[CentOS-virt] Moving vmware guests to a CentOS KVM server

Kenni Lund kenni at kelu.dk
Sat Feb 20 13:10:41 UTC 2010


2010/2/20 S.Tindall <tindall.satwth at brandxmail.com>:
>
> On Sat, 2010-02-20 at 02:41 +0100, Kenni Lund wrote:
>> 2010/2/18 compdoc <compdoc at hotrodpc.com>:
>> > I would also just use the e1000 emulation. Theres nothing
>> > better about the virtio devices...
>>
>> ...other than lower CPU utilization and higher throughout? Since these
>> are CentOS/RHEL guests, I wouldn't even consider using e1000, I would
>> just go for virtio_net.
>>
>> I don't have any links, but some time ago there were some benchmarks
>> (on the KVM development list?), showing the e1000 maxing out at around
>> 300-400mbit/s while the virtio got around 900mbit/s. Even with the
>> much higher throughput, the virtio_net driver still had the same or
>> lower CPU utilization.
>>
>> Do your own testing if in doubt.
>>
>> Best Regards
>> Kenni Lund
>
> Are you using test-signed drivers or do you have a redistributable
> source for release-signed drivers (that chain to a microsoft root)?

I don't think that anyone are talking about Windows in this thread?
You don't need Microsoft signing of drivers for Linux guests ;)

> Never got the chance to test relative performance of e1000 vs the netkvm
> drivers on a M$ guest, but on a centos5 guest, virtio absolutely blows
> the doors off e1000 performance.
>
> Using ttcp in both directions, typical C5-host-to-C5-guests for e1000
> was in the 30-60MB/s range and virtio was in the 300-400MB/s range.

Exactly... :)

Best Regards
Kenni Lund


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