[Xen-devel] Xen Stability Testing - 320 guest domains on ES7000

["Carb, Brian A" <Brian.Carb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'd like to share more of our Stability Testing results.  We've recently executed 320 guest domains under SLES10 and Xen Unstable on our ES7000/one platform. Each para-virtualized guest successfully ran Kernbench, a cpu-intensive benchmark that generates its workload by compiling a Linux kernel from source files. Throughout the testing, the ES7000 environment was very stable - we were able to interact with domain0 via putty sessions, and with the running guests via xm consoles and networked secure shell commands.

 

In these tests, the ES7000/one was configured with 56 CPUs and 166gb memory. Xen Unstable was built with NR_DYNIRQS=1024 and max_phys_cpus=64, and the system was booted with dom0_mem=1024M and xenheap_megabytes=64. Each guest was configured as a 4x para-virtualized SLES10 machine with 512mb memory. Guests were each stored on separate logical volumes on san storage, and booted via physical block device (phy:).

 

Some features demonstrated by this testing include scalability (320 guests), stability of Xen on the ES7000 platform, and effective Xen scheduling and handling of over-committed cpus (a total of 1280 virtual CPUs mapped onto 54 physical CPUs).

 

Host Platform Hardware:
    ES7000/0ne (7-cell configuration) using 56 cpus (28 dual-core sockets, non-hyperthreaded)
    166gb memory
    SAS internal RAID boot disks
    4 Emulex 2gb Fibre LP1005 HBAs.

 

Host Platform Software:
    SLES10 Release
    Xen Unstable tree (changeset 15445)
    Code deviations from changeset:
      NR_DYNIRQS set to 1024 in ./linux-2.6-xen-sparse/include/asm-x86_64/mach-xen/irq_vectors.h
    Compile Options: max_phys_cpus=64
    Additional Xen Boot Options: dom0_mem=1024M,  xenheap_megabytes=64

 

Storage:
    Hardware: 28 Eurologic 72GB Fibre Channel 10k rpm drives in 2 enclosures, connected via four 2gb fiber paths
    Management: Host-managed via LVM, 4 volume groups of 7 spanned spindles each, split into 5gb volumes

 

Guest domains:
    Configuration: Para-virtualized SLES10, 512mb memory, 4 vcpu, OS on external physical storage, fixed IP
    Kernbench test: kernbench -H -M -f -n 1

 

brian carb
unisys corporation - malvern, pa

 

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