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Re: [Xen-users] LVM Read/Write speed <10% drive's normal speed: SOLVED

To: "Olivier B." <xen.list@xxxxxxxxx>, "Bryn M. Reeves" <bmr@xxxxxxxxxx>, Robert Dunkley <Robert@xxxxxxxxx>, Jeff Sturm <jeff.sturm@xxxxxxxxxx>, "Fajar A. Nugraha" <fajar@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] LVM Read/Write speed <10% drive's normal speed: SOLVED
From: Stephen Hamer <Stephen.Hamer@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:05:52 +0000
Cc: "xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, LVM general discussion and development <linux-lvm@xxxxxxxxxx>
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WOW. Thank you all for the overwhelming response!!! I'm going to answer you all in order of who replied first.
(NOTE: the solution is in the 2nd section. Thanks Oliver!)
-Stephen



==================================
On Thu, 2009-09-17 at 03:41 -0400, Robert Dunkley wrote:
>Hi Stephen,
>Can you please post your DomU config file to the list.
>Rob

Sure, without any of the comments, here it is (without the true names or IPs, of course):

kernel      = '/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-xen-686'
ramdisk     = '/boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-xen-686'
memory      = '1024'
root        = '/dev/hda2 ro'
disk        = [ 'phy:/dev/xenvg/testVM1-swap,hda1,w',
                  'phy:/dev/xenvg/testVM1-root,hda2,w', ]

name        = 'testVM1'

vif = [ 'ip=192.168.0.100' ]


on_reboot   = 'restart'
on_crash    = 'restart'

# Needs to be inserted to allow console to attach to VM
extra="console=hvc0 xencons=tty"


This was generated by xen-tools (after a little modification to xen-tools xm.tmpl). I like how easy xen-tools is to expand upon. For example, I used 'xen-update-image' as a model to create my own 'xen-image-cmd' which can pass a single command to multiple offline domUs. Works just like 'xen-update-image', except for the fact that you can pass ANY command that the domU can execute AND you can force the output to be redirected to a file INSIDE the chrooted image. I was sort of proud of myself for that scripting voodoo. =D


==================================
On Thu, 2009-09-17 at 03:45 -0400, Olivier B. wrote:
>Hi,

>what mount options do you use on the DomU ?
>Under Debian there is xen-tools example with the "sync" mount options : 
>if you use it, writes will be really slow.

>Olivier

THIS is where the money is. Once I removed the 'sync' option from the fstab for my root partition, the I/O speed sailed. Makes sense, really. This got the VM's performance to actually BEAT the old bare metal machine that we were running this server on before.
Thanks for your help!


==================================
On Thu, 2009-09-17 at 06:21 -0400, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:
What is the configuration of the guest's storage? I.e. what type of virt
driver are you using to expose the dom0 storage to the domUs? This can
have a massive impact on the performance levels you can achieve.

You should also test the performance of these underlying devices in the
domUs - i.e. benchmark read (and if possible write) performance of
the /dev/sd*, /dev/hd* or /dev/xvd* devices seen in domU (or whatever
other type of virtual disks you are using).

Regards,
Bryn.

I'm not PRECISELY sure what you mean here, but I think you're referring to the xen driver used to pass the storage in as a block dev. to the domU. If that is what you mean, I used the 'phy:' command. The performance of the /dev/hda* inside the domU is what I was mentioning trying to benchmark simplistically with 'dd'.
- A 'dd' command in my dom0 on the true physical /dev/sda1 got 100 MB/s.
- Before I turned off 'sync', a 'dd' command on /dev/hda2 inside my domU (physically a 10GB LVM on the physical device /dev/sda5) got 3 MB/s.
I noted later that running a DD command directly to another LVM on that same VG as the others got comparable performance to the 100 MB/s. That was my first indicator that the domUs were doing something nasty.
- After I turned off 'sync', a 'dd' command on that same /dev/hda2 inside the same domU got 100 MB/s!


==================================
On Thu, 2009-09-17 at 10:59 -0400, Jeff Sturm wrote:
Your domU's--are they paravirt, or HVM?
I believe they're paravirtualized, unless I'm doing something silly. They're running off the modified kernel, and I'm not doing any hardware forwarding magic. See config file at the top.

==================================
On Thu, 2009-09-17 at 11:16 -0400, Fajar A. Nugraha wrote:
I suggest you try using official xen.org's 2.6.18 kernel, or other
vendor-supported 2.6.18 kernel-xen (like RHEL5's kernel-xen, or even
Etch's kernel) for both domU and dom0 and see if the problem persists.
I've noticed a couple of quirks in the startup sequence of my domUs, I figured it had something interesting to do with the kernel. I'll look into using one of those kernels. Thanks!
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