Understanding Perceived Performance in Virtualization Environments
This presentation by Tim Mangan from TMurgent Technologies focuses on the critical distinction between computational performance and perceived performance in virtual environments. It explores what users truly care about, how to measure perceived performance, and the components that affect overall system performance. Attendees will learn about methodologies to enhance user productivity by addressing issues that impact their experience. The session will also cover innovative testing frameworks and the evolution of virtualization technologies.
Understanding Perceived Performance in Virtualization Environments
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Presentation Transcript
Understanding Perceived Performance Tim Mangan Kahuna: TMurgent Technologies LLP http://www.tmurgent.com Microsoft MVP for Application Virtualization President, Virtualization Boston http://www.virtg.com
Agenda • Computational VS Perceived Performance • What Do Users Care About? • Measuring Perceived Performance • Virtual Environment Performance
Computational Performance Measurement of discrete components of a system that affect overall performance. Examples include: • Processor time • Bandwidth • Queue lengths • Counters of all kinds
Perceived Performance A methodology where one analyzes the system with a goal of improving user productivity by focusing on issues that affect the performance as perceived by the users.
Differences in Techniques Computational Perceived • Repeatable • Break down to directly measurable components • Variable • Measure “end to end”
Bring in the “V” Word Our systems today are too complex to rely on computational performance (alone). • Multi-system • Networking • Remote Protocols • Virtualization Layering
Example Rethinking the Progress Bar1 • Good: • Linear • Fast Power • Bad: • Any with variation 1 Harrison, Amento, Kuznetsov, & Bell http://chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars/ProgBarHarrison.pdf
Virtualization Reality Check1 1http://www.projectvrc.nl
Project VRC • Independent framework to measure virtual machine performance • Free • Set up your own tests • Understand their results • Virtual Session Index
Bare Metal 32-bit Office 2007 SP1 2003 versus 2008 x86 SWAP Space (RAID5) Add XenApp5.0 2003 versus 2008 x64
Hyper-V (version 1) Bare Metal vs VMs Odd Results TS versus Desktops
Vmware(Esx 3.5) Virtual Desktops Bare Metal vs VMs Page Sharing
It Depends… • Disk I/O Subsystem very important • Scenarios were CPU oriented • I/O subsystem of Hyper-V was bottleneck • New results being published soon • Improved Test Methodologies • New Vendor Releases
New! VRC 2.0 • Nehalem Rocks for TS! 2x Improvement • Hyperthreading great (except ESX) • EPT-D Rocks (Hardware vs Software) • if ESX and EPT-D, turn vMMU software off, • if ESX and no EPT-D, turn vMMU software on • New version Hypervisors did not improve much • Vsphere 4.0, Hyper-V 2.0, XenServer 5.5 • Hyper-V 2.0 improved more than others • Xen & Hyper-V now almost identical, except that a single VM cannot have 8CPU under Hyper-V (limit=4) • Vsphere can be better/worse than others depending on scenario • Office 2007 SP2 fixes “outlook preview pane” performance • IE8 performs on par with IE7
Links Project Virtual Reality Check: http://www.projectvrc.nl Perceived Performance: http://www.tmurgent.com/WhitePapers/PerceivedPerformance.pdf http://www.tmurgent.com/WhitePapers/PerceivedPerformance_VirtualOS.pdf VDI versus TS (video): http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/videos/archive/2007/04/25/vdi-solutions-a-year-later-from-briforum-2007.aspx http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/videos/archive/2007/10/09/xen-versus-esx-a-performance-head-to-head-comparison-from-briforum-europe-2007.aspx Citrix Logon and Logoff Chart: http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/gabeknuth/archive/2008/08/14/briforum-video-the-excruciating-detail-of-the-xenapp-logon-process.aspx Here are some links most relevant to this topic.