EPISODE · Jun 21, 2026 · 16 MIN
What Virtualization Actually Costs on 2026 Hardware
from My Weird Prompts
When you reflexively install Proxmox on a new Ubuntu server, what performance are you actually trading for those snapshot and rollback capabilities? This episode digs into real benchmark data from a Ryzen 9 7950X running Proxmox 8.3 with a single Ubuntu VM — measuring CPU cycles, memory access, disk I/O, and network throughput. We trace the overhead from VM-exits on Intel and AMD hardware, nested page table walks, virtio driver paths, and the real-world cost of that hypervisor translation layer. The answer: 2-6% depending on workload, with specific numbers for PostgreSQL, Nginx, 7-Zip compression, and NVMe disk operations.
What this episode covers
When you reflexively install Proxmox on a new Ubuntu server, what performance are you actually trading for those snapshot and rollback capabilities? This episode digs into real benchmark data from a Ryzen 9 7950X running Proxmox 8.3 with a single Ubuntu VM — measuring CPU cycles, memory access, disk I/O, and network throughput. We trace the overhead from VM-exits on Intel and AMD hardware, nested page table walks, virtio driver paths, and the real-world cost of that hypervisor translation layer. The answer: 2-6% depending on workload, with specific numbers for PostgreSQL, Nginx, 7-Zip compression, and NVMe disk operations.
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What Virtualization Actually Costs on 2026 Hardware
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