Xen users - Apr 2008 - Re: Poor performance running WinXP x86 hvm underCentOS5.1x64 with xen3.1

I found on some CPUs an ACPI based HVM chews up a lot of CPU time versuses an
APIC HVM, so in Windows I would change the computer type in device manager to
"Standard PC" and disable acpi in the domain config.

-Ross


----- Original Message -----
From: xen-users-bounces@lists.xensource.com
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To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com <xen-users@lists.xensource.com>
Sent: Wed Apr 09 23:17:46 2008
Subject: [Xen-users] Poor performance running WinXP x86 hvm underCentOS5.1x64
with xen3.1

I have a dual core in this machine with 2 gig of ram and the hvm config is set
to use 512. When started the overall performance of the host is very bad.

Being this is my first working xen setup, are there any non specific pointers
that could resolve this?

Thanks!
jlc

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>I found on some CPUs an ACPI based HVM chews up a lot of CPU time versuses
an APIC HVM, so in Windows I would
>change the computer type in device manager to "Standard PC" and
disable acpi in the domain config.
>
>-Ross
Wow,
Night and day! Thanks for that tip. So how does one install Vista or more
importantly W2008 Server on Xen and maintain usable performance?

Thanks!
jlc

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Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> > I found on some CPUs an ACPI based HVM chews up a lot of CPU time
versuses
> > an APIC HVM, so in Windows I would change the computer type in device
> > manager to "Standard PC" and disable acpi in the domain
config.
> > 
> > -Ross
> 
> Wow,
> Night and day! Thanks for that tip. So how does one install 
> Vista or more importantly W2008 Server on Xen and maintain 
> usable performance?
If you have a more recent motherboard/cpu combo then ACPI should
perform better, otherwise I guess you suck it up ;-)

It all depends on how good of an implementation your BIOS does
of ACPI really. I don''t know which BIOSs work well and which
don''t, maybe somebody else on the list has some input on this,
or a link to a site that lists the poor performing ACPI BIOSs.


-Ross

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>If you have a more recent motherboard/cpu combo then ACPI should
>perform better, otherwise I guess you suck it up ;-)
>
>It all depends on how good of an implementation your BIOS does
>of ACPI really. I don''t know which BIOSs work well and which
>don''t, maybe somebody else on the list has some input on this,
>or a link to a site that lists the poor performing ACPI BIOSs.
I ultimately plan on using an HP DL380 G5 with the newer revision of mobo that
supports my two E5405''s. What do you use under your Xen
implementations?

Thanks!
jlc

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Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> >If you have a more recent motherboard/cpu combo then ACPI should
> >perform better, otherwise I guess you suck it up ;-)
> >
> >It all depends on how good of an implementation your BIOS does
> >of ACPI really. I don''t know which BIOSs work well and which
> >don''t, maybe somebody else on the list has some input on this,
> >or a link to a site that lists the poor performing ACPI BIOSs.
> 
> I ultimately plan on using an HP DL380 G5 with the newer 
> revision of mobo that supports my two E5405''s. What do you 
> use under your Xen implementations?
On my desktop or in my datacenter?

On the desktop, well whatever ships with the Dells we use.

In the datacenter, we use Quad Xeons, Dell blade servers with
iSCSI storage on the backend. The 5405s perform nicely and
using a server motherboard/bios as you would find on the
DL380s you should have no problems.

-Ross

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