[Xen-users] Slow Windows XP 32-bit

[Peter Milesson <miles@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

I've been using Xen hypervisor for a couple of years. What beats me is, 
that Windows XP 32-bit performance is quite slow, and there seems to be 
no improvements with Xen 4.3.0, compared to Xen 4.1.0. I'm using the 
GPLPV drivers with Windows, I've tried the experimental 0.11.0.404 
(installation problems), but it's obvious, the problem isn't with the 
GPLPV drivers, as the performance didn't improve a bit.
Yesterday, I upgraded a system that previously had Xen 4.2.0 hypervisor, 
and a standard Linux kernel 3.7.1 with all Xen-stuff (backends, 
frontends, etc) activated. I replaced it with a similar Linux kernel 
3.10.12 and Xen 4.3.0. I've also got another system with about the same 
setup, though different hardware. In both systems, the Windows XP 32-bit 
performance is quite below expectations. On the contrary, the 
performance of Windows XP 64-bit improved considerably, when ported to 
Xen from an older PC, and it's really shining.
The virtual disks are always LVM-backed, so the issues are not there.

Dom0 is using 2 exclusive pinned vcpus in all the machines
There's 2GB of RAM set aside for Dom0 in all setups, which is more than 
sufficient
Dom0 has got weight 6000, and all DomU have got default weight 256 in 
the scheduler
Dom0 normally uses about 10-20% cpu
Every DomU is using 2 vcpus, sharing the available vcpus with other machines
DomUs mostly have got 1GB of RAM

I've tried different tweaks, parameter settings, and I don't know what, 
and I'd be very grateful for some good advice where to improve the 
situation.
Best regards,

Peter


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