WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-devel

RE: [Xen-devel] system load

To: "Ian Pratt" <Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [Xen-devel] system load
From: "James Harper" <JamesH@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 20:59:31 +1000
Cc: <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Delivery-date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 03:06:49 +0100
Envelope-to: steven.hand@xxxxxxxxxxxx
List-archive: <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=xen-devel>
List-help: <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=help>
List-id: List for Xen developers <xen-devel.lists.sourceforge.net>
List-post: <mailto:xen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
List-subscribe: <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=subscribe>
List-unsubscribe: <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=unsubscribe>
Sender: xen-devel-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thread-index: AcSXCFAtvsqIPAC4SGebrLi+r97fZwAHMYEQ
Thread-topic: [Xen-devel] system load
I'm only wondering from a monitoring point of view. If I have a few
physical servers it will be useful to get an accurate picture of how
hard each is working with a view to balancing the virtual servers
sensibly across them.

James

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Pratt [mailto:Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, 10 September 2004 17:32
> To: James Harper
> Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] system load
> 
> > Where does system load live for xen related tasks?
> > If a packet is received by dom0, then bridged into dom1, how is the
> > system load proportioned between domains for the actual transfer of
data
> > between the two domains?
> >
> > I guess what I'm asking is, is there a way to report the amount of
cpu
> > time is spent in xen itself and the corresponding system load?
> 
> Very little time will be spent in Xen itself, but what there is
> will appear to be accounted to the domain that was running at the
> time.
> 
> If you have a domain that is doing a lot of I/O, this will be
> generating work for your driver domains (usually dom0). We've
> gone to every effort to do as little work in the driver domain as
> possible, but it does take some CPU to execute the hardware
> device driver, the bridging/firewalling code, and the 'backend'
> virtual driver.
> 
> It's hard to account and apportion exactly how much time the
> driver domain spends working on behalf of each of the other
> domains. If you're worried about a domain hogging too much of
> this resource then use can use tools like Linux's 'tc' to rate
> limit the amount of IO a particularly domain is allowed to do.
> 
> > It would be nice to be able to see the load on the physical
> > server as a whole for monitoring purposes, or is it sufficient
> > to simply sum up the load on all the domains?
> 
> Xen/xend already export the information you need to sum up load
> over each CPU, and hence see the total system load.
> 
> As Keir says, the load figures reported internally within each
> domain can be confused due to pre-emption. One trick we could do
> would be to hack Linux to create a dummy process to which we
> account all time when the domain isn't running. This would enable
> the load figures to add up, but I'm pretty sure that this is not
> what many Xen users want: In a 'virtual dedicated server'
> environment the owner of the physical server doesn't want to giveq
> customers too much information about what else is going on on the
> server...
> 
> 
> Ian



-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170
Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on
who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM.
Deadline: Sept. 13. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php
_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>