Re: HVM Performance and PV drivers

[Jim Klein <jklein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Feb 12, 2007, at 9:12 AM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:

On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 09:45:07AM -0800, Jim Klein wrote:

On Thursday 08 February 2007 10:08am, Jim Klein wrote:

Anyone been able to get the PV drivers from Xensource to work on an

FC6 created HVM. Performance is rather sluggish, even on 64bit,

without these, yet they don't seem to want to work here. Or,

alternatively, is Red Hat working on their own? The HVM IO is really

a bit too slow for most production use without them.

On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 11:26am, Lamont Peterson wrote:

I don't believe that you can do this.

But, I'm wondering what OS you're trying to run on the HVM DomU.  

If it's

Linux, use a paravirtualized DomU. You'll get much better  

performance

(especially on things like I/O).

HVM adds some emulation overhead and, thus, is slower than PV.  

HVM is only

necessary to run an OS for which no paravirtualized kernel is  

available.

-- 

Lamont Peterson <lamont@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Senior Instructor

Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ]

All my Linux guests are PV (been running Xen in production for 7  

months - far longer

in testing.) I'm talking about Windows guests, which is why I  

would need PV drivers to work.

Am running 64bit Dom0 to alleviate some of the pain, but I/O is  

still too slow for anything

but lightweight applications. We're a RHEL shop, so would prefer  

to use RHEL as a base over

XenSource Commercial, but it looks like I may have to go that  

route if noone else is working

on PV drivers for Windows guests.

Interesting point is the fact that Novell will ship Windows PV  

drivers in

SLES 10 SP1 when it's released in May 2007..

-- Pasi

If only SLES didn't suck - and Novell actually kept their promises.  

But I could be wrong, maybe they'll be better now that they have  

reliable partners like Microsoft...

"Novell and Intel plan to announce Monday software that improves the

performance of Windows running atop the Xen virtualization software."

http://news.com.com/Novell+offers+faster+virtualized+Windows/2100-1012_3-6158196.html

I guess that means PV drivers for windows.. 

-- Pasi

Impressive prediction - hopefully, they will open source them so that all may benefit.

-- 

Jim Klein

Director Information Services & Technology

LPIC1, CNA/CNE 4-6, RHCT/RHCE

Saugus Union School District

http://www.saugus.k12.ca.us 

"Finis Origine Pendet"

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