyper30 vSphere Hostname Individual Tests - CPU w/1 process - CPU w/2 process - Disk on 1vCPU VMs - Mem on 1vCPU VMs - Net on 1vCPU VMs 2 vCPU Combined Tests All VMs running CPU and Mem. 2 vCPU VMs running Disk and Net. Each set of testing was run identically on the same host using both hypervisors

Results - Individual VM CPU Surprisingly Win7 on Hyper-V appears slower

Results - Individual VM CPU Extra vCPU no help with one process

Results - Individual VM CPU Twice the work in the same time

Results - Individual VM CPU Summary of CPU results - Windows CPU performance on Hyper-V was significantly slower - Two vCPUs running a single process had little negative impact

Results - Individual VM Disk Write a 512 MB file

Results - Individual VM Disk Read the 512 MB file

Results - Individual VM Disk Abysmal performance for Windows on Hyper-V

Results - Individual VM Disk Summary of disk I/O results - Random I/O on a Hyper-V dynamic disk had terrible performance

Results - Individual VM Memory No penalty for dynamic memory

Results - Individual VM Network Slight advantage for vSphere

Results - Combined Test And now… for the grand finale All workloads running at the same time on multiple VMs The winner is….

Results - Combined Test Draw - except disk workload on Hyper-V did not finish

CPU Details - Both platforms on the same chart

Detail CPU Metrics -vSphere VM ready time -Hyper-V Guest run time

CPU Details - vSphere CPU Ready Time

CPU Details - Hyper-V Guest Run Time

Detail Memory Metrics -vSphere memory consumed by VMs -vSphere memory ballooning -vSphere paging -Hyper-V memory balancer average pressure -Hyper-V memory current pressure -Hyper-V physical page allocation

Memory Details - vSphere Ballooning

Memory Details - vSphere Paging

Memory Details - vSphere Consumed

Memory Details - Hyper-V Memory Balancer Pressure

Memory Details - Hyper-V Memory Current Pressure

Memory Details - Hyper-V Pages Allocated

Detail I/O Metrics -vSphere queue latency -vSphere device latency -Hyper-V disk throughput

I/O Details - vSphere Queue Latency

I/O Details - vSphere Device Latency

I/O Details - Hyper-V Disk Throughput

Interesting Observations -Hyper-V dynamic memory -Hyper-V dynamic disk device performance

Dynamic Memory in action - High Pressure

Dynamic Memory in action - Low Pressure

Hyper-V - Random I/O on Dynamic Disks Chart from Hyper-V MSDN Blog by: Tony Voellm

Conclusions, Caveats, and Final Thoughts Overall the combined results were surprising close Individual tests produced some interesting findings - Windows CPU performance on Hyper-V was significantly slower - Two vCPUs running a single process had little negative impact - Random I/O on a Hyper-V dynamic disk had terrible performance - Hyper-V dynamic memory worked great with no performance penalty Caveats - Workloads were very general and dependent on perl implementation - Many more variables could be taken into account - Result may be different on other hardware Running benchmarks in your own environment should be done to help make the best informed decisions.

Thank you for attending Charles Johnson Metron-Athene Inc. vSphere vs. Hyper-V