decent hardware(enterprise), but vm windows still feels a bit slugish? - how to verify proper performance?

[kladze]

Hi all,

i'm all to new proxmox so bare with me with my very limited knowlegde.

I have recently installed proxmox 8 on my server

dell r730
cpu: 2x 2680v4 xeon (14 core/28 threads each)
320gb ecc ram
root disk, 1 disk zfs - Intel D3-S4610 Series - model: SSDSC2KG480G8 ( purely for proxmox )
1x nvme (vm disk) - intel p4510 2tb enterprise datacenter disk, setup as zfs single disk... zfs sync is set to disabled! lz4 compression

i have 4 windows vm's

basically identical setup, just name difference - all located on the nvme disk - here is the config of a vm

qm config 101
agent: 1 balloon: 4096 bios: ovmf boot: order=scsi0 cores: 4 cpu: host efidisk0: nvme:vm-101-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=1M machine: pc-q35-8.0 memory: 8192 meta: creation-qemu=8.0.2,ctime=1697109004 name: srv-dc01 net0: virtio=52:73:E6:DA:3C:CA,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1 numa: 1 ostype: win11 scsi0: nvme:vm-101-disk-1,backup=0,discard=on,iothread=1,size=100G,ssd=1 scsihw: virtio-scsi-single smbios1: uuid=b1a71565-ef34-46d7-874b-cbc8fad4b0a0 sockets: 2 tpmstate0: nvme:vm-101-disk-2,size=4M,version=v2.0 vmgenid: 5dae6566-c779-4e01-bae0-56f89fc0a1ac

however when doing stuff in the vm's i feel like the vm's still feel a bit slow in performing stuff and just a bit slugish in general.. is this me just being wierd or am i actually getting the expected performance?

im a bit unsure how to test if im getting the expected performance considering the hardware i have, which i would say is quite decent - how can i go about testing this?
oh and virtio drivers are installed for everything, no missing drivers in device manager in the windows vm's


i hope you guys can help me to put this to rest as im really unsure what to expect

 

[_gabriel]

iirc, win11 run on nested virtualization because of its Windows Security Core Isolation enabled by default.
try disable it then reboot
then set bcdedit.exe /set hypervisorlaunchtype off in elevated Terminal.

 

[kladze]

iirc, win11 run on nested virtualization because of its Windows Security Core Isolation enabled by default.
try disable it then reboot
then set bcdedit.exe /set hypervisorlaunchtype off in elevated Terminal.

im actually running windows server 2022 (4 of them) but maybe this still applies?

 

[_gabriel]

not by default in server os, iirc
is hyperv role enabled ?

 

[kladze]

not by default in server os, iirc
is hyperv role enabled ?

core isolation is disabled by default, and hyper v role is not enabled.

 

[Dunuin]

CPU isn't that decent when it comes to single-threaded performance (like a 13 years old desktop CPU).

Not sure how you define "feels a bit slugish" but with a passed through GPU at least working with the GUI feels way more snappy.

 

[_gabriel]

indeed graphics isn't the fastest even over RDP,
(edited, after re-read Dunuin famous member) Xeon E5-2680v4 remains old, even if it's a 2016 era cpu.
I would set mitigations=off in kernel option with this old cpu.
+ test and compare between other Windows versions Win10 / Win11 / Server 2019 / even Server 2012R2.

 

[kladze]

CPU isn't that decent when it comes to single-threaded performance (like a 13 years old desktop CPU).

Not sure how you define "feels a bit slugish" but with a passed through GPU at least working with the GUI feels way more snappy.

not really sure where on earth you are getting those 13 years from..

 

[kladze]

indeed graphics isn't the fastest even over RDP,
(edited, after re-read Dunuin famous member) Xeon E5-2680v4 remains old, even if it's a 2016 era cpu.
I would set mitigations=off in kernel option with this old cpu.
+ test and compare between other Windows versions Win10 / Win11 / Server 2019 / even Server 2012R2.

running with server 2022, cpu is running host - sure it has some years on its back, no worries and im fully well aware of that. but even if you look at the xeon scaleable cpu's bronze,silver,gold,plat... 6100 and 6200 series both are still 14nm..

yes im aware its the 14nm+++++++++++ refinements with intel having issues with going down in nm process .. but architecturally wise not much have changed over those 6-7 generations of cpu's other than some slight changes, no major redesigns, that came with 6300 series when they went to 10nm, and 6300 series is from 2021..

heck at my work we manage roughly 15.000 windows servers and 4000k linux servers, we have ALOT of servers with v4 xeon still, gold 6100 and 6200 series

but yea i will try with mitigations=off, thanks for the suggestion

 

[Dunuin]

not really sure where on earth you are getting those 13 years from..

Nearly the same (+/- 5%) single-threaded cinebench/geekbench performance as a 13 years old i7 3770.

 

[kladze]

Nearly the same (+/- 5%) single-threaded cinebench/geekbench performance as a 13 years old i7 3770.

while that may be true... you are just forgetting that 3770 cpu is running at 3.4 ghz while the xeon is 1ghz lower! (2.4ghz) - if i took the xeon to 3.4ghz aswell, it would be completely different

 

[Dunuin]

while that may be true... you are just forgetting that 3770 cpu is running at 3.4 ghz while the xeon is 1ghz lower! (2.4ghz) - if i took the xeon to 3.4ghz aswell, it would be completely different

Yes, but whats the point? You can't overclock that Xeon to 3.4GHz. And running both at the stock boost clockings this is what you get. If you argue that way another model like the E5 2667v4 would feel snappier that could actually clock at 3.2 to 3.6 GHz. But you only got the model with lots of slow cores instead of few fast cores.

 

[nsc117]

First you need a quantitative indicator to measure whether it is fast or slow