New Benchmarks: Xen vs. KVM vs. VirtualBox

[Technologov]

VirtualBox 4.1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... nkvm&num=1

VirtualBox 4.0
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... box4&num=1

[sej7278]

So VirtualBox came 2nd to KVM on everything, pretty much what I'd expect.

I'm still not switching until KVM gets a nicer UI than what is a glorified VNC server, does it even have bridged networking yet or is it still all NAT?

I'd also like to see what non-Linux guests perform like, as if you're just going to do Linux-on-Linux then you might as well use OpenVZ which is essentially the same speed as bare metal.

[tjwatts]

I'm still not switching until KVM gets a nicer UI than what is a glorified VNC server

For management, there is convirt which looks interesting.

For transmission of the basic raw screen, what else would you suggest? You only need this util you get the guest OS up, then you can put local direct access in, eg Remote Desktop for windows guests.

does it even have bridged networking yet or is it still all NAT

It's a slight PITA, but bridged works fine ("shared") - IF you setup a bridge device as your main host networking device and put your primary NIC or WIFI device in that bridge as a member. It cannot do it automatically as, say, VMWare Workstation can.

I'd also like to see what non-Linux guests perform like, as if you're just going to do Linux-on-Linux then you might as well use OpenVZ which is essentially the same speed as bare metal.

I've found performance reasonable for Windows guests on linux - not much different to VMWare Workstation (old versions) and similar to KVM.
Of course OpenVZ will win, because it is a fancy chroot jail, so avoids huge amounts of baggage if you happen to be running a load of guest OSes that are the same.

Cheers

Tim

[Technologov]

For me a 10% performance penalty (as seen in benchmarks) is an acceptable trade for a cross-platform support, that VBox provides. (read: Windows host support)

If VBox was 4x times slower than KVM on most workloads, it would be a problem.