[CentOS-virt] performance differences between kvm/xen

Tue Oct 19 10:47:03 UTC 2010
Dennis Jacobfeuerborn <dennisml at conversis.de>

On 10/19/2010 09:41 AM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 09:58:15PM +0200, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>> On 10/16/2010 08:11 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
>>> On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 02:16:42PM +0100, Bart Swedrowski wrote:
>>>> Hi Karanbir,
>>>>
>>>> On 14 October 2010 19:59, Karanbir Singh<mail-lists at karan.org>   wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 10/14/2010 07:48 AM, Tom Bishop wrote:
>>>>>> I think xen is still on top in terms of performance and features....now
>>>>>
>>>>> that is indeed what it 'feels' like, but I'm quite keen on putting some
>>>>> numbers on that.
>>>>
>>>> I have done some testing some time ago on one of the EQ machines that
>>>> I got from hetzner.de.  Full spec of the machine was as following:
>>>>
>>>>     * Intel® Core??? i7-920
>>>>     * 8 GB DDR3 RAM
>>>>     * 2 x 750 GB SATA-II HDD
>>>>
>>>> It's nothing big but even though results are quite interesting.  All
>>>> tests were performed on CentOS 5.5 x86_64 with PostgreSQL 8.4 (from
>>>> CentOS repos).
>>>>
>>>
>>> Note that 64bit Xen guests should be HVM, not PV, for best performance.
>>> Xen HVM guests obviously still need to have PV-on-HVM drivers installed.
>>>
>>> 32bit Xen guests can be PV.
>>
>> Hm, why would HVM be faster than PV for 64 bit guests?
>>
>
> It's because of the x86_64 architecture, afaik.
>
> There was some good technical explananation about it,
> but I can't remember the url now.

In that case I'll have to call this advice extremely bogus and you probably 
should refrain from passing it on. The only way I can see this being true 
is some weird corner case.

Regards,
   Dennis