Microsoft Hyper-V provides a hypervisor implementation that promises better performance than host-based virtualization solutions such as Microsoft Virtual Server or VMware Workstation or VMware Server. This chat provides an open discussion about performance of Hyper-V virtual machines.

Technical Community - Background Reading

Hyper-V Function and Features Chat Transcript 8/26/08
Hyper-V VM Benchmark Surprise

Chat Transcript

	DELL-ToddM	Hello, everybody!
		DELL-ScottH joined.
	DELL-ToddM	Yo
	DELL-ScottH	Yo
		Dell-RogerF joined.
	DELL-ScottH	Hey, Roger
		rpeter3 joined.
	DELL-ToddM	Hello, Roger!
	Dell-RogerF	Afternoon
	DELL-ToddM	Welcome, Rpeter3
	rpeter3	Hello
	DELL-ToddM	We will be officially starting the chat in about five or ten minutes—feel free to chat early
	DELL-ToddM	Today's topic is Hyper-V performance
		jbarton joined.
	DELL-ToddM	Welcome Jbarton, how goes it this afternoon?
	jbarton	Good so far :)
	DELL-ScottH	Nothing but chrome talk on the Twitter stream today
	DELL-ScottH	At least the people we follow
	DELL-ScottH	Of course I had to download it
	DELL-ScottH	Didn't work with the chat gadget on our page
	DELL-ToddM	Is their new browser very different from Firefox or IE?
	DELL-ToddM	I haven't even looked at a screenshot or anything yet
	DELL-ScottH	I don't really get it. How different can a browser be? It's small and loads fast—seems to render pages quickly
	DELL-ScottH	Very simple interface
	DELL-ScottH	Tabs and that’s about all you see
	DELL-ToddM	Anyway, it's about time to start the Hyper-V performance portion of the chat!
	DELL-ScottH	w00t
	DELL-ToddM	Last week we discussed Hyper-V from a function and features point of view
	DELL-ToddM	We ended up comparing it to VMware ESX as part of the discussion—see the transcript here: www.delltechcenter.com/page/08-26-2008+microsoft+hyper-v+function+and+features+web+chat
	DELL-ToddM	The idea with today's chat was to focus on the performance of Hyper-V
	DELL-ToddM	I have been doing some testing with Hyper-V in our lab and have learned some interesting things along the way and thought that others might like to discuss
	DELL-ToddM	So, here we are
	DELL-ToddM	Jbarton and Rpeter3, Have you started working with or testing Hyper-V yet?
	DELL-ScottH	Ye110wbeard tweeted that he couldn't make it, but we should commence the singing without him
	rpeter3	No, I haven't
		DELL_AndyF joined.
	DELL-ScottH	Hello, Andy. Use Action, Recent Room History to catch up
	DELL-ToddM	I had quite a bit of experience testing performance with VMware ESX, but there were some adjustments that I had to make for Hyper-V
	DELL-ToddM	ESX and Hyper-V are both hypervisors, but their underlying architectures are different
	DELL-ToddM	This ends up making something simple like measuring the CPU utilization on the server different between the two
	DELL-ToddM	In the case of ESX, there is a performance-monitoring tool called ESXtop
	DELL-ToddM	and the Virtual Center console
	jbarton	I have not touched Hyper-V at all
	DELL-ToddM	That will show the total CPU utilization for the server; across all VMs
	DELL-ToddM	I thought that with Hyper-V I would be able to use the CPU utilization counter in Perfmon to see the same type of thing
	DELL-ToddM	But the Parent partition (closest thing to the ESX Service console) doesn't show the CPU utilization of the Child partition VMs
	DELL-ToddM	It turns out that you have to use a new counter—Hypervisor Logical Processor - Total Run Time—to see what the CPU utilization is the whole server
	DELL-ToddM	This could be the Hyper-V tip for the day: Use Hypervisor Logical Processor to view CPU utilization
	DELL-ToddM	There are actually a bunch of these hypervisor counter objects added to a Windows Server 2008 system that is running Hyper-V
	DELL-ToddM	I had to hunt for a bit to find the right one, but you too can have fun poking around these counters if you are looking for something more specific than CPU utilization
	DELL-ToddM	Anybody interested in using Hyper-V in the near future?
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	DELL-ToddM	So, Jbarton, any questions about Hyper-V? Virtualization in general?
	DELL-ToddM	Welcome Mark08
	Mark2008	Sorry I am late
	DELL-ToddM	You can use Action, Recent Room History to catch up
	DELL-ToddM	No problems on arriving a bit late
	jbarton	Not really, we are an ESX shop for the most part, I was just interested in anyone's experiences with running Hyper-V to see how it performed
	DELL-ToddM	I have been very impressed with the performance of Hyper-V VMs
	Mark2008	I am running all our services in Hyper-V
	DELL-ToddM	I would say that generally the VMs perform similar to how ESX VMs would perform on the same box—Disclaimer: I haven't run the numbers to quantify this
	DELL-ToddM	The issue that I have had with Hyper-V is the tools around it
