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Re: [Xen-users] XP HVM performance

To: James Harper <james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] XP HVM performance
From: Matthieu Patou <mat+Informatique.xen@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:02:56 +0400
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On 06/25/2009 11:37 AM, James Harper wrote:
I recently reinstalled an XP over my xen 3.2.1 (my conf is at the end
of
the mail).

And it's working but I find it a bit (well a big bit ...) too slow and
use a lot of CPU.

For instance just having a taskmanager running use between 10/15% of
CPU
as reported by taskmanager and xm top.

When I run iozone the CPU usage is almost 95% whereas on a real XP
workstation it's only a few percents.

The server hosting this XP is a 4 core Xeon E5320  @ 1.86GHz and I
have
only dom0 with 2 VCPU and 1 VCPU in XP.

I know that running XP in XEN will bring a penalty but I wasn't
expecting such penalty.

Do I miss something ?

I also use the latest GPL PV drivers and found with iozone that the
throughput is 1/3 of the raw capacity of the disk (as measured in
dom0).
Does this number seems normal to you or once more am I missing
something ?
Finally I also did some tests with more than one VCPU but if the whole
system load reduced somehow (which is logical) the IO perf where even
worse. Is it a good idea to use more than one VCPU in HVM ?


Please try putting /PATCHTPR in your boot.ini (make a copy of the
existing line in case it causes a problem). That will get GPLPV to patch
the windows kernel to stop using one of the hardware APIC registers so
often (intel) or at all (amd). Let me know if that affects the speed in
any way.

I was already using it because otherwise the system is so slow.
I tried john the ripper on dom0, domU with /patchtpr and without. The two first are very close and the third one is little behind the second but not so far ...
So it seems that some applications are OK with XP in Xen some others not ...
Am I the only one to feel this problem so badly ?

Matthieu.



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