Re: [Xen-users] HVM shutdown

["Fajar A. Nugraha" <fajar@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Stefan Below <stefanbelow@xxxxxx> wrote:
>> For Windows HVM guest you can try James Harper's GPLPV. You can choose
>> to install only the shutdown monitor service (without xen-net and
>> xen-vbd drivers) if you want, but I suggest you install all of them as
>> the PV drivers increase performance greatly.
>>
>
> I know, but i did a try with the gplpv drivers and windows xp and i had some
> strange performance issues ( DomU locked up for a couple of seconds, IO
> performace was very worde and so one).

Odd. What xen version and GPLPV was it?
I recall having a low performance problem on old GPLPV and Xen
versions (as in the one in RHEL 5.0), but with RHEL5.3's Xen 3.1+ or
Xen 3.3.1 combined with GPLPV 0.9.12-pre13 I have been able to get a
stable system with MUCH higher I/O throughput (disk and network)
compared to the qemu-emulated devices.

It might also be SMP problem though, last time I check using vcpus > 1
on domU reduce GPLPV performance significantly (although it should
still be higher than qemu-emulated devices).

> Its a productive system, so i need a
> stable version.

... and you're willing to put up with the low I/O performance without
PV drivers? Seriously?
IMHO if you're unable to use PV drivers for windows domU, you should
stick with other virtualization instead (vmware, virtualbox, etc.).
Part of the reason why I even considered having windows domU on Xen
was the availability of GPLPV. Before that I had to use a vmware
server especially for Windows virtualization because I could only get
acceptable performance with their guest additions.

But hey, that's just me :)
You should be able to get shutdown monitor service running without
xen-vbd and xen-net if you want. I believe Xen 3.3 also has stubdom,
which can be used to increase I/O performance without having to use PV
drivers.

Regards,

Fajar

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