Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[JR]

Greetings all,

Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very
poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with
the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs
getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.

I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by
some google searches but nothing has helped.

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks much,
JR


-- 
Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is
an answer. My public key
<http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>

RE: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[Venkateswara Rao Nandigam]

Try TSO offload on Guest Virtio interface

And try passthrough interface mode at Host Level for this Guest Virtio Interface

Thanks,
Venkatesh

-----Original Message-----
From: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of JR
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:07 PM
To: kvm@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

Greetings all,

Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.

I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by some google searches but nothing has helped.

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks much,
JR


--
Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is an answer. My public key <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[Peter Kieser]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 742 bytes --]


On 2014-05-14 8:37 AM, JR wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very
> poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with
> the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs
> getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.
>
> I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by
> some google searches but nothing has helped.
>
> Does anyone have any advice?
>
> Thanks much,
> JR
>
>

I ran into similar issues with the Redhat virtio drivers, and the guest 
would freeze with high transfer. I switched to the emulated e1000 NIC 
and haven't had any problems since.

-Peter


[-- Attachment #2: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature --]
[-- Type: application/pkcs7-signature, Size: 4504 bytes --]

RE: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[Venkateswara Rao Nandigam]

One more important thing is to make sure you launch vhost thread for your virtio nic, as part of Guest instantiation. There will be a parameter "vhost=on" in Guest instantiation command line.

-----Original Message-----
From: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of Venkateswara Rao Nandigam
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:20 AM
To: JR; kvm@vger.kernel.org
Subject: RE: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

Try TSO offload on Guest Virtio interface

And try passthrough interface mode at Host Level for this Guest Virtio Interface

Thanks,
Venkatesh

-----Original Message-----
From: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of JR
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:07 PM
To: kvm@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

Greetings all,

Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.

I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by some google searches but nothing has helped.

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks much,
JR


--
Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is an answer. My public key <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[JR]

We have tried TSO offload; no effect.

I'm thinking about passthough; I don't think that grizzly (openstack,
the environment in which I'm running) supports it. Not to say that
there's not a way to make it work but ...

Thanks
JR

On 5/15/2014 12:49 AM, Venkateswara Rao Nandigam wrote:
> Try TSO offload on Guest Virtio interface
> 
> And try passthrough interface mode at Host Level for this Guest Virtio Interface
> 
> Thanks,
> Venkatesh
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of JR
> Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:07 PM
> To: kvm@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM
> 
> Greetings all,
> 
> Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.
> 
> I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by some google searches but nothing has helped.
> 
> Does anyone have any advice?
> 
> Thanks much,
> JR
> 
> 
> --
> Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is an answer. My public key <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 

-- 
Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is
an answer. My public key
<http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>

Re: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[JR]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the advise.  How does the intel driver perform?  Wirespeed
range?  (Or, did you make the change more to fix the freezing rather
than to up the performance?)

Thanks
JR

On 5/15/2014 1:27 PM, Peter Kieser wrote:
> 
> On 2014-05-14 8:37 AM, JR wrote:
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very
>> poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with
>> the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs
>> getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.
>>
>> I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by
>> some google searches but nothing has helped.
>>
>> Does anyone have any advice?
>>
>> Thanks much,
>> JR
>>
>>
> 
> I ran into similar issues with the Redhat virtio drivers, and the guest
> would freeze with high transfer. I switched to the emulated e1000 NIC
> and haven't had any problems since.
> 
> -Peter
> 

-- 
Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is
an answer. My public key
<http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>

Re: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[JR]

Yes, thank you, Venkateswara, it is vhost=on is present.

This is something specific to driver in windows since, in linux it
performs very well.

