[Gllug] Hardware problems / good replacements

[Phil Reynolds]

On 10/02/12 22:05, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 07:40:21PM +0000, Phil Reynolds wrote:
>> Since I upgraded my motherboard, processor and memory last summer I have
>> found that virtual machines (be they under kvm or virtualbox) perform
>> less well than expected.
> 
> What test are you running to determine this?

Nothing very scientific - just that they are (or were, before the BIOS
upgrade, at least) noticeably much slower than on the previous 3 core
processor.

> Does FreeBSD have a virtio driver?  Google is a bit unclear as to
> whether a stable, finished driver exists.  In any case if you're using
> IDE emulation, that would be your performance problem right there.
> Use a guest that supports virtio block and network .. it'll be a lot
> faster.

I have looked into this before and not really reached any conclusion. I
fully intend to look into this feature when I can but it will probably
need a complete "nuke and pave". One attempt I made proved difficult to
partition.

> The second problem is Debian squeeze ... because it's old.  Using the
> latest kernel, qemu-kvm and libvirt should yield significantly better
> results.

I tried a later qemu-kvm... it didn't seem to make much difference on
what I could actually get it to do at the time. I will try it again
fairly soon, if this problem persists.

> A 6 core Phenom surely has enough oomph to run virtual machines fast
> (although not as fast as if you're using virtio and the latest
> software).  To check, you could compare your cpu flags to this page:
> 
> http://virt-tools.org/learning/check-hardware-virt/

A pass, as ever when I checked.

> To check for a defective processor / cache etc. look at 'mcelog'.

Installed - I'll see what happens.

-- 
Phil Reynolds
mail: phil-gllug at tinsleyviaduct.com
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