[libvirt-users] network-performance

[Justin Clift]

On 02/02/2011, at 7:44 PM, Francesc Guasch wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 02:33:28PM -0500, Brian K. White wrote:
>> On 2/1/2011 12:39 PM, 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
>>> Host: CentOS 5.5 x86_64 kvm running libvirt
>> 
>> First thing is to stop unfairly comparing things that don't even
>> claim to do the same job. hyper-v is a hypervisor, while kvm is not,
>> xen is.
> 
> Hi Brian, I don't want to sound picky, but I did a quick search in the
> KVM documentation and I couldn't find what category KVM is. I really
> thought it was playing the same league as Xen.
> 
> That's from the KVM faq:
> 
> http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#What_is_the_difference_between_KVM_and_Xen.3F
> 
>    Xen is an external hypervisor ...
>    On the other hand, KVM is part of Linux and uses the regular Linux
>    scheduler and memory ...
> 
> I just found this Linux Journal article:
> 
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9764
> 
>    KVM is a unique hypervisor. ...

Heh, Brian's email was worded a bit strongly, so may have thrown you onto
the wrong track. ;)

With RHEL *6* (and therefore CentOS 6 when it's released), KVM is production quality.

With the CentOS 5 series though, I'm personally just "not sure".  Maybe Xen is the right
choice for that technology series.

If you want the most up-to-date feature set and best performance, in a RHEL/CentOS
type of distribution, then you probably want to get a hold of RHEL 6 or wait for
CentOS 6 to be released.

As I work for Red Hat, I can find the right sales-y type of contact for you if you want, and
they'll get you access to the RHEL 6 evaluation download.  (I think it's like a 30 day trial version
or something, but I'm not sure... haven't kept up with that side of things.)

Anyway, hope some of that's useful, and happy to find someone for you if needed. :)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift