Benchmarks and suggestion

[faceless]

Hi there

Recently discovered Proxmox and I'm very, very pleased with it. Our ad-hoc Virtualbox setup was not up to task and so far Proxmox 1.3 seems easier to use, more reliable and faster. So thanks.

I was undecided on whether to go KVM or OpenVM, so I ran some benchmarks to see which was faster - I thought these results might be of interest to others. Benchmarks done with "hardinfo" tool on Ubuntu Hardy on 2 x Xeon 2.5Ghz (8 cores).

KVM (1 CPU):
CPU ZLib: 26287.662 (higher is better)
CPU Fibonacci: 3.091 (lower is better)
CPU MD5: 72.516 (higher is better)
CPU SHA1: 83.185 (higher is better)
CPU Blowfish: 17.717 (lower is better)
FPU Raytracing: 15.058 (lower is better)

KVM (8 CPU):
CPU ZLib: 26750.706
CPU Fibonacci: 3.095
CPU MD5: 78.812
CPU SHA1: 91.867
CPU Blowfish: 14.138
FPU Raytracing: 15.016

OpenVM (compared with 8-core KVM)
CPU ZLib: 28140.244 (5% faster)
CPU Fibonacci: 3.042 (1.2% faster)
CPU MD5: 81.934 (4% slower)
CPU SHA1: 94.349 (2.7% slower)
CPU Blowfish: 13.128 (7.2% faster)
FPU Raytracing: 14.969 (0.3% faster)

OpenVM is going to use less memory as it doesn't have its own kernel, but in terms of raw CPU speed there doesn't appear to be much in it.

While I'm here, a couple of suggestions from the POV of a small setup.

1. I'm really, really looking forward to NFS and iSCSI support in 2.0. Really.

2. Please consider optional use of Avahi for the management console - installing it and adding:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">Proxmox on %h</name>
<service>
<type>_http._tcp</type>
<port>80</port>
<txt-record>path=/</txt-record>
</service>
</service-group>

as /etc/avahi/services/apache.service means no need to remember the IP of each Proxmox installation.

3. Converting from KVM to OpenVM, would be nice to have a panel to do that which prompts for all the info required on http://howtoforge.com/how-to-convert-physical-systems-and-xen-vms-into-openvz-containers-debian-etch.

4. You have an option to upload an ISO for KVM - the option to upload a disk image (possibly converting the result with qemu-img) would means migration from another VM (VirtualBox, Parallels, VMWare) is entirely web based.

5. Please be careful naming OpenVZ virtual hosts - the ".local" prefix you seem to add by default should really only be used for Zeroconf hosts.

That's it. Thanks again.

Cheers... Mike

 

[tom]

Hi there

Recently discovered Proxmox and I'm very, very pleased with it. Our ad-hoc Virtualbox setup was not up to task and so far Proxmox 1.3 seems easier to use, more reliable and faster. So thanks.

I was undecided on whether to go KVM or OpenVM, so I ran some benchmarks to see which was faster - I thought these results might be of interest to others. Benchmarks done with "hardinfo" tool on Ubuntu Hardy on 2 x Xeon 2.5Ghz (8 cores).

KVM (1 CPU):
CPU ZLib: 26287.662 (higher is better)
CPU Fibonacci: 3.091 (lower is better)
CPU MD5: 72.516 (higher is better)
CPU SHA1: 83.185 (higher is better)
CPU Blowfish: 17.717 (lower is better)
FPU Raytracing: 15.058 (lower is better)

KVM (8 CPU):
CPU ZLib: 26750.706
CPU Fibonacci: 3.095
CPU MD5: 78.812
CPU SHA1: 91.867
CPU Blowfish: 14.138
FPU Raytracing: 15.016

OpenVM (compared with 8-core KVM)
CPU ZLib: 28140.244 (5% faster)
CPU Fibonacci: 3.042 (1.2% faster)
CPU MD5: 81.934 (4% slower)
CPU SHA1: 94.349 (2.7% slower)
CPU Blowfish: 13.128 (7.2% faster)
FPU Raytracing: 14.969 (0.3% faster)

OpenVM is going to use less memory as it doesn't have its own kernel, but in terms of raw CPU speed there doesn't appear to be much in it.

Benchmarking in a very complex task and very hard to setup a real live benchmark, but you are right CPU performance should not differ much - but in most (95%) virtualization projects CPU power is not the limiting issue, its network and even more disk IO which can differ a lot. depends what you need ... with Proxmox VE you can have both on the same host

While I'm here, a couple of suggestions from the POV of a small setup.

1. I'm really, really looking forward to NFS and iSCSI support in 2.0. Really.

Me too. A first look on ISCSI and NFS (beta) is expected in a few weeks.

2. Please consider optional use of Avahi for the management console - installing it and adding:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">Proxmox on %h</name>
<service>
<type>_http._tcp</type>
<port>80</port>
<txt-record>path=/</txt-record>
</service>
</service-group>

as /etc/avahi/services/apache.service means no need to remember the IP of each Proxmox installation.

I will take a deeper look into this but not sure about the real benefit.

3. Converting from KVM to OpenVM, would be nice to have a panel to do that which prompts for all the info required on http://howtoforge.com/how-to-convert-physical-systems-and-xen-vms-into-openvz-containers-debian-etch.

This needs basic Linux know how and deeper understanding about container virtualization technologies and it makes no sense to put this on a web interface - this will end up in endless support cases and frustrated users. People who knows the details can do it already without problems, people without deep knowledge cannot do it. That is my personal opinion here.

4. You have an option to upload an ISO for KVM - the option to upload a disk image (possibly converting the result with qemu-img) would means migration from another VM (VirtualBox, Parallels, VMWare) is entirely web based.

That's it. Thanks again.

Cheers... Mike

not top priority here but would be nice to have. thanks for sharing your thoughts.