How do you measure virtualization performance?

1 Why measure virtualization performance?

Measuring virtualization performance is important for several reasons. First, it can help you identify and troubleshoot any issues that may affect the availability, reliability, and responsiveness of your virtualized systems. Second, it can help you optimize the allocation and utilization of your physical resources, such as CPU, memory, disk, and network. Third, it can help you plan and manage your capacity and scalability needs, as well as your costs and benefits of virtualization.

2 What to measure in virtualization performance?

Measuring virtualization performance involves two levels: the host level and the guest level. The host level is the physical machine that runs the virtualization software, also known as the hypervisor or VMM. The guest level is composed of virtual machines (VMs) that run on top of the hypervisor, each with its own OS and applications. You can measure various metrics at both levels, such as CPU usage (percentage of CPU time consumed by the host or guest), memory usage (amount of physical or virtual memory allocated and used by the host or guest), disk usage (amount of disk space and throughput used by the host or guest), and network usage (amount of network bandwidth and latency used by the host or guest).

3 How to measure virtualization performance?

When measuring virtualization performance, there are different tools and methods available depending on the type and vendor of your virtualization software. Commonly used tools include built-in tools like VMware's vSphere Performance Charts, Microsoft's Hyper-V Manager and Performance Monitor, and Oracle's VirtualBox Manager and Guest Additions. Third-party tools such as SolarWinds Virtualization Manager, Nagios XI, and Zabbix can also be used to complement or enhance the built-in tools. Benchmarking tools like SPECvirt, VMmark, and Vdbench can simulate and test different workloads and scenarios on your virtualized systems to measure performance. These benchmarking tools can also be used to compare the performance of different virtualization software, configurations, and platforms.

4 How to improve virtualization performance?

Measuring virtualization performance is not enough; you also need to act on the results and improve your virtualization performance. To do this, you should choose the right virtualization software and hardware for your needs and budget that supports hardware-assisted virtualization, as well as have enough quality resources for your virtualization needs. Additionally, you should configure and optimize your virtualization settings and parameters according to your performance goals and best practices. This includes avoiding overcommitting or underutilizing your resources, using thin provisioning for your virtual disks, and enabling network offloading for your network adapters. Lastly, it is important to monitor and troubleshoot your virtualization performance regularly to detect and resolve any issues that may arise, as well as test and verify any performance improvements.

5 How to learn more about virtualization performance?

If you're looking to learn more about virtualization performance, there are a plethora of resources and courses available online. We recommend taking Virtualization Performance: Concepts and Examples, a free online course from VMware that covers the performance metrics, tools, and best practices for VMware products. Additionally, Virtualization Essentials by Matthew Portnoy provides a comprehensive and practical introduction to virtualization, including the history, types, benefits, and challenges of virtualization. Finally, Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User is a free online course from Google that teaches you how to use and manage different operating systems, as well as how to utilize virtualization tools and techniques to run multiple operating systems on your computer.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?