Maximizing File Transfer Performance Using 10Gb Ethernet and Virtualization

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CASE 2: One Virtual Machine with
Eight vCPUs and VMDirectPath

in this case was similar to that of the
previous case except that the 10G was


The test team started with a synthetic
benchmark netperf and then ran eight


12 compare the performance numbers
from the VM with DirectPath I/O to the
performance numbers of the VM with no

As Figure 11 illustrates, VMDirectPath
(VT-d direct assignment) of the 10G
NIC to the VM increases performance
to a level that is close to the native

the trade-offs associated with using

A number of features are not available


record/replay, fault tolerance, high

these limitations, the use of VMDirectPath
will continue to be a niche solution
awaiting future developments that

be practical to use today for virtual
security-appliance VMs since these VMs

VMDirectPath may also be useful for other
applications that have their own clustering


Figure 10. 
Figure 11. 
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
NETPERF SCP
(SSH)
RSYNC
(SSH)
SCP
(HPN-SSH)
RSYNC
(HPN-SSH)
SCP
(HPN-SSH +
No Crypto)
RSYNC
(HPN-SSH +
No Crypto)
BBCP
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
10000
Avg. CPU (%Util)
Receive Throughput (Mbps)
ESX 4.0* GA (1VM with 8 vCPU & VMDirectPath I/O: Various FileVarious File Copy Tools (8 streams)
Receive Throughput – Native Receive Throughput – VM w/o VMDirectPath I/O
Receive Throughput – VM w/VMDirectPath I/O Avg. CPU (%Util) – Native
Avg. CPU (%Util) – VM w/o VMDirectPath I/O Avg. CPU (%Util) – VM w/ VMDirectPath I/O
SOURCE SERVER
VM1 (8 vCPU) VM1 (8 vCPU)
File Transfer
Direction

Directly connected
back-to-back
File Transfer
Applications
File Transfer
Applications
 
VMware® ESX® 4.0 VMware ESX 4.0
 
DESTINATION SERVER
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