RE: Performance of Virtual Server vs Hyper-V?

In preparation for our user group event on September 29, we may want to show
some performance data for Hyper-V. I could run some of these benchmarks on
the systems we will be demonstrating. However, I won't be able to run these
until sometime in September, due to other projects in the queue ahead of this.

My servers are dual-Xeon, quad-core with 32GB of memory, with internal SAS
drive array and connections to iSCSI and Fibre Channel disk storage. What
applications are you running on your VMs? How much memory are you allocating
to each of your VMs?

"markm75" wrote:

> Currently, we run about 10 VM's on a 2003 x64 box.. with 12GB of memory..
> this box is a dual CPU quad core xeon 2.4GHZ box with a SATA2 32mb cache
> raid6 array, consisting of 8, 500GB drives.. Our network has about 40 users
> and 35 machines roughly.. i dont think our sql box gets hit that frequently
> either..
>
> The performance Passmark rating of this box on the D drive array test is
> about 3850 (This is with passmark software located at
> http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm there is also a free trial)
>
> For the Virtual Servers, even with 10 of them.. i get about 565 for an
> average on each one (this is the equivalent of a dual core system)..
> technically (i think) this is about 90% slower than the physical machine, if
> you go by passmark ratings.. which maybe i shoudlnt ..
>
> Things run fine.. i run virtually: Office Comm server, both Domain
> controllers (anyone else doing DC's completely virtually?) with one on this
> server and another DC on another virtual server that only runs a DC, i also
> run Virtual Machine manager (guessing i wont need this with hyperV).. I run
> MS Dynamics Great Plains, a sql 2005 box with 7 virtual instances..
> sharepoint virtually.. Team Foundation server.. Configuration Manager..
> antivirus trendmicro box.. etc..
>
> In the case of the virtual SQL, i've installed the sql portion of say the
> configuration manager or dynamics in these instances (seperately).. anyone
> else doing this?
>
> So my question is..
>
> How is the performance of Hyper-V.. either barebones hyper-V or the software
> overlayed Hypervisor..
>
> Would anyone be willing to run the passmark test on the Host machine then on
> a virtual server in either of these cases?
>
> Is it really 85% that of the host machine with the barebones.. what is it
> with the software version ontop of 2008 server?
>
> How is everyone else's performance with VS 2005? Anyone running actual file
> systems/non-passthrough inside a VM rather than on a host?
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance..
>
>

"Dennis29" wrote:

> In preparation for our user group event on September 29, we may want to show
> some performance data for Hyper-V. I could run some of these benchmarks on
> the systems we will be demonstrating. However, I won't be able to run these
> until sometime in September, due to other projects in the queue ahead of this.
>
> My servers are dual-Xeon, quad-core with 32GB of memory, with internal SAS
> drive array and connections to iSCSI and Fibre Channel disk storage. What
> applications are you running on your VMs? How much memory are you allocating
> to each of your VMs?
>

That would be great, particularly comparison of the same system on Virtual
Server vs Hypervisor.. but either way that is good info..

I allocate anywhere from 1GB to 4GB depending on the application.. I isolate
applications per individual VM's..

IE: Configuration Manager 2007 on a VM called VMCM01 (say 1 or 2GB
memory).. then all sql instances on a sql VM called VMSQL01 with 4GB memory..

Then another with antivirus software.. call it VSAV01 with say 1GB of memory..

usually i do fixed discs, some i do dynamic.. though with our 40 user load,
i could see a difference in performance, even on the sql box.

Curious.. what type of motherboard are you using giving you 32GB? Our next
board was going to be one that could do more than 16GB.. the Supermicro
motherboard we use now cant do more than 16GB.

Thanks

These servers are Dell PowerEdge 2900 that support up to 48GB RAM. I
currently have 32GB but may increase them to 48GB.

