[Fedora-xen] HVM Performance and PV drivers

[Jim Klein]

On Thursday 08 February 2007 10:08am, Jim Klein wrote: 
> Anyone been able to get the PV drivers from Xensource to work on an 
> FC6 created HVM. Performance is rather sluggish, even on 64bit, 
> without these, yet they don't seem to want to work here. Or, 
> alternatively, is Red Hat working on their own? The HVM IO is really 
> a bit too slow for most production use without them. 


On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 11:26am, Lamont Peterson wrote: 
> I don't believe that you can do this. 
> 
>But, I'm wondering what OS you're trying to run on the HVM DomU. If it's 
>Linux, use a paravirtualized DomU. You'll get much better performance 
>(especially on things like I/O). 
> 
>HVM adds some emulation overhead and, thus, is slower than PV. HVM is only 
>necessary to run an OS for which no paravirtualized kernel is available. 
>-- 
>Lamont Peterson <lamont at gurulabs.com> 
>Senior Instructor 
>Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ] 

All my Linux guests are PV (been running Xen in production for 7 months - far longer in testing.) I'm talking about Windows guests, which is why I would need PV drivers to work. Am running 64bit Dom0 to alleviate some of the pain, but I/O is still too slow for anything but lightweight applications. We're a RHEL shop, so would prefer to use RHEL as a base over XenSource Commercial, but it looks like I may have to go that route if noone else is working on PV drivers for Windows guests. 

-- 
Jim Klein 
Director Information Services & Technology 
LPIC1, CNA/CNE 4-6, RHCT/RHCE 
Saugus Union School District 
http://www.saugus.k12.ca.us 

"Finis Origine Pendet" 

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