[CentOS-virt] Windows Xen VM's have high guest CPU usage and poor performance
Pasi Kärkkäinen
pasik at iki.fi
Fri Jan 22 09:20:10 UTC 2010
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:39:31PM -0500, Ryan Pugatch wrote:
> Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>
>> Oh, one more thing.. is it only the guest VM taking cpu time when you
>> monitor with "xm top"?
>>
>> Do you have the latest service packs installed in the guest?
>>
>> Have you tried monitoring the performance from inside the guest, to
>> figure out what takes cpu time there?
>>
>> -- Pasi
>>
>
>
> The guest is running XP w/ SP3. It is not just the guest VM taking cpu
> time. Basically, whatever process I am doing hits 100% cpu usage in
> Windows. If I open IE, it will use 100% cpu for a bit while it opens.
> If I try to click on a website, it will do it again. Thus, it is
> causing a very sluggish session as it keeps pausing. It isn't just IE,
> it's any program I try to use. This CPU usage is reflected in xm top as
> both the guest's CPU% will hit 100% as will Dom-0.
>
Did you verify from Windows Task Manager you're actually using the GPLPV
PV drivers/devices?
How do you use the WinXP guest? Through the VNC console, or by using RDP
over the network? RDP is recommended, since it's much faster.
Does WinXP have high IOwait?
> I have done pretty much everything specified in the Xen Best Practices.
> In fact, I have dedicated 4GB to Dom-0.
>
Dom0 only needs 512 MB - 1024 MB (imho) on a common machine.
-- Pasi
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