[vfio-users] Physical vs virtual machine gaming performance comparison benchmarks

[Jon Panozzo]

There is a little more to it than that (we have a few other components
including our own HTTP server and user share file system), but yes, we have
a webGui which is used to manage all aspects of the system.  VM Manager
doesn't utilize libvirt for all things through.

We are experimenting with QXL and SPICE as well, but the performance hasn't
quite been strong enough for us to consider it as a replacement for a local
desktop experience or in home game streaming solution.  That said, we have
a lot more testing and tuning to do, and I'm hopeful that SPICE will be a
big benefit in the longer term.

As for Alex's comment on hugepages, the challenge I've had in convincing
our team to enable this is that we haven't been able to witness any sort of
true gain from doing this.  I've turned it on before and from the desktop
VM, I didn't really see any performance difference.  If there is a specific
use case that someone could share or a tool/benchmark I could run to show a
difference, we would gladly implement it and prioritize its inclusion.
On Sep 6, 2015 7:43 AM, "Blank Field" <ihatethisfield at gmail.com> wrote:

> So you wrote a web control panel for libvirt, docker and some NAS, right?
> Can you try providing VDI via Spice or VNC on gigabit LAN?
> On Sep 6, 2015 2:38 PM, "Jon Panozzo" <jonp at lime-technology.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sep 6, 2015 5:54 AM, "Blank Field" <ihatethisfield at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Have you used cpu pinning?
>>
>> Yes.  Our OS automatically pins CPUs for VMs.
>>
>> > Do you attach a screen to your "NAS" box or you connect remotely? If
>> using remote connection, what is it, VNC, Spice or some other?
>>
>> Yes, local graphics output.  No remote connection used, although I also
>> leverage Steam in home streaming from other devices for gaming as well.
>> Our primary use case is to allow folks to add NAS capability to a
>> performance gaming rig.  We also have Docker support.  This allows 3 tiers
>> of functionality: network attached storage, virtual applications, and
>> virtual machines.
>>
>> > Did you enable HugePages?
>>
>> No, we don't have hugepages enabled.  We tested hugepages before, but
>> honestly didn't see any gains.  We do have transparent pages enabled on the
>> host, but our guests do not make use of the <hugepages> XML tag (we use
>> libvirt).
>>
>> > How much memory the VM had allocated?
>>
>> The blog post covers this:
>>
>> "...other thing worth noting here was that for our bare metal test, all
>> 16GB of RAM was accessible to the OS, but with our VM tests, we only
>> allotted 8 of the 16GB of RAM."
>>
>> >
>> > On Sep 6, 2015 12:50 PM, "Jon Panozzo" <jonp at lime-technology.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello vfio users!
>> >>
>> >> A common question folks seem to have is what sort of performance they
>> can expect out of a VM for gaming as compared to that of a physical
>> machine. My company makes a linux-based OS that features the capabilities
>> of a NAS and a virtualization host using KVM, which has been tuned for
>> maximum compatibility with vfio GPU assignment.
>> >>
>> >> In a recent blog post, I've shown benchmark testing results in
>> comparing a physical machine to a virtual one using the same hardware and
>> with varying VM configurations. I even put together a video clip showing a
>> side by side comparison of the benchmarks as they ran in real time,
>> allowing you to visually see the difference in each test. Thought this
>> might be of interest to some of you, do here's the link:
>> >>
>> >> http://lime-technology.com/gaming-on-a-nas-you-better-believe-it/
>> >>
>> >> Tl;Dr:  I achieved up to 98% of bare metal.
>> >>
>> >> Regards,
>> >>
>> >> Jonathan Panozzo
>> >> Lime Technology, Inc.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> vfio-users mailing list
>> >> vfio-users at redhat.com
>> >> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/vfio-users
>> >>
>>
>
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