On 5/15/2014 1:41 PM, Venkateswara Rao Nandigam wrote:
> One more important thing is to make sure you launch vhost thread for your virtio nic, as part of Guest instantiation. There will be a parameter "vhost=on" in Guest instantiation command line.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of Venkateswara Rao Nandigam
> Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:20 AM
> To: JR; kvm@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: RE: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM
> 
> Try TSO offload on Guest Virtio interface
> 
> And try passthrough interface mode at Host Level for this Guest Virtio Interface
> 
> Thanks,
> Venkatesh
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of JR
> Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:07 PM
> To: kvm@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM
> 
> Greetings all,
> 
> Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.
> 
> I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by some google searches but nothing has helped.
> 
> Does anyone have any advice?
> 
> Thanks much,
> JR
> 
> 
> --
> Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is an answer. My public key <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 

-- 
Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is
an answer. My public key
<http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>

RE: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[Venkateswara Rao Nandigam]

I agree, but since you are saying this is in open stack environ, the Guest's parameters gets supplied through different input files for different type of Guests, better to check once. 

-----Original Message-----
From: JR [mailto:botemout@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 11:33 PM
To: Venkateswara Rao Nandigam; kvm@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

Yes, thank you, Venkateswara, it is vhost=on is present.

This is something specific to driver in windows since, in linux it performs very well.

On 5/15/2014 1:41 PM, Venkateswara Rao Nandigam wrote:
> One more important thing is to make sure you launch vhost thread for your virtio nic, as part of Guest instantiation. There will be a parameter "vhost=on" in Guest instantiation command line.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org] On 
> Behalf Of Venkateswara Rao Nandigam
> Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 10:20 AM
> To: JR; kvm@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: RE: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 
> 2008 R2 on KVM
> 
> Try TSO offload on Guest Virtio interface
> 
> And try passthrough interface mode at Host Level for this Guest Virtio 
> Interface
> 
> Thanks,
> Venkatesh
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org] On 
> Behalf Of JR
> Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:07 PM
> To: kvm@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 
> R2 on KVM
> 
> Greetings all,
> 
> Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.
> 
> I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by some google searches but nothing has helped.
> 
> Does anyone have any advice?
> 
> Thanks much,
> JR
> 
> 
> --
> Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption 
> is an answer. My public key 
> <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the 
> body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at  
> http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the 
> body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at  
> http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 

--
Your electronic communications are being monitored; strong encryption is an answer. My public key <http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x4F08C504BD634953>

Re: Poor performance with virtio network driver on windows 2008 R2 on KVM

[Peter Kieser]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1430 bytes --]

Hi JR,

I mostly did this to stop the freezing. I'm back to troubleshoot this 
issue, since the e1000 driver performs worse with Linux 3.10 and qemu 
2.0 now. One thing that did help a bit, was disabling vhost-net zero 
copy, but the latency and packet loss is still there (but not as much.)

Did you come up with anything?

-Peter

On 2014-05-15 11:01 AM, JR wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> Thanks for the advise.  How does the intel driver perform?  Wirespeed
> range?  (Or, did you make the change more to fix the freezing rather
> than to up the performance?)
>
> Thanks
> JR
>
> On 5/15/2014 1:27 PM, Peter Kieser wrote:
>> On 2014-05-14 8:37 AM, JR wrote:
>>> Greetings all,
>>>
>>> Though I don't believe that this is KVM problem per se, I'm seeing very
>>> poor network performance when using windows 2008R2 KVM instances with
>>> the virtio driver when on a 10G network.  iperf results show linux VMs
>>> getting close to wire speeds, while windows only does about 1.3Gb/sec.
>>>
>>> I've tried a number of tcp settings (chimney, etc...) as recommended by
>>> some google searches but nothing has helped.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have any advice?
>>>
>>> Thanks much,
>>> JR
>>>
>>>
>> I ran into similar issues with the Redhat virtio drivers, and the guest
>> would freeze with high transfer. I switched to the emulated e1000 NIC
>> and haven't had any problems since.
>>
>> -Peter
>>



[-- Attachment #2: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature --]
[-- Type: application/pkcs7-signature, Size: 4504 bytes --]