Case study of performance degradation on the Xen hypervisor-based virtualization related to the native host

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of file system performance between a native operating system and Xen hypervisor-based virtualization. The study uses CentOS Stream 9 as both the native and guest operating system and employs Filebench for benchmarking purposes. Performance tests were carried out on the native operating system and within the Xen virtual environment, accommodating one to four virtual machines. A mathematical model was established for both the native and virtual environments, predicting that the native operating system would significantly outperform the virtualized one. The findings of this paper corroborate the model's predictions, demonstrating a substantial decline in file system performance due to virtualization.