On 02/01/2011 11:42 AM, Justin Clift wrote:
On 02/02/2011, at 4:39 AM, Orion Poplawski wrote:
I'm just starting to take a look at guest networking performance and am a 
little disappointed.  I'm comparing two setups:

Host: Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
Guest: CentOS 5.5 x86_64

Host: CentOS 5.5 x86_64 kvm running libvirt
Guest: CentOS 5.5 x86_64

The guests are essentially identical except that I'm running the Microsoft 
Linux Integration Components synthetic drivers on the windows hosted VM.  The 
libvirt setup uses bridged networking.  Running bonnie++ on a nfs mounted 
filesystem on each guest I'm seeing the libvirt hosted guest get between 
16%-35% of the performance of the Hyper-V guest.  Is this expected?  Is there 
anything I can do to increase network performance of the kvm guest?

Hi Orion,

Just as an initial question, if the CentOS 5.5 guest using the VirtIO network 
drivers?
It's been ages since I used CentOS 5.x, so I don't remember if they're the 
default or
not.

That's the initial "big performance boost" thing that's needed over the 
emulation type
drivers.

To check, take a look at the XML definition for the guest, and look at the 
networking
interface.  There should be an element there called "model", and it will 
contain the
type of network card being emulated.  If it's anything other than "virtio" then 
an
emulated network driver interface is being used.  (not real fast)

I'd give you a direct URL for the XML to reference, but ironically the 
libvirt.org server
appears to be offline at the moment (doesn't happen very often thankfully!).  
Heh.

Hope that helps.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

Thanks a lot.  For some reason that particular machine was missing the crucial:

      <model type='virtio'/>

in the interface section.  Performance is much better now.

--
Orion Poplawski
Technical Manager                     303-415-9701 x222
NWRA/CoRA Division                    FAX: 303-415-9702
3380 Mitchell Lane                  or...@cora.nwra.com
Boulder, CO 80301              http://www.cora.nwra.com

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