Optimizing Guest Performance

Options Section

Uncheck the ‘use tablet for pointer’ checkbox.

Hard Disk Performance

SCSI Controller

From this it looks like VIRTIO SCSI, NOT single, iotread=1 is the best.

Hard Disk

Cache: Write back for best performance. No cache default is safer, but slower.

Discard: Check, to optimally use disk space (TRIM).

IO Thread: Check

Network Performance

Network Device

Model: VirtIO (paravirtualized)

Use ethtool for troubleshooting

How to Use ethtool Command with Examples.

Identify NIC name:

alex@kdesktop:~$ ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp6s18: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 4e:7c:94:c8:6f:2e brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.10.181/24 brd 192.168.10.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute enp6s18
       valid_lft 4833sec preferred_lft 4833sec
    inet6 fe80::dbfe:6f6d:11d5:1743/64 scope link noprefixroute
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Now you know that enp6s18 is the device name. Display this interface details:

alex@kdesktop:~$ ethtool enp6s18
Settings for enp6s18:
	Supported ports: [  ]
	Supported link modes:   Not reported
	Supported pause frame use: No
	Supports auto-negotiation: No
	Supported FEC modes: Not reported
	Advertised link modes:  Not reported
	Advertised pause frame use: No
	Advertised auto-negotiation: No
	Advertised FEC modes: Not reported
	Speed: Unknown!
	Duplex: Unknown! (255)
	Auto-negotiation: off
	Port: Other
	PHYAD: 0
	Transceiver: internal
netlink error: Operation not permitted
	Link detected: yes

Display the interface information, such as driver name:

alex@kdesktop:~$ ethtool -i enp6s18
driver: virtio_net
version: 1.0.0
firmware-version:
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:06:12.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: no

Benchmarks

Browser

http://speed-battle.com/speedtest_e.php

Platform	Calculate	Store	Render	OVERALL SCORE
Bare Latitude + FireFox mint-001 - 1.0	186.18	132.13	143.72	462.03
VM i440fx + FireFox canonical-002 - 1.0	134.3	256	182.04	572.34
VM q35 + FireFox canonical-002 - 1.0	212.78	252.06	180.04	644.88