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Re: [Xen-users] Increasing throughput on xen bridges

To: Mark Williamson <mark.williamson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-users] Increasing throughput on xen bridges
From: carlopmart <carlopmart@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:29:38 +0100
Cc: xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Mark Williamson wrote:
  I have a rhel 5.1 xen server with two rhel 3 ES hvm guests installed.
Both rhel3 guests use an internal xen bridge (xenbr1) which it isn't binded
to any physical interface host. On this bridge throughput it is very very
poor, only 2.5 Mbs. How can I increase this throughput???

The bridge driver does add overhead but I suspect that your poor performance is more likely due to the HVM emulation of the network card than the bridge driver.

If there's a Linux 2.6 kernel available for RHEL 3, you might be able to compile the PV drivers from the "unmodified_drivers" directory in the Xen tree. These would improve performance.

There were some patches posted to the list from Virtual Iron that enabled PV drivers to be used under a Linux 2.4-based kernel, which would enable you to compile against a 2.4 kernel in your HVM machine.

The above suggestions would mean that you keep using a RHEL3 kernel in the HVM virtual machine but just add PV drivers.

Finally, http://xen.org/download/dl_304guest_rhel3.html contains a download link for a Xen-patched 2.4.21 kernel for RHEL 3.8. This is not an official RedHat supported kernel, since it's been patched by XenSource. Therefore it could perhaps impact your support agreement... But if you converted to a PV domain using it you might improve performance, particularly for network.

This suggestion differs in that you would actually be converting from using an HVM domain to using a PV domain with an entirely different kernel.

Cheers.
Mark

Thanks Mark, but i can't find Virtual Iron's patches that you say ... Where they are??

--
CL Martinez
carlopmart {at} gmail {d0t} com

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