Xen users - Sep 2006 - Which do you recommend AMD or Intel for HVM?

Hi everyone,

We''re looking at getting a / some boxen in to run Windows server in
Xen. I was wondering what thoughts / experience you guys have had with
that?

We''re also wondering if we should get the Intel or AMD chips with VT?
The Intel chips seem at first glance to be cheaper and better
performing than the AMD chips so it looks a bit like a no-brainer, but
I am aware that the memory bandwidth on the Intel chips is much worse.
Are there any benchmarks / anecdotal experiences of using either with
Xen HVM?

We''re not overly concerned with the cooling / power draw aspect.

The big question for us though is the level of support for the VT in
AMD chips in Xen. I know that it hasn''t been around as long, is the
HVM implementation for Intel on Xen production ready?

Thanks a lot everyone.
-Rob

-- 
------------------------------------------------------
"I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it
appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments
against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public;
& freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of
men''s minds, which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has,
therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I
have confined myself to science." - Darwin

http://www.robhulme.com/
http://robhu.livejournal.com/

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com 
> [mailto:xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of 
> Robert Hulme
> Sent: 28 September 2006 11:02
> To: Xen-users
> Subject: [Xen-users] Which do you recommend AMD or Intel for HVM?
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> We''re looking at getting a / some boxen in to run Windows server
in
> Xen. I was wondering what thoughts / experience you guys have had with
> that?
> 
> We''re also wondering if we should get the Intel or AMD chips with
VT?
> The Intel chips seem at first glance to be cheaper and better
> performing than the AMD chips so it looks a bit like a no-brainer, but
> I am aware that the memory bandwidth on the Intel chips is much worse.
> Are there any benchmarks / anecdotal experiences of using either with
> Xen HVM?
They are pretty equal implementations at the technological level. Memory
bandwidth will have more of an effect in a virtual machine than it does
in the regular system, as you get more memory accesses to do with the
switching between hypervisor and guest and page-table management in the
guest/hypervisor, compared to the bare-metal system. [How well this is
cached depends very much on the amount of work done between HV/guest
switches]

Unfortunately, I can''t point you to any direct benchmarks or such... 
> 
> We''re not overly concerned with the cooling / power draw aspect.
> 
> The big question for us though is the level of support for the VT in
> AMD chips in Xen. I know that it hasn''t been around as long, is
the
> HVM implementation for Intel on Xen production ready?
I strongly disagree with this statement - the HVM architecture was put
in place for the purpose of supporting the AMD-V architecture with the
same infrastructure that Intel put in. Xen has several AMD-V boxes
provided by AMD for testing, and whilst there may be bugs in any code, I
don''t agree that the AMD-V support is immature - it''s been in
Xen
officially since the 3.0.1 release - which is 0.0.1 release later than
the Intel VT support was introduced officially. 

--
Mats
> 
> Thanks a lot everyone.
> -Rob
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------
> "I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it
> appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments
> against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public;
> & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of
> men''s minds, which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has,
> therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I
> have confined myself to science." - Darwin
> 
> http://www.robhulme.com/
> http://robhu.livejournal.com/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> 
> 
> 


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