[xenpreview-dev] Windows XP performance in Xen HVM

[Don van der Haghen]

Hello,

I am currently testing Xen 3.0 hardware virtualization on SLES 10.

In the first test phase, I am running Xen HVM on a Pentium D 930 (HP
DC7600 (EJ656ET#ABH)).

I currently have Windows XP running in Xen without any real stability issues.
However, the I/O performance (both network and HDD) is very poor (even
with the 9763-0.03 changeset). Testing harddisk IO performance with iozone
gives me 60MB/s in Dom0 and 5MB/s on WXP DomU.
Also, file transfers over the network from Linux to virtualized WXP are
taking twice as long as Linux to native WXP file transfers.

Linux (Knoppix 5.0.1) in full virtualization gives the same poor
performance. So I can imagine NOES9 giving the same results in Xen.

The strange thing is that I can find little information about this issue,
although I haven't seen any good reports either.

Is this a known and unresolved issue?

If so, I am very interested to hear about if/how/when Novell is planning
to handle this?
Will it be feasible at all to deploy Windows2000, NOES9 and Citrix on one
Xen in a production environment within 2006?
Or is it heavily recommended to go with VMware on this for the time being?

Thanks in advance for any answers anyone can provide me with regarding
this issue,
with kind regards,

D. van der Haghen
Network/System Administrator



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