[CentOS-virt] Windows Xen VM's have high guest CPU usage and poor performance

Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 09:24:41PM +0200, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
>   
>> On 01/25/2010 07:28 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>>     
>>> On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 09:03:58PM -0500, Ryan Pugatch wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>>>> Also many people are running Windows 2003 VMs on Xen without problems.
>>>>>
>>>>> -- Pasi
>>>>>
>>>>>       
>>>>>           
>>>> My patch management and antivirus console machine is a Xen virtualized  
>>>> Windows 2008 machine that doesn't have problems.  I even moved an XP VM  
>>>> over to the same server as that machine just to see what happens.  The  
>>>> XP machine still performed poorly.
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> Ok. The next thing to try would be to update to gitco Xen 3.4.2 rpms, 
>>> but I guess you switched to ESXi already :)
>>>       
>> For what is worth, I had several problems with the gitco packages:
>> - in xen-3.3 .0 , Java starting to consume all the processing power ( 
>> the same VM with stock xen from Centos 5.2 was fine in this aspect; see 
>> my thread started at 
>> http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-virt/2009-February/000836.html )
>> - with xen-3.4.1 and 3.4.2 from gitco, an XP HVM failed to start, 
>> despite working perfectly with stock Centos 5.4
>>
>>     
>
> Ok. Did you check "xm log" for more information about the XP problem?
>
>   
    I apologize, my wording could have bean clearer: it was Windows that 
was crashing with the new version of xen (some "hardware" changes in the 
VM, I presume); xen itself was pretty happy. At the time I needed a 
functional XP (even if it was an experimental installation and I could 
do some experiments). I did not do any digging because my life as 
Windows programmer/admin ended exactly 10 years ago and my Windows 
skills were not really upgraded ever since; therefore I simply reverted 
to the known good configuration. That is, Centos 5.4.
    These days I could do some debugging if that would be useful (the XP 
VM is mostly useless now, it has served its purpose), but I would need a 
tutor to keep my hand on the Win part ( I am not willing to spend time 
googling for solutions to Windows issues )