Bare metal hypervisors: a group test

David Jones ZDNet Australia

Published: 01 Jun 2009

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Go to section: Introduction How we tested Accessibility Manageability Test results Summary

Test results

The table and graphs below display the test results: the baseline physical server is shaded in pink, while the host-based VMware Server 2 virtualisation environment is shaded a darker blue than the bare-metal hypervisors.

All times in seconds.

As you can see, the bare metal hypervisors all performed well and the results were quite close — with one exception. XenServer, unlike VMware and Hyper-V, has the ability to support up to eight vCPUs per VM, and as you can see from the Sungard test with eight vCPUs, XenServer performed exceptionally well. However, it's worth noting that its vCPUs present themselves to the Windows OS as physical CPUs, which means for eight CPUs to be selected you'll need Windows Server Enterprise Edition running on your VM.

Some interesting conclusions can be drawn from the results:

• The VMware Server 2 hosted environment only supports up to two vCPUs based on performance results. Bare metal hypervisors outperform host-based hypervisors significantly.
• XenServer, with its eight-vCPU support, performs very similarly to bare metal; the hypervisor overhead is minimal.
• In the Sungard test, XenServer with four vCPUs marginally outperforms the others, followed by Hyper-V and then VMware.
• XenServer seems to have an issue with the latest Intel NIC installed in the server, as copy-up times were unacceptably long. This was also tested on another server in-house with a different NIC (still Intel) and it worked perfectly.
• Two VMs running concurrently had minimal impact on the other VM for all the tested platforms.

Verdict
The results show that there's little difference between each of the bare-metal hypervisors. The host-based version tested is considerably slower on all tests, so choosing a bare-metal hypervisor over a host-based makes a lot of sense when hosting a server environment.

The performance difference is slightly in favour of XenServer, followed closely by Hyper-V and then VMware. However, if you wish to virtualise Citrix XenApp (presentation server), for example, then XenServer would be the bare metal hypervisor of choice.

When choosing a bare metal hypervisor you should first look at the workloads you're planning to run on the virtualised server, what your current environment is using, and what expertise will be available. If you have strong in-house Microsoft skills, Hyper-V will make the most sense. Similarly, if your IT department has Linux skills, then Red Hat or Xen will make more sense.

Forced to choose, we'd put VMware in the runner's up position, with Citrix XenServer getting our vote. It's easy to acquire, and the XenCenter Windows console provides good management with no need to upgrade when you decide to migrate to the fully-paid edition of the product.

 

Go to section: Introduction How we tested Accessibility Manageability Test results Summary

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