[Fedora-xen] HVM Performance and PV drivers

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 09:45:07AM -0800, Jim Klein wrote:
> >>
> >>On Thursday 08 February 2007 10:08am, Jim Klein wrote:
> >>
> >>>Anyone been able to get the PV drivers from Xensource to work on an
> >>>FC6 created HVM. Performance is rather sluggish, even on 64bit,
> >>>without these, yet they don't seem to want to work here. Or,
> >>>alternatively, is Red Hat working on their own? The HVM IO is really
> >>>a bit too slow for most production use without them.
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 11:26am, Lamont Peterson wrote:
> >>
> >>>I don't believe that you can do this.
> >>>
> >>>But, I'm wondering what OS you're trying to run on the HVM DomU.  
> >>>If it's
> >>>Linux, use a paravirtualized DomU. You'll get much better  
> >>>performance
> >>>(especially on things like I/O).
> >>>
> >>>HVM adds some emulation overhead and, thus, is slower than PV.  
> >>>HVM is only
> >>>necessary to run an OS for which no paravirtualized kernel is  
> >>>available.
> >>>-- 
> >>>Lamont Peterson <lamont at gurulabs.com>
> >>>Senior Instructor
> >>>Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ]
> >>>
> >>
> >>All my Linux guests are PV (been running Xen in production for 7  
> >>months - far longer
> >>in testing.) I'm talking about Windows guests, which is why I  
> >>would need PV drivers to work.
> >>Am running 64bit Dom0 to alleviate some of the pain, but I/O is  
> >>still too slow for anything
> >>but lightweight applications. We're a RHEL shop, so would prefer  
> >>to use RHEL as a base over
> >>XenSource Commercial, but it looks like I may have to go that  
> >>route if noone else is working
> >>on PV drivers for Windows guests.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Interesting point is the fact that Novell will ship Windows PV  
> >drivers in
> >SLES 10 SP1 when it's released in May 2007..
> >
> >-- Pasi
> >
> 
> If only SLES didn't suck - and Novell actually kept their promises.  
> But I could be wrong, maybe they'll be better now that they have  
> reliable partners like Microsoft...
> 

"Novell and Intel plan to announce Monday software that improves the
performance of Windows running atop the Xen virtualization software."

http://news.com.com/Novell+offers+faster+virtualized+Windows/2100-1012_3-6158196.html

I guess that means PV drivers for windows.. 

-- Pasi