Re: XP installation speed: KVM vs Xen

[Avi Kivity <avi-atKUWr5tajBWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org>]

Andrew Olney wrote:
> I've been migrating from Xen to KVM for a wide variety of reasons.
>
> I've noticed, however, that XP installs much much faster with Xen (3.03
> xen-image-xen0-2.6.17-6-generic-xen0 ubuntu) than with KVM (14).
>
> I haven't clocked it, but for KVM it takes longer than realtime (by the
> XP install clock) and with Xen it takes less than realtime.
>
> I assume that this is all file I/O related, which raises the question:
> what file system setup optimizes KVM I/O, e.g. qcow vs. raw?
>   

The best file format is not a file, but a raw partition or lvm volume.  
Second best is a raw partition that has been prewritten using dd.

Pinning kvm to a cpu may help; try prefixing the command with 'taskset 1'.

Please report you experiences, especially about the last hack, as it 
indicate a serious problem.

-- 
Do not meddle in the internals of kernels, for they are subtle and quick to panic.


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