[Xen-devel] bad write performance with qdisk with larger files in pv-domU

[Ronny Hegewald <ronny.hegewald@xxxxxxxxx>]

Im using the following 32-bit setup:

- xen 4.1.0 
- upstream linux-kernel 2.6.39 as dom0
- linux 2.6.32 pv-domU that has several ext3 partitions mounted with qdisk 
(same behaviour with a 2.6.39 kernel, so i continued the investigation with 
the 2.6.32er kernel)

Die read performance is good (ca. 60 MB/s)

For smaller files (< 30-40 MB) the write-speed is ok.

But if i copy a larger file (ca > 40 MB), the write speed decreases to ca. 0,5 
MB/s, after the first ca. 40 MBs are written.

One reason for the bad performance might be that qdisk doesnt use AIO. For 
testing purposes i activated AIO in hw/xen_disk.c (i set use_aio=1), but the 
domU freezed shortly after the domU-kernel started.

Is this performance-impact expected when no AIO is used? 

I compared the raw-block implementation from xen-qemu 4.1.0 and current 
upstream, in case xen-qemu has some missing bugfixes and found the following 
patch that looks a bit interesting

        commit 4899d10d142e97eea8f64141a3507b2ee1a64f52
        Author: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
        Date:   Mon Apr 19 13:34:11 2010 +0100
        raw-posix: Use pread/pwrite instead of lseek+read/write

        This patch combines the lseek+read/write calls to use pread/pwrite
        instead.  This will result in fewer system calls and is already used by
        AIO.


From the first look the patch cannot be backported 1:1, so i havent tried it 
yet, because i doubt that it can make such a huge difference. Or would it be 
worth a try?

Any other ideas how/what to investigate this issue further, in case the write-
speed should be better also without AIO? I know that the qdisk implementation 
is expected to be slower, but i would expect at least lets say 5 MB/s.




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