Are you running any 64-bit VMs or applications? I usually run 64-bit
all-around and can allocate more than 4GB to a VM if needed. SQL 2005 and
Exchange 2007 like lots of memory.

"markm75" wrote:

>
>
> "Dennis29" wrote:
>
> > In preparation for our user group event on September 29, we may want to show
> > some performance data for Hyper-V. I could run some of these benchmarks on
> > the systems we will be demonstrating. However, I won't be able to run these
> > until sometime in September, due to other projects in the queue ahead of this.
> >
> > My servers are dual-Xeon, quad-core with 32GB of memory, with internal SAS
> > drive array and connections to iSCSI and Fibre Channel disk storage. What
> > applications are you running on your VMs? How much memory are you allocating
> > to each of your VMs?
> >
>
> That would be great, particularly comparison of the same system on Virtual
> Server vs Hypervisor.. but either way that is good info..
>
> I allocate anywhere from 1GB to 4GB depending on the application.. I isolate
> applications per individual VM's..
>
> IE: Configuration Manager 2007 on a VM called VMCM01 (say 1 or 2GB
> memory).. then all sql instances on a sql VM called VMSQL01 with 4GB memory..
>
> Then another with antivirus software.. call it VSAV01 with say 1GB of memory..
>
> usually i do fixed discs, some i do dynamic.. though with our 40 user load,
> i could see a difference in performance, even on the sql box.
>
> Curious.. what type of motherboard are you using giving you 32GB? Our next
> board was going to be one that could do more than 16GB.. the Supermicro
> motherboard we use now cant do more than 16GB.
>
> Thanks

"Dennis29" wrote:

> These servers are Dell PowerEdge 2900 that support up to 48GB RAM. I
> currently have 32GB but may increase them to 48GB.
>
> Are you running any 64-bit VMs or applications? I usually run 64-bit
> all-around and can allocate more than 4GB to a VM if needed. SQL 2005 and
> Exchange 2007 like lots of memory.
>


As of now no 64bit VM's.. we are still at Virtual Server 2005 R2 sp1 etc..
once we get this new box in, ill be putting server 2008 on it, then hyper-V
so we can have 64bit guests..

Ideally i was hoping to wait for the barebones hyper-v.. but i havent seen
an eta on when that will be out, or how much improvement in performance you
would gain over the standard hyper-v that gets installed ontop of 2008 server.

I'll keep you posted. I expect to be able to run these tests probably early
to mid-September. If you're in or planning to be in Denver on Sept. 29, you
can see these systems in person at our user group event
(http://www.rmwtug.org/Virtualization_Event.htm).

"markm75" wrote:

>
>
> "Dennis29" wrote:
>
> > These servers are Dell PowerEdge 2900 that support up to 48GB RAM. I
> > currently have 32GB but may increase them to 48GB.
> >
> > Are you running any 64-bit VMs or applications? I usually run 64-bit
> > all-around and can allocate more than 4GB to a VM if needed. SQL 2005 and
> > Exchange 2007 like lots of memory.
> >
>
>
> As of now no 64bit VM's.. we are still at Virtual Server 2005 R2 sp1 etc..
> once we get this new box in, ill be putting server 2008 on it, then hyper-V
> so we can have 64bit guests..
>
> Ideally i was hoping to wait for the barebones hyper-v.. but i havent seen
> an eta on when that will be out, or how much improvement in performance you
> would gain over the standard hyper-v that gets installed ontop of 2008 server.
>
>

"Dennis29" wrote:

> I'll keep you posted. I expect to be able to run these tests probably early
> to mid-September. If you're in or planning to be in Denver on Sept. 29, you
> can see these systems in person at our user group event
> (http://www.rmwtug.org/Virtualization_Event.htm).
>
> "markm75" wrote:
>


Thanks for that info.. look forward to hearing some stats when you get to it.

Curious.. on our server right now its dual, quad core 5000 series xeon at
2.5GHZ (667mhz ram) with sata II drives (8 of them in raid6, seems very fast,
3 TB)..

