Platform Overview
The Virtual Client is a unified workload and system monitoring platform for running customer-representative scenarios on virtual machines or physical hosts/blades in the Azure Cloud. The platform supports a wide range of different industry standard/benchmark workloads used to measuring various aspects of the system under test (e.g. CPU, I/O, network performance, power consumption). The platform additionally provides the ability to capture important performance and reliability measurements from the underlying system. The platform supports all business-critical Azure environments including guest/VM systems, host/blade systems and data center/DC lab systems. The platform additionally supports both x64 and ARM64 compute architectures.
Team Contacts
Supported Operating Systems
The following section defines operating systems for which the Virtual Client application is tested and generally confirmed to run on depending upon the workload or monitor. The application is compiled for both Linux and Windows operating systems and for X64/AMD64 and ARM64 CPU architectures. Each workload and monitor however may have a limited set of platforms on which it is expected to operate. The details are covered in the documentation for each of workload or monitor profiles noted below. The following list are the recommended operating systems on which the application is tested and confirmed to work by Microsoft teams:
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Linux Operating Systems
- Azure Linux 3
- Azure Linux 4
- CentOS 8
- CentOS 9
- Debian (upstreams of Ubuntu distros noted below)
- Fedora (upstreams of RedHat distros noted below)
- RedHat Enterprise 8
- RedHat Enterprise 9
- Ubuntu 18.04
- Ubuntu 20.04
- Ubuntu 22.04
- Ubuntu 24.04
- Ubuntu 26.04
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Windows Operating Systems
- Windows 10
- Windows 11
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2022
- Windows Server 2025
Supported Platform-Architectures
The following section defines the operating system platform-architectures for which the Virtual Client application is tested and generally confirmed to run on depending upon the workload or monitor. The application is compiled for both Linux and Windows operating systems and for X64/AMD64 and ARM64 CPU architectures.
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linux-arm64
Offers releases that run on Linux operating systems with ARM64 processors. -
linux-x64
Offers releases that run on Linux operating systems with X64/AMD64 (AMD, Intel) processors. -
win-arm64
Offers releases that run on Windows operating systems with ARM64 processors. -
win-x64
Offers releases that run on Windows operating systems with X64/AMD64 (AMD, Intel) processors.
Supported Workloads/Benchmarks
The following list of workloads are used by Virtual Client profiles to exercise the system components in a consistent way required to measure performance baselines and differences.
Virtual Client will handle the installation and execution of various tools. Individual license files are not prompted for each workload. By using Virtual Client, users accept the license of each of the benchmarks individually, comply to the terms for the tool you are using, and take responsibility for using them.
| Workload/Benchmark | Specialization | Supported Platforms/Architectures | License(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7zip | Compression | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | GNU LGPL |
| ASP.NET Bench | ASP.NET Kestrel web server throughput and latency. | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | MIT (ASP.NET) MIT (Bombardier) Apache 2.0 (Wrk) |
| BlenderBenchmark | GPU/Graphics Rendering Performance | win-x64 | GNU LGPL |
| CoreMark | CPU Performance | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | Apache+Custom |
| CoreMark Pro | Precision CPU | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | Apache+Custom |
| NCPS | Network Connection Reliability | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | Microsoft-Developed |
| DCGMI | GPU Qualification | linux-x64 | Apache-2.0 |
| DeathStarBench | Docker Swarm/Container Microservices | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | Apache-2.0 |
| DiskSpd | Disk I/O Performance | win-x64, win-arm64 | MIT |
| Dotnet (.NET) Runtime | .NET Application Performance | win-x64, win-arm64 | MIT License |
| ElasticSearch (Rally) | Search/Query Engine | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | Apache-2.0 |
| Flexible IO Tester (FIO) | Disk I/O Performance | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64 | GPL-2.0 |
| GeekBench5 | CPU Performance | linux-x64, win-x64, win-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| GeekBench6 | CPU Performance | linux-x64, win-x64, win-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| Graph500 | 3D Simulation | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | Custom |
| Gzip | Compression | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | GPL |
| HPCG | High Performance Compute (HPC) | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | Custom |
| HPLinpack | Linear Equations | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | IBM |
| LAPACK | Linear Equations | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | Custom |
| Latte | Network Latencies | win-x64, win-arm64 | MIT |
| LMbench | Memory Performance | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | GPL-2.0 |
| LZBench | Compression/Streaming | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | None |
| Memcached | In-Memory Data Cache | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | BSD-3 (Memcached) GPL-2.0 (Memtier) |
| NAS Parallel | High Performance Compute (HPC) | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | NASA-1.3 |
| Network ICMP Ping | Network Latencies | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | MIT |
| NGINX | Web Server | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | BSD-2-Clause (NGINX) Apache 2.0 (Wrk) Apache 2.0 (Wrk2) |
| NTttcp | Network Bandwidth | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | MIT |
| OpenFOAM | Computational Fluid Dynamics | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | Custom |
| OpenSSL | Cryptography/Encryption | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64 | Apache-2.0 |
| Pbzip2 | Compression | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | BSD |
| PostgreSQL | Relational Database Performance | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64 | PostgreSQL |
| Prime95 | CPU Stress | linux-x64 | Custom |
| Redis | In-Memory Data Cache | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | BSD-3 (Redis) GPL-2.0 (Memtier) |
| SockPerf | Network Latencies | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | Custom |
| SPEC CPU 2017, SPECrate Integer | Precision CPU, Integer Calculations | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC CPU 2017, SPECrate Floating Point | Precision CPU, Floating-point Calculations | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC CPU 2017, SPECspeed Integer | Precision CPU, Integer Calculations | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC CPU 2017, SPECspeed Floating Point | Precision CPU, Floating-point Calculations | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC CPU 2026, SPECrate Integer | Precision CPU, Integer Calculations | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC CPU 2026, SPECrate Floating Point | Precision CPU, Floating-point Calculations | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC CPU 2026, SPECspeed Integer | Precision CPU, Integer Calculations | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC CPU 2026, SPECspeed Floating Point | Precision CPU, Floating-point Calculations | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC JBB 2015, SPECjbb | Java Server | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPEC JVM 2008, SPECjvm | Java Runtime Performance | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | SPEC |
| SPEC Power 2008, SPECpower | High precision, steady-state CPU usage | linux-x64, linux-arm64, win-x64, win-arm64 | End User License Required. Software/license purchase required for use. |
| SPECviewperf 2020, SPECview | 3D graphics performance | win-x64 | SPEC |
| Stressapptest | Fault Tolerance | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | Apache-2.0 |
| Stress-ng | Fault Tolerance | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | GPL-2.0 |
| Sysbench | Relational Database Performance | linux-x64, linux-arm64 | GPL-2.0 (Sysbench) GPL-2.0 (MySQL) |
Data Collection Notice
The software may collect information about you and your use of the software and send it to Microsoft. Microsoft may use this information to provide services and improve our products and services. You may turn off the telemetry as described in the repository. There are also some features in the software that may enable you and Microsoft to collect data from users of your applications. If you use these features, you must comply with applicable law, including providing appropriate notices to users of your applications together with a copy of Microsoft’s privacy statement. Our privacy statement is located at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=824704. You can learn more about data collection and use in the help documentation and our privacy statement. Your use of the software operates as your consent to these practices.
Trademarks
This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft's Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos are subject to those third-party's policies.