ML
    • Recent
    • Categories
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Groups
    • Register
    • Login

    Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2

    IT Discussion
    xp xenserver xenserver 7.2 storage iops
    12
    98
    11.6k
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • S
      scottalanmiller
      last edited by

      And...

      https://mangolassi.it/topic