Your 2900 dell.. is it more than 2 CPU's.. are you running the 5000 series
Xeons?

I'm guessing the 5000 series should be good enough in this new server i'm
specing out right now.. sticking with SATA II's again (with only 40-100
users, i figure the cost of SAS isnt worth it).

Like i mentioned, even with 10 instances, things still seem ok.

Do you think that 5000 series Xeon is still a good choice on the new server
(dual quad core again).. though once on the new server, ill probably split
the load from the old to new, maybe 7 at most on each data center server.

I have made the switch to a motherboard (for $80 more) that can do 128GB
(supermicro).. I'm able to build this whole (3u sas/sata, 16 bay) system with
16GB of memory and 800mhz memory and areca controller for $4390, compared to
some of these dells or hps that run $6k or more. (our budget is basically
$4500 or less)

Any thoughts?

Each of my Dell 2900 servers have two Intel Xeon E5345 (quad-core, 2.33 Ghz,
1333 MHz FSB, 667 MHz ECC RAM) for a total of 8 cores and have done very well
with every workload I've thrown at them. They also have internal SAS disk
arrays (each drive is 73GB, 15K RPM). These types of disk are better for SQL
Server and Exchange Server workloads. I also use iSCSI and Fibre Channel
external disk storage for projects that require large amounts of storage.

The Intel Xeon 5xxx series in your systems should do well, especially if
they are the 53xx or 54xx series, which are quad-core. The 50xx and 51xx are
dual-core only, with smaller L2 caches and generally slower FSB.

The Intel Xeon 7xxx series support up to 32 processors and the 73xx are
quad-core. If you have massive CPU processing needs, then go with one of
those. I would only do this if you have very large workloads and you've
measured the CPU utilization on your current systems and found them severely
lacking.

Depending on your workloads, the SATA drives could be a bottleneck... It
just depends on which is more important to you: capacity or performance. I've
found that systems with SAS drives get significantly better performance than
the same systems with SATA drives (I have personally tested this). Also,
you'll generally get better performance with RAID10 than RAID6, but it takes
more drives to build a RAID10 disk group of equivalent capacity.

Once you start going with 64-bit O.S. and applications, then your ability to
add memory is quite easy and simple to manage (no special switches, PAE,
etc.) and your performance usually improves because the O.S. and applications
have more room for caching and less physical I/O is needed. The good news
here is that memory has come down in price quite a bit over the last year.
Memory is especially important for virtual machines.

Obviously the costs have to factor into all of this and you can only get as
much as your budget will allow. If you have a Dell/HP/IBM rep or reseller,
ask them to prepare a quote for a system. Depending on how much business you
do with any of them, these quotes will often be less than the list price
shown on their web sites.



"markm75" wrote:

>
>
> "Dennis29" wrote:
>
> > I'll keep you posted. I expect to be able to run these tests probably early
> > to mid-September. If you're in or planning to be in Denver on Sept. 29, you
> > can see these systems in person at our user group event
> > (http://www.rmwtug.org/Virtualization_Event.htm).
> >
> > "markm75" wrote:
> >
>
>
> Thanks for that info.. look forward to hearing some stats when you get to it.
>
> Curious.. on our server right now its dual, quad core 5000 series xeon at
> 2.5GHZ (667mhz ram) with sata II drives (8 of them in raid6, seems very fast,
> 3 TB)..
>
> Your 2900 dell.. is it more than 2 CPU's.. are you running the 5000 series
> Xeons?
>
> I'm guessing the 5000 series should be good enough in this new server i'm
> specing out right now.. sticking with SATA II's again (with only 40-100
> users, i figure the cost of SAS isnt worth it).
>
> Like i mentioned, even with 10 instances, things still seem ok.
>
> Do you think that 5000 series Xeon is still a good choice on the new server
> (dual quad core again).. though once on the new server, ill probably split
> the load from the old to new, maybe 7 at most on each data center server.
>
> I have made the switch to a motherboard (for $80 more) that can do 128GB
> (supermicro).. I'm able to build this whole (3u sas/sata, 16 bay) system with
> 16GB of memory and 800mhz memory and areca controller for $4390, compared to
> some of these dells or hps that run $6k or more. (our budget is basically
> $4500 or less)
>
> Any thoughts?