	DELL-ToddM	Until SCVMM—System Center Virtual Machine Manager—is out of beta it's kinda hard to really manage stuff that easily
	Mark2008	I have not used any of the more advanced tool set from Systems Operation Center, but just the toolset that comes with Hyper-V
	DELL-ToddM	IMHO
	DELL_AndyF	Do you see any difference in terms of disk I/O?
	DELL-ToddM	The performance testing I am finishing up right now is with EqualLogic PS 5000xv arrays
	DELL-ToddM	I was able to push I/O such that I needed three arrays to keep up
	DELL-ToddM	I don't have a raw I/O number
	DELL-ToddM	Mark, what has your experience been with disk I/O?
	DELL_AndyF	Do I understand right; you had to add disk arrays the get the CPU toward 100 percent?
	DELL-ToddM	Yes, you are correct; but my target for CPU was only 80 percent. Running with up to 40 VMs on a four socket server
	DELL-ToddM	In my testing I am using some new unreleased processors that have more cores: www.delltechcenter.com/page/08-26-2008+testing+unreleased+processors+-+comments
	DELL-ToddM	I have seen good performance scaling with the addition of these cores
	DELL-ToddM	Oops, right-click on links to avoid exiting chat; I should have mentioned it
	DELL_AndyF	No, I'll remember^^
	DELL-ToddM	Unfortunately, I can't really say more about the testing results as I haven't finished the write-up and sent it though legal review yet
	DELL-ToddM	In general, virtualization with lots of VMs will scale better with more cores than a traditional single application on a single server
	DELL_AndyF	And for VM load generation you are using DVD Shop?
	DELL-ToddM	Yes, the world famous Dell DVD Store: www.delltechcenter.com/page/dvd+store
	DELL-ToddM	We discussed this some on last week's chat, but it is the same type of testing that I did with ESX and the DVD Store as in the past
	DELL_AndyF	I hope I can find the time to do some testing with an FC storage
	DELL-ToddM	But with new Windows Server 2008 VMs to take advantage of the "enlightned" Hyper-V drivers available for 2008 guests,
	DELL-ToddM	FC storage is so last year :)
	DELL-ToddM	As I sit next to a humming rack of CX3-80 15 K spindles in our lab
	DELL_AndyF	But if the storage becomes the bottleneck we have to be prepared
	DELL-ScottH	I think that would be interesting: how many CX3-80 15 K spindles would you need for same workload that is on the current EqualLogic array you just finished testing?
	DELL-ScottH	Of course, that is more testing
	DELL-ToddM	I would have started off with 20 disks on CX3-80—not sure where I would have ended
	DELL-ToddM	It has been interesting monitoring the iSCSI performance on the Windows Hyper-V systems
	DELL-ToddM	I have never really seen Ethernet network utilization consistently that high before
	DELL-ToddM	I also got to do some work with MPIO setup for iSCSI to the arrays to get my load spread across two NICs
	DELL-ScottH	Time for a 10 GB upgrade in the lab :-)
	DELL-ToddM	I still like the Fibre Channel stuff, but the EqualLogic arrays are very easy to work with (No Zoning, w00t!)
	DELL-ToddM	Any request for future Hyper-V tests/demos? Scott is working on an SCVMM one I think?
	DELL-ToddM	Hey, anybody going to VMworld this year?
	DELL-ScottH	If I can get the service to stay up
	DELL-ScottH	Will demo the self-service portal and how to set it up—instructions in the help are quite confusing
	DELL-ScottH	Hey, they shut down the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton!
	DELL-ScottH	Yesterday was the last day
	DELL-ToddM	A sad dayf:
	DELL-ScottH	http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/01/1725223&from=rss
	DELL-ScottH	I hope we can bid on all that memorabilia
	DELL-ToddM	Scott and I will be at VMworld; you can follow along: www.twitter.com/delltechcenter
	DELL-ScottH	We'll also have a virtual exhibitor booth at vmworld.com
	DELL-ToddM	Sorry about the light attendance today; there is a problem with the messaging system for delltechcenter.com, so reminders that I sent didn't make it to most
	DELL-ToddM	We are just about at the end of the hour; so we can wrap this one up!
	DELL-ToddM	Thanks to everybody for attending today's chat. Next week we will be starting a series on blades!
	jbarton	Looking forward to that
	DELL-ToddM	Scott has been working on the landing pages for those chats, and they should be up soon
	DELL-ScottH	We've got the links to the blades chats on the home page now; all have some background reading to prepare
	DELL-ToddM	Soon, like now :)
	DELL-ScottH	Already some good links for the M805 and M905 blades
	DELL-ToddM	Oh, the unannounced, but well-publicized blades
	DELL-ToddM	Feel free to post questions about Hyper-V on any of the delltechcenter.com Hyper-V pages or directly in the discussion forum
	DELL-ToddM	Thanks to everybody; see you next week
	DELL_AndyF	Thank you
	DELL-ScottH	I think IE detected that I installed Chrome and blew up on me