[TUTORIAL] Deep dive into Storage Controllers and Performance of Windows on Proxmox - Continued

[bbgeek17]

Hello All,

Here's another technote in the Windows on Proxmox series. In Part 4, we quantify and compare IOPS, bandwidth, and latency across all storage controllers and AIO modes under ideal conditions (i.e., "unloaded"), utilizing Windows 2022 running on Proxmox with iSCSI shared block storage. This is the traditional "performance-focused" view of the world. However, some interesting nuances exist for the storage performance geeks counting microseconds.

You can find part 4 here: Performance study of Windows Guests on Shared Block Storage

TLDR: Here are the key takeaways from part 4

• The virtio-scsi controller with aio=native and an iothread stands out as the top performer overall. Opting for virtio-scsi with aio=iouring is also viable, although it tends to lag slightly in bandwidth-oriented tests.
• While the IOPS and latency data show critical distinctions in performance among storage controllers, all controllers and AIO combinations deliver acceptable bandwidth.
• virtio-blk offers a slight QD1 performance advantage, delivering a 2-microsecond improvement over virtio-scsi, likely attributed to reduced protocol overhead in the driver. However, virtio-blk fails to deliver competitive IOPS scores.
• The most performant storage controller with native Windows 2022 driver support is vmware-pvscsi. SATA and IDE deliver noticeably poor performance.
• Compared to vmware-pvscsi, virtio-scsi exhibits significant performance advantages, including a 157% increase in IOPS, a 14% reduction in QD1 latency, and a 67% decrease in QD128 latency.

If you are looking for more details and comprehensive efficiency analysis, here are the previous parts:

Windows Storage Controllers, AIO modes, and Efficiency Metrics.

• Part 1: https://kb.blockbridge.com/technote/proxmox-optimizing-windows-server/part-1.html

Efficiency Data for IOPS-Constrained Workloads

• Part 2: https://kb.blockbridge.com/technote/proxmox-optimizing-windows-server/part-2.html

Efficiency Data for Bandwidth-Constrained Workloads

• Part 3: https://kb.blockbridge.com/technote/proxmox-optimizing-windows-server/part-3.html

If you find this helpful, please let me know. Questions, comments, and corrections are always welcome.

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Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox