[Xen-users] Poor Windows 2003 + GPLPV performance compared to VMWare

[Adam Goryachev <mailinglists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have an application server running on MS Windows 2003, which was a
clean install on VMWare last year (after a failed migration attempt to
XenServer).

At this point, a benchmark (actually a live process run regularly on the
machine) produced a result of 7800 to 7900 transactions per second

I've recently migrated this to Xen by:
1) Uninstall VMWare tools
2) Shutdown Windows
3) Use VMWare to download the vmdk
4) Write the VMDK file (dd) to the same LVM that contained the VMWare
storage area (which was exported by iSCSI to VMWare
5) Installed Debian Testing with Xen 4.1
6) Using the exactl same iSCSI server/LVM config etc, started the VM
7) Installed the GPLPV drivers

Everything seemed to work, and all was good.

Then, the user ran the above process, and got consistently, results of
approx 2500 transactions per second

I increased the vcpus from 2 to 4, but this didn't change the result at all.

I modifed the domU config for the disk line from hda to xvda, and the
result increased slightly to 2560 / sec (these tests are just one off
tests, no verification of actual performance increase etc...).

In any case, I seem to have a significant loss of performance on the
domU when compared to VMWare.

The storage server/network is identical
The dom0 machine is identical to the VMWare machine

Here is my current domU config file:

kernel        = "/usr/lib/xen-4.1/boot/hvmloader"
builder        = 'hvm'
memory        = 4096
shadow_memory    = 12
device_model    = '/usr/lib/xen-default/bin/qemu-dm'
localtime    = 1
name        = "vm1"
cpus        = "2,3,4,5"    # Which physical CPU's to allow
vcpus        = 4        # How many Virtual CPU's to present
viridian    = 1
disk = [
'phy:/dev/disk/by-path/ip-10.30.10.23:3260-iscsi-iqn.2012-06.domain:vm1-lun-0,xvda,w'
]
vif        = ['bridge=xenbr0, mac=00:16:3e:39:10:1a']
boot        = 'c'
sdl        = 0
vnc        = 1
vncdisplay    = 10
vncviewer    = 0
vncconsole    = 0
vncunused    = 0
stdvga        = 1
usb        = 1
usbdevice    = 'tablet'
acpi        = 1
apic        = 1
on_reboot    = 'restart'
on_poweroff    = 'destroy'
on_crash    = 'restart'
audio        = 0

Any suggestions on how to improve performance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Adam

-- 
Adam Goryachev
Website Managers
www.websitemanagers.com.au


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