Linux KVM vs. VirtualBox 4.0 Virtualization Benchmarks
Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 1:14 pm
Phoronix article
I thought it was interesting that some benchmarks improved with virtualizing!Oracle's been vigorously working on their VM VirtualBox 4.0 software and in just the past week they have delivered two public betas that bring a number of new features. Among the changes there is support for Intel HD audio / ICH9 to guest VMs, the concept of extension packs, user-interface improvements, support for limiting a virtual machine's CPU time and I/O bandwidth, 3D acceleration fixes for guests, and a great number of bug-fixes. How though is this updated Oracle/Sun virtualization platform comparing to the older VirtualBox 3.2 release and that of the upstream Linux KVM (the Kernel-based Virtual Machine) that most Linux distributions rely upon? Here are a number of benchmarks that seek to answer this very question.
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In a majority of the benchmarks used that were mostly CPU oriented, the Kernel-based Virtual Machine was measurably faster than VirtualBox 3.2.12 and VirtualBox 4.0 Beta 2. The only area where VirtualBox decisively pulled in front of KVM was with the disk benchmarks, but it's a situation where VirtualBox by default isn't obeying sync/fsync requests made within the guest, so it's numbers are shown as even being faster than the host operating system, but it comes with potential data integrity issues.
While VirtualBox may be slower than KVM in many areas, VirtualBox does provide 2D and 3D acceleration support to guests, among other features, not currently offered by KVM/QEMU.
As far as the VirtualBox 4 performance goes, in many areas right now its performance with the just-released Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 Beta 2 is slower than VirtualBox 3.2.12. However, it is a beta release not intended for use in a production capacity and we will be back with more VirtualBox 4.0 benchmarks upon the program's final release to see whether these regressions are still present or how the performance shakes down.