A new performance result reveals that the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor delivered unprecedented storage I/O performance with the highest virtualized storage I/O rates ever reported for a single virtual machine. The new result shows that KVM delivered 50% better performance than competing hypervisors, as well as low latency and consistent throughput for I/O requests.
Many enterprise workloads, including data warehousing, ERP, financial trading, and big data applications, require very high I/O rates. The new performance result – a result of a collaborative effort between IBM’s Linux Technology Center’s Performance organization, and Red Hat –provides evidence that KVM can handle even the most demanding enterprise workloads.
The storage I/O test environment included an IBM System x3850 X5 host server with QLogic QLE 256x Host Bus Adapters, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 hypervisor with a new I/O virtualization technology called “virtio-blk-data-plane,” and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 guests. The test demonstrated that a single KVM guest can handle more than 1.2 million I/O operations per second (IOPS) – the highest storage I/O performance ever reported in a virtualized environment.
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