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Configuring Disk Controllers In VMs

David Klee explains how you can get a performance improvement in high-I/O virtual machines:

Both Hyper-V and VMware’s default controller emulates the LSI Logic SAS controller, because that’s what is built into Windows driver storage, and *just works* without having to do anything fancy.

But… it’s not necessarily there for speed. It’s there for compatibility so that you can boot up a VM without having to deal with extra drivers.

VMware created a driver a while back that comes with the VMware Tools package called the Paravirtual SCSI controller, and it gives a 10-30% bump in performance (depending on the speed of the underlying storage) because it’s built for speed from the beginning. It’s just not native to Windows, so I don’t personally feel comfortable using it for the C: drive controller unless required. You can change the controller type for these controllers, so we use it by default for non-OS SQL Server object drives.

Definitely worth the read.