Windows 11 guest - performance benchmarks?

[thomas-oc]

I'm new to Proxmox and wondering if there is any performance benchmark repository available. I've configured a Windows 11 VM with the configuration parameters as shown below on a Proxmox Host with AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core CPU and two Nvme PCI Samsung 980 Pro 2TB (ZFS mirrored), VirtIO SCSI/cache=writeback. 10Gbe Asus XG-C100F Network Card.

It seems to me, I get reasonable Disk I/O & network throughput results, but I'm not sure if I am on the right direction with the settings or if there are any other recommendations (see attached crystaldiskmark & speedtest ookia results).

Host parameters:



Windows 11 VM-Config:


CrytalDisMark Results:


Network Results Speedtest Ookia (Win App version):

 

[toomanylogins]

I dont see anywhere near your what you have. Does the zfs mirror vs nvme qcow2 make that much difference ?

 

[Dunuin]

Most GUI tools like are quite useless. CrystalDiskMark for example will only do async writes, so you are only benchmarking your RAM and caches and not your actual disks. Fio would be way better but only CLI and you need to know what you are doing to get useful results.
Speedtest is also not great for benchmarking network performance. Better would be iperf3, but again: only CLI and you need to know how to use it the right way to get useful results.

Do some really hard fio tests and you will see that under specific workloads your disk performance will drop into the single digit MB/s or even into the KB/s range. So 8126 MB/s write performance sounds great, but the same setup might drop to below 1 MB/s when writing some hundreds GBs of 4K random sync writes.
It always depends on your workload and what you want to measure.

 

[Matthias.]

So one thing I see is that you're not using cpu type host.
We have some performance tweaks in the wiki: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Performance_Tweaks#OS_Specific

 

[toomanylogins]

Thanks for the replies. I accept that the Crystal is not accurate but it's a big difference.
The guest is my virtualised desktop which I migrated from hardware. The server is running a variety of development environments guests with grapics passthrough and I am switching between guests using a KVM. The whole setup is great for dev and testing but I have noticed my primary development win 10 guest is a bit sluggish.
When I switch the guest to host CPU windows gives me blue screen on boot. I will try to fix that and run the tests again.

 

[Dunuin]

In my opinion Windows feels way snappier when you passthrough a GPU to a VM. Especially if you then directly connect a monitor to that GPU instead of using RDP. But even over RDP its nice when all graphics doesn't have to be rendered in software by the CPU.

 

[toomanylogins]

I agree. That is what I have kvm is the usb keyboard switch not the virtual machine

 

[arxaios]

You managed to have a Windows like VM on your Proxmox Server ?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ohhhh that is incredible news because I did not manage to do anything on linux like systems to VMs in proxmox..!! The system after 1 Week is freezing with no reason at all ..!! See my other posts and you will understand. !
But if you manage to have your Proxmox Server up 24/seven without any glitches and with Windows VM on it , PLEASE DO POST BACK.! Thank you.

 

[toomanylogins]

I am on 7.0.11 and it runs perfectly. I have mix on windows 10, win server 2016 and 2012, linux server and Mac Catalina. The MAc and Win guests use passthrough for usb and GPU.
All runs 14 hours a day stops and starts on schedule. It was running 24/7 with no problems now saving energy. Wary of upgrading to latest kernal at moment. Backups to PBS are great.

 

[Dunuin]

You managed to have a Windows like VM on your Proxmox Server ?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ohhhh that is incredible news because I did not manage to do anything on linux like systems to VMs in proxmox..!! The system after 1 Week is freezing with no reason at all ..!! See my other posts and you will understand. !
But if you manage to have your Proxmox Server up 24/seven without any glitches and with Windows VM on it , PLEASE DO POST BACK.! Thank you.

The key is to use reliable hardware. Not too old (maybe up to 8 years, because hardware degrades and required features are missing) and not too new (atleast 1 or 2 years old hardware so drivers are supported and well matured). And enterprise hardware helps with compatability, stability and PCI passthrough. So getting new consumer hardware isn't a good idea if you want a stable 24/7 system.