NVMe SSD performance still not great in Workstation 16 Pro

[Afro201110141]

Since VMware Workstation 14 (perhaps earlier) there have been performance problems when running a VM...

Host system

OS: Windows 10 Pro 2004

RAM: 32GB DDR3

CPU: AMD FX 8350 @ 4.12GHz (8 cores)

Storage: 2TB Sabrent Rocket NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD

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Virtualisation platforms

VMware Workstation 16 Pro

Windows 10 Hyper-V

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Guest OS specs on both platforms

CPU: 4 cores

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 64GB NVMe class thick provision (also tried SCSI for marginally better results on Workstation)

OS: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia

Note: VMware tools was installed in the guest OS

Note: The tests were run with only one virtualisation platform being installed at a time so no co-existence causing any conflicts.

Note: On Hyper-V I had not got around to uninstalling VMware Tools and installing Hyper-V equivalent and the VM had been converted using the Starwind V2V Converter

I've had poor SSD performance on Workstation 14, 15 and now 16 with these huge I/O stalls.

The average read speed seems comparable to Hyper-V, but those dips are realtime and make the benchmark test take measurably longer than when run in Hyper-V.

VMware Workstation 16 Pro

Windows 10 Pro Hyper-V

[Mikero]

You're comparing a Type-1 and a Type-2 hypervisor. Apples and Oranges.

Hyper-V has direct access to the device tree.

Workstation has to go through Windows.

[Afro201110141]

How do you explain significantly better disk performance also in Virtual Box running the same VM?

[Mikero]

I haven't looked at their code, so I don't have an answer to that.

Regarding Workstation, are you using Hyper-V mode when testing, or are you fully disabling all of the Hyper-V features and testing?

(they run in distinctly different models depending if Hyper-V mode is enabled or not)

[dlhtox]

As an FYI, here is my performance in Workstation 17.

NvME seems to be strong in some areas and not as much in others.

Also, the top speed we see if 2827 on read and 2629 on write is nowhere near the speed of my NvME host drive.

I built a new system with the latest and greatest NvME mainly for VMWare Workstation and it is disappointing it is not even half as fast as the host NvME.

Hyper-V tests out around the same as the host drive.

I have a very large program I install and it takes 21 minutes to install on VMWare Workstation 17 and 15 minutes on Hyper-V.

--- VMWare Workstation 17 Pro tests of different disk types ----
Hyper-V has been completely removed from Windows on the host prior to these tests.