Impact of the host operating systems on virtual machine performance

Virtualization enables installation and running of multiple virtual machines on the same computer system. Operating system that communicates directly with hardware is known as the host operating system whereas virtual operating systems have all the features of a real operating system, but they run inside the host operating system. A virtual machine is separated from the computer hardware resources and it runs on the emulated hardware. Performance of the virtual operating system running on the same computer system hardware depends on the performance of the host operating system. In this paper we study how different host operating systems influence virtual machine performance. Windows XP®, Windows Vista^™ and Windows 7^™ are used as host operating systems using Windows Vista as a virtual operating system. Performance measurement of the virtual operating system is done in the same controlled conditions for all three host operating systems using benchmark applications. Performance measurement results show that the virtual operating system has the best performance when Windows 7 is used as the host operating system.