Re: [Xen-users] Performance monitoring for Xen

[Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I m in a process to monitorperformance of Xen. If you know any or few
> answers to the following query kindly let me know that :-
>
> 1. Can i specify multiple CPU to Xen server.

Xen supports a multiprocessor host machine, and guests can have multiple 
virtual processors too.  The guest processors will be scheduled across the 
available physical processors.

> 2.Can i use multiple instances of the same operating system on different
> clients. Say i have installed Window-XP on my Xen server can i make use of
> same Windows at two different location.

I'm not sure what you mean by this?  You can connect remotely to the WinXP 
guest using VNC, and there's no reason you couldn't connect from multiple 
locations but there'd still only be one virtual display so they'd have to 
share (just like if you VNCed to a real machine).

Or you could just install multiple independent copies of Windows.

> 3. How many operating system can be installed on a Xen server.

The only limit to how many installed guests you can have is how much disk 
space you have available.

The limit for how many guests can be running at a given time is usually 
memory: guests have a "hard" allocation of memory and don't get swapped by 
Xen, so you can only start another guest if there's enough free memory to 
hold it.  Obviously depending on the work you want the guests to do you'll 
also need to make sure there's enough CPU time to go around...

I know of people having started over 100 very small guests on a large machine, 
although I don't imagine any of them were doing anything useful!  This may 
have been on x86_64.  I don't know if the limits are likely to be different 
for 32-bit and 64-bit Xen.

> 4. Suggest the best way to monitor the performance of my Xen Server. Right
> now what i have done is written perl Scripts for Windows and Linux. For
> windows i m using perfmon and for Linux Sans.

There are various user interfaces.  If you can use a recent Fedora, RHEL5 or 
CentOS 5 for the dom0 then you could use virt-manager.  Or you could try to 
install virt-manager on your distro of choice.  Other projects are Argo and 
Xenmon, but I'm not sure what state they're in.  You could also check out 
Enomalism, which gives you a pretty web GUI.

Finally, the XenSource commercial products (and Xen-based commercial products 
from other vendors) provide their own ways of monitoring performance.

Oh, and there's the xm top command, which is like "top" for virtual 
machines :-)

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
Dave: Just a question. What use is a unicyle with no seat?  And no pedals!
Mark: To answer a question with a question: What use is a skateboard?
Dave: Skateboards have wheels.
Mark: My wheel has a wheel!

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