Optane (Intel 900P) performance havled in Hyper-V clients

[VLeas]

I got a question about SSD performance of Hyper-V clients.

I used an Intel 900P 280GB drive as the storage for two Hyper-V clients, both running Windows 10 Enterprise 1809. If I only power one of them on, and I use CrystalDiskMark 6 to test the disk performance, the Q1T1@4K (Queue 1 Thread 1@4K) result (the one that made all the difference with Optane) will be only Read:110MB/S Write:105MB/S, but if I test the same drive in the host system, the result will be Read:235MB/S Write:225MB/S.

I tried different platform, and the result is identical, the disk performance of clients are seemingly limited at 110MB/S.

I managed to set up the entire 280GB drive to direct pass through as a SCSI drive for one client, and the disk performance is still like above, halved the test result within host system.

The sequential read and write performance is the same for clients and the host, but that does not make the biggest impact on the smoothness of the system. I wonder if there are some tweaks to change this.

My host system configuration is: AMD Ryzen 2600, 8-core, 64GB DDR4 2666Mhz, Intel 900P 280G NVME

Well, before this, I used the same storage with an Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2, which is a certified CPU for Server OS, but the 4K performance was still halved in Hyper-V clients. It seems to be irrelevant which CPU is being used, the 4K Q1T1 performance will always be halved inside Hyper-V clients. 

 Just want to know if anyone ever saw a better 4k performance in Hyper-V clients? Thanks!

[BrusC_Intel · Accepted solution]

Hello, VLeas.

Good day,

Thank you for contacting Intel Community Support.

I checked your ticket regarding the performance of the Intel SSD in a Hyper-V environment.

This type of usage for consumer drives is not fully validated or supported by us; losing performance seems expected when the drive is accessed by the client, but you mentioned that Sequential Reads (and Sequential Writes) performance is the same for Client and the Host, so it may go down to settings or tweaks as you mentioned, and that's something we can't check since it's not directly related to the SSD or Intel Tools.

Let me know if there is anything you would like to point out or anything else we can help you with.

Best regards,

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

A Contingent Worker at Intel

[VLeas]

Thank you, Bruce.​