VMware vs Proxmox: performance comparison

VMware is often touted as a market leader. However, in the real world I have encountered that the performance of virtual servers running over VMware was inferior to Linux KVM (Proxmox). What are the specific performance differences between the two technologies?

VMware is often used by corporations and is considered a market leader. VMware was one of the first and best solutions on the market. But what is the situation today? Especially if we compare VMware with opensource solutions built on Linux.

Working for many years, one encounters situations that one would not expect to occur. So I already know that anything is to be expected. Most people get caught off guard by unexpected situations and get into an intractable situation. The advantage of working with me is that I am able to diagnose unexpected and problematic situations. And then suggest procedures on how the problem could be successfully resolved.
Thus, when I was in a situation where the same application, and subsequently the same configuration, showed worse results on paper on more powerful hardware, I was only partially surprised. Consequently, I set about investigating the situation and testing to discover where the problem started.

Test parameters

I used the same versions of the software and operating system for testing:

• OS Linux distribution Debian.
• To make the environment easy to set up and import data automatically, I used Docker.
• The same version of MariaDBSQL server with the same data and the same configuration.
• The test consisted of running a specific SQL query.

Only the hypervisor that provides the virtualization and the HW on which the server runs differ. Or the application was running without virtualization directly on the physical server.

To test this, I used a client application that generated challenging non-optimal SQL queries to the database. The drop in performance was thus all the more noticeable.

Test

For the tests I used various existing HW with a pre-built system. There was no time and no reason or possibility to install VMware on the same HW.
I ran the same SQL query repeatedly over the same data. Used blah same version of MariaDB with identical configuration.

My server with Proxmox

A regular server with rotating disks and a VPS running on it in KVM. SQL query processing time: 0.7 seconds.

Disk performance test

# hdparm -Tt
 Timing cached reads: 27832 MB in 2.00 seconds = 13933.02 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 610 MB in 3.01 seconds = 202.88 MB/sec

vpsFree

SQL query processing time: 3.7 seconds.

Notebook

My work laptop with NVMe disk, no virtualization. SQL query processing time: 0.9 seconds.

Server + VMware + rotating disk

Server with VMware and rotating disks. SQL query processing time: 1.76 seconds.

Disk performance test

# hdparm -Tt
 Timing cached reads: 6386 MB in 1.99 seconds = 3216.96 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 920 MB in 3.00 seconds = 306.57 MB/sec

Server + VMware + SSD

Server with VMware and ssd drives. SQL query processing time: 1.69 seconds.

Disk performance test

# hdparm -Tt
Timing cached reads: 15700 MB in 1.99 seconds = 7883.06 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 1496 MB in 3.00 seconds = 498.02 MB/sec

Server + VMware + NVMe

Server with VMware and NVMe disks. SQL query processing time: 1.5 seconds.

Performance test of Samsung NVMe drives

# hdparm -Tt
 Timing cached reads: 18056 MB in 1.99 seconds = 9082.95 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 2926 MB in 3.00 seconds = 974.79 MB/sec

Original KVM server

Original server with KVM virtualization. SQL query processing time: 0.8 seconds.

Test conclusion

As you can see, the results of Linux virtualization named KVM are significantly better than VMware. This is even when comparing VMware combined with fast NVMe disks vs KVM with only rotating disks.
Specifically, this test shows that KVM provides better performance for disk IO operations.

Other Disadvantages of VMware

From a business perspective, there is also the risky VMware licensing policy. It is therefore much more secure, and easier, to run a freely licensed solution such as Proxmox, which is built on Linux and KVM.
If we take a purely technical point of view, the opensource solution built on Linux wins in terms of management and even performance. And Proxmox in particular is a very user-friendly visualization tool. So there is no reason to use VMware. Proxmox wins outright and is the clear choice in terms of price, maintenance and performance.

Proxmox complete virtualization solution

In addition to Proxmox VE, there is also Proxmox Backup Server, which I recommend installing. Proxmox Backup Server provides a simple and efficient way to back up virtual servers from Proxmox VE. By combining these two tools, you can provide your organization with a comprehensive visualization solution where you can run your applications and keep your data conveniently and securely.