Re: [Xen-users] Poor disk I/O with HVM stub domains

[Brian Conway <xen@xxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:13:57 +0700
"Fajar A. Nugraha" <fajar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Brian Conway <xen@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > idle dom0 and WinXP domU).  After following the stubdom README, I saw
> > a big performance drop-off immediately,
> 
> > Thanks for any tips.
> 
> A user has reported good results with xen.org's version (not Lenny's
> package), so you might want to try that first (just in case the
> problem is Lenny's packages)
> 
> http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2009-01/msg00590.html
> 
> Personally, if your goal is to improve IO performance for XP domUs,
> I'd suggest using GPLPV drivers instead of stubdom. Annoucement for
> the latest version is here
> 
> http://www.nabble.com/New-version-of-GPL-PV-drivers-for-Windows-0.10.0.47-td22867090.html
> 
> Older version (which have received more testing) is also available at
> http://meadowcourt.org/downloads/ (I'm using 0.9.12-pre13), so if you
> have problems with the latest version you can use this one.
> 

Thank you.  I'm familiar with the GPL PV drivers and am testing them
separately.  My goal is to understand the functionality and performance
of HVM stub domains
( 
http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/08/28/xen-33-feature-hvm-device-model-domain/
 ).
I see the same drop-off in performance in both Windows and FreeBSD HVMs,
which I wouldn't expect based on the above link, and GPL PV isn't an
option in the latter case (although testing 8-CURRENT as a PV guest is).

The kernel version could be the issue, it appears I'm not the only one
with this problem
( http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-04/msg00369.html ).
I'm not familiar with all the nuances of the Xen.org 2.6.18 kernel, does
it include backported drivers, or is it strictly 2.6.18 + Xen?  The ICH9
chipset on my motherboard wasn't supported in Debian until the
Etch-And-A-Half release with 2.6.24.

Brian

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