"Dennis29" wrote:

> Each of my Dell 2900 servers have two Intel Xeon E5345 (quad-core, 2.33 Ghz,
> 1333 MHz FSB, 667 MHz ECC RAM) for a total of 8 cores and have done very well
> with every workload I've thrown at them. They also have internal SAS disk
> arrays (each drive is 73GB, 15K RPM). These types of disk are better for SQL
> Server and Exchange Server workloads. I also use iSCSI and Fibre Channel
> external disk storage for projects that require large amounts of storage.
>
> The Intel Xeon 5xxx series in your systems should do well, especially if
> they are the 53xx or 54xx series, which are quad-core. The 50xx and 51xx are
> dual-core only, with smaller L2 caches and generally slower FSB.
>
> The Intel Xeon 7xxx series support up to 32 processors and the 73xx are
> quad-core. If you have massive CPU processing needs, then go with one of
> those. I would only do this if you have very large workloads and you've
> measured the CPU utilization on your current systems and found them severely
> lacking.
>
>

Sounds like CPU/FSB/Memory speed wise, our systems match up. Thanks for the
info.

I did actually try raid10 with 4 drives on each side at one point, but i ran
passmark diskmark tests and found that the raid6 was faster (for some reason,
perhaps because i didnt have enough disks).

I guess with our 40 user load, usually maybe 10 sql hits at a time, the SATA
drives will be ok for now.. I'm pretty sure the same 3TB (one big array) SAS
setup is about 4x the cost of the sata, hence they are unlikely to go for
that idea, though i'd prefer it as well.

You mention the iSCSI external discs.. is this a SAN?

I was trying to convince management that we should start looking into
replacing our 6TB of free space, scattered over 3 servers into a SAN in the
near future, but the prices seem daunting. IE: it seems that a dual
controller, with the ability to go beyond the initial 8 or 16 drive chasis
(chain them?), is pretty pricey.. in the 15K range. They did make some
hitachi closed systems that would have to be duplicated and replaced with
larger systems as they ran out for around $7k i think, but even those i
believe were 1 controller models.

I figured if we had a san, we could go with "blade" or smaller chasis and
save on actual server cost, but still be able to run Hyper-V/Virtual Server
work loads off of the designated LUNs on the SAN.. or perhaps this would be
too resource intensive for a san, especially a SATA based one.

Yes, iSCSI is one form of a SAN. The benefits of a SAN are that you can have
your primary storage available to all the application servers in a big "pool"
of storage. The storage is not "captive" to any one server so that as storage
needs change, storage is allocated where it is needed. Also, when a server
needs to be replaced, you don't have to move the data from the old server to
the new server, it's just there on the SAN.

In Logical Disk Manager, SAN storage (iSCSI or Fibre Channel) appears to the
host server the same way that internal direct attached storage does. So the
applications and users don't know (or care) that the storage is on a SAN.

There are many good SAN storage solutions that use iSCSI as the interface. I
did a large iSCSI deployment white paper for Microsoft last year that is
available on Microsoft's website and on mine at:
http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Dep...s_2007-06.html.
This paper goes into all the theory of iSCSI, shows how to deploy various
Microsoft applications on iSCSI, then shows five different iSCSI storage
hardware solutions and how to deploy them. Feel free to download this paper.


