[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [Xen-users] Does I/O from Dom0 skip the PV backend drivers ?


  • To: Xen List <xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • From: "Fajar A. Nugraha" <fajar@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 09:53:47 +0700
  • Delivery-date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:54:32 -0700
  • List-id: Xen user discussion <xen-users.lists.xensource.com>

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 9:29 PM, Joe Armstrong <Joe.Armstrong@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Thanks for the info - since I am running CentOs (with xen 3.0.3) it sounds
> like my best bet for real network numbers is to run on bare metal,

Actually it depends on what you're trying to do.
Network PV drivers are good enough so (for example) if you have a
recent enough CPU, you can easily saturate 1 GB link with only a minor
difference in CPU load.

If your benchmark is something like sysbench for MySQL, the limiting
factor is usually disk I/O. In this case testing on a native Linux and
testing on dom0 would yield very similar results.

> but disk
> I/O numbers from dom0 should be consistent with a bare metal machine.

Correct.

Another thing to note is memory allocation. By default Xen
automatically baloons down dom0 memory as needed when domU is started,
but it does NOT automatically baloon-up later when domU is stopped. So
make sure your dom0 is using all memory (try "xm list" or "xm info")
before starting your benchmark.

Regards,

Fajar

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users


 


Rackspace

Lists.xenproject.org is hosted with RackSpace, monitoring our
servers 24x7x365 and backed by RackSpace's Fanatical Support®.