A New Tool to Find Your Kubernetes VM Bottlenecks

A new open-source tool called `virtbench` provides a standardized way to measure the performance of virtual machines running on Kubernetes.

Many organizations are moving their virtual machines (VMs) to Kubernetes using a technology called KubeVirt, but they often struggle to measure performance. Standard Kubernetes monitoring tools are built for containers, not VMs, and miss important details like scheduler delays or network overhead. At the same time, older VM benchmarking tools can test inside the VM but can't see the underlying Kubernetes platform's performance. This creates a significant blind spot for engineering teams. To solve this, developers have released `virtbench`, a new open-source tool. It is a Kubernetes-native solution designed specifically to benchmark KubeVirt, addressing this critical observability gap.

`virtbench` gives platform engineering and IT teams a standard way to measure key performance indicators. It can test important metrics like how quickly a VM starts, live migration duration, and disk I/O speeds. By running predefined tests, teams can identify bottlenecks, validate configuration changes, and establish clear performance baselines. The tool is designed for ease of use, running as a simple job within a Kubernetes cluster. Its results are published as Prometheus metrics, allowing for seamless integration with existing monitoring dashboards. This helps teams track performance trends and proactively address potential issues before they affect users.

The release of `virtbench` highlights a broader trend of adapting traditional IT workloads for modern, cloud-native environments. As companies adopt Kubernetes for both containers and VMs, the need for specialized tooling that understands both worlds becomes critical. Tools like `virtbench` are essential for ensuring these migrations are successful, giving teams confidence that performance will not be compromised. By providing clear, actionable data, it helps bridge the operational gap between old and new infrastructure. As an open-source project, `virtbench` also invites community collaboration to further enhance its capabilities.

For teams running virtual machines on Kubernetes, `virtbench` solves a major observability problem. It provides the first standardized way to measure and benchmark performance, helping engineers find bottlenecks and ensure stability in complex, modern infrastructure.

By enabling better performance monitoring for KubeVirt, `virtbench` helps companies migrate legacy VM workloads to Kubernetes more confidently. This can reduce infrastructure costs, improve operational efficiency, and ensure that critical applications maintain performance and reliability during and after the transition.