Performance Comparison Of VMs For High Performance Computing

In this article, I am talking about how to do performance comparison of two virtual machines using the IOMeter for high performance computing, because a high-core CPU and high memory alone are not sufficient for high performance computing, as the disk IO operations also play a  part in achieving high performance. Therefore, in Microsoft Azure standard A series and D series; machines are available. So I have done experiments on two VMs using an IOMeter to compare the performance. Hence, first, create two VM A series machines and D Series machines in Azure portal, and configure the IOMeter, which is a free tool available on the internet.

After VM creation, download RDP file and remotely connect with D series machine, copy IOMeter setup files on the desktop.

Run IO Meter.EXE on D series RDP File ( D Series VM ) in Desktop iometer-1.1 Folder (Along with the Dynamo CMD console, mode also opens to minimize it).



Select Worker 1 under All Managers -> SSDVMFORIO-D.

Select Disk Target D Drive.

Select Access Specifications Tab Add Default from the right side to left side by Add Button.



Select Green Flag Icon in Menu Bar.

Save Result.csv file on Desktop.

Now, it will generate random data in D Drive (Shown below in iobw.tst file will fill all the remaining disk space for IOMeter).



See below, that D Drive space is full.



Click Results Display tab in IOMeter and click Radio button Last Update and Start of Test, shown below, in the snapshot:

The Average I/O response Time is 0.29 Mili Seconds.

Click ( >) Average I/O Response Time (ms), shown in the snapshot, given below:





Like this, you can show all the parameters. Click Stop button and close IOMeter.

Likewise, you can select Read Write Random Operation in Access Specifications tab rather than the Default and compare D Series and A Series Machine Performance Differences.

Now IOMeter.EXE on A Series VM RDP File in Desktop iometer-1.1 Folder Run IT.

The snapshot, given below, shows 111.48 Mili Seconds Average I/O Response Time (ms).





From the above experiment, you can see a drastic difference in the performance between the A series machine and D series machine in Azure VM because D series VM, has SSD as a disk and the A series machine has HDD as a disk. Hence, we can see and compare performance, using IOMeter.