"markm75" wrote:

>
>
> "Dennis29" wrote:
>
> > Each of my Dell 2900 servers have two Intel Xeon E5345 (quad-core, 2.33 Ghz,
> > 1333 MHz FSB, 667 MHz ECC RAM) for a total of 8 cores and have done very well
> > with every workload I've thrown at them. They also have internal SAS disk
> > arrays (each drive is 73GB, 15K RPM). These types of disk are better for SQL
> > Server and Exchange Server workloads. I also use iSCSI and Fibre Channel
> > external disk storage for projects that require large amounts of storage.
> >
> > The Intel Xeon 5xxx series in your systems should do well, especially if
> > they are the 53xx or 54xx series, which are quad-core. The 50xx and 51xx are
> > dual-core only, with smaller L2 caches and generally slower FSB.
> >
> > The Intel Xeon 7xxx series support up to 32 processors and the 73xx are
> > quad-core. If you have massive CPU processing needs, then go with one of
> > those. I would only do this if you have very large workloads and you've
> > measured the CPU utilization on your current systems and found them severely
> > lacking.
> >
> >
>
> Sounds like CPU/FSB/Memory speed wise, our systems match up. Thanks for the
> info.
>
> I did actually try raid10 with 4 drives on each side at one point, but i ran
> passmark diskmark tests and found that the raid6 was faster (for some reason,
> perhaps because i didnt have enough disks).
>
> I guess with our 40 user load, usually maybe 10 sql hits at a time, the SATA
> drives will be ok for now.. I'm pretty sure the same 3TB (one big array) SAS
> setup is about 4x the cost of the sata, hence they are unlikely to go for
> that idea, though i'd prefer it as well.
>
> You mention the iSCSI external discs.. is this a SAN?
>
> I was trying to convince management that we should start looking into
> replacing our 6TB of free space, scattered over 3 servers into a SAN in the
> near future, but the prices seem daunting. IE: it seems that a dual
> controller, with the ability to go beyond the initial 8 or 16 drive chasis
> (chain them?), is pretty pricey.. in the 15K range. They did make some
> hitachi closed systems that would have to be duplicated and replaced with
> larger systems as they ran out for around $7k i think, but even those i
> believe were 1 controller models.
>
> I figured if we had a san, we could go with "blade" or smaller chasis and
> save on actual server cost, but still be able to run Hyper-V/Virtual Server
> work loads off of the designated LUNs on the SAN.. or perhaps this would be
> too resource intensive for a san, especially a SATA based one.
>
>

"Dennis29" wrote:

> Yes, iSCSI is one form of a SAN. The benefits of a SAN are that you can have
> your primary storage available to all the application servers in a big "pool"
> of storage. The storage is not "captive" to any one server so that as storage
> needs change, storage is allocated where it is needed. Also, when a server
> needs to be replaced, you don't have to move the data from the old server to
> the new server, it's just there on the SAN.
>
> In Logical Disk Manager, SAN storage (iSCSI or Fibre Channel) appears to the
> host server the same way that internal direct attached storage does. So the
> applications and users don't know (or care) that the storage is on a SAN.
>
> There are many good SAN storage solutions that use iSCSI as the interface. I
> did a large iSCSI deployment white paper for Microsoft last year that is
> available on Microsoft's website and on mine at:
> http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Dep...s_2007-06.html.
>

Nice, i've added that document to my list of things to explore here in the
near future.

Do you feel iSCSI to be superior to Fibre channel as a whole though?

I guess in terms of a SAN, for us, since doing Virtual hosting, SAS would be
the only way to go, especially for longevity.

With a SAS, would you still recommend having a seperate 3rd party addon
controller card, ie: Areca Pciex8 etc, as oppossed to using the built in
motherboard raid functions?

(I usually go with raid1 for the OS, then raid6 for the data, or in the case
of exchange, raid1 for the logs, raid6 for the data, but its hardware raid
off of a dedicated card, which also does the other arrays, ie: all in one).
I've not used motherboard raid as of yet.

I figured motherboard raid could save a few bucks but not sure that its
worth it.

Cheers