We''ll soon be turning the machine we''ve been doing testing with into a production system designed primarily to provide several different linux distributions as HVM guests for us to use to build and test our software under different flavors of linux. As build systems, they will be doing lots and lots of disk writes compiling stuff. There appear to be about a gazillion different ways to setup the disks for the guests, and I''m wondering if anyone has any performance numbers saying which one is best? _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> -----Original Message----- > From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com > [mailto:xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com] On Behalf Of > Tom Horsley > Sent: 21 December 2006 13:02 > To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com > Subject: [Xen-users] best guest disk performance? > > We''ll soon be turning the machine we''ve been doing testing > with into a production > system designed primarily to provide several different linux > distributions as HVM guests > for us to use to build and test our software under different > flavors of linux. > > As build systems, they will be doing lots and lots of disk > writes compiling stuff. > > There appear to be about a gazillion different ways to setup > the disks for the > guests, and I''m wondering if anyone has any performance > numbers saying which > one is best?There''s probably many variants that will make some small difference, but I''d say Para-Virtual drivers are a must for good HVM disk performance. Whether you then connect the virtual disk to a partition, LVM volume, file or otherwise will be of much more minor importance, because that''s going to give you the 1.1x or 1.5x performance improvement, while the former probably delivers in the region of 3x performance boost. -- Mats> > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users > > >_______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Thursday 21 December 2006 8:06 am, Petersson, Mats wrote:> There''s probably many variants that will make some small difference, but > I''d say Para-Virtual drivers are a must for good HVM disk performance. > Whether you then connect the virtual disk to a partition, LVM volume, > file or otherwise will be of much more minor importance, because that''s > going to give you the 1.1x or 1.5x performance improvement, while the > former probably delivers in the region of 3x performance boost.strangely, this strong selling point isn''t on XenSource''s webpage. at least, i haven''t seen any numbers like that. it''s also strange that VMWare''s drivers for virtual machines include mostly video, mouse and such; i think there''s no mass storage drivers -- Javier _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
JHJE (Jan Holst Jensen)
2006-Dec-21 13:33 UTC
RE: [Xen-users] best guest disk performance?
> > I''d say Para-Virtual drivers are a must for good HVM disk > > performance.> it''s also strange that VMWare''s drivers for virtual machines > include mostly > video, mouse and such; i think there''s no mass storage driversIn fact VMware GSX _does_ have special SCSI drivers, at least for Windows. I can''t recall that I have seen special storage drivers for Linux on GSX, but I am fairly certain that they do have for VMware ESX. Cheers -- Jan Holst Jensen, Novo Nordisk A/S, Denmark _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users