Re: [Xen-users] Xen vs VMWare comparison paper

[Andrew Bobulsky <rulerof@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello James,

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 6:25 PM, James Harper
<james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hello Admin,
>>
>> On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 1:11 PM,  <admin@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > I'm guessing that the benchmarks were run without any optimized
>> > drivers for Windows under Xen.  That would be the only way to explain
>> > the dismal performance.  Windows is known to perform poorly under Xen
>> > if you simply install Windows and don't install optimized drives.  In
>> > all fairness, Windows performs poorly on native hardware if you don't
>> > install optimized drivers, so testers should expect to have to install
>> > optimized drivers when testing Windows regardless of the environment.
>> > I have emailed them about this, and I will post anything I hear back from
>> them.
>>
>> I'm rather curious here because you said "optimized drivers" rather than
>> saying "GPLPV."  Is there a choice of [better than stock] drivers for a
>> Windows HVM DomU that I'm not aware of?  I ask because GPLPV doesn't
>> quite work for me yet in all situations.
>>
>
> If they were running the Citrix branded Xen product then Citrix's own drivers 
> would be the obvious choice.
>
> In what way is GPLPV letting you down? You asked about USB a while back... 
> I've made some progress there but it's still very much a work in progress.

Heh, I remember I tried the Citrix drivers on Xen a while back... that
didn't go well :D

While GPLPV seemed to work pretty well with my Xen guests, it
invariably caused a BSOD on atimkpag.sys (I think that's the spelling)
when I passed my Radeon 5850 through with IOMMU.  I really wish I knew
why, especially because it seems to work very well for Casey, albeit
on an Intel setup with a Radeon 6XXX model card.

If you'd like, I can offer my time and/or access to my hardware to
help debug the issue, but would definitely need some direction on
exactly what to do :P

Cheers,
Andrew Bobulsky

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