Virtual machine vs real machine server performance [closed]

Question

I want to self-host some services (some examples include, but are not limited to, Nextcloud, Matrix, Jitsi, Bitwarden). For security reasons, I don't want to install all of them on the same machine directly (because, if one of them causes the whole machine to be compromised, then all services will, implicitly, be compromised).

So, I only see 2 solutions:

• one physical machine for each service
• one physical machine that has a virtual machine for each service

Having a physical machine for each service is obviously the more difficult choice. It costs more money and is more difficult to manage (from a space perspective). Especially for somebody who plans on hosting this/these in the living room.

The VM approach would be much easier to manage, but my concern is performance. And this leads me to my question(s):

What kind of performance drawbacks should I expect if I choose the VM approach? Obviously a server running on a real machine would be faster that a server running on a VM hosted on said machine. But what percentage would we be talking about? I know it's impossible to get an exact answer (that's not what I'm asking for), but wuld it be something obviously noticeable, like 50-70%, or would it be something "acceptable", like 10-20%?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Choose the VM option. Be sure you have a fast SSD and enough RAM for all services. 2 VM's should do the trick. Use all cores for VM's and dynamic memory.

Answer 2

Unless your server applications are very latency or throughput sensitive, there's no significant loss of performance on modern hardware.

Since you don't tailor a server system to run at 100% capacity but leave (considerable) reserves for future growth, there isn't really too much to think about. If you do need to think about it, calculate 1-5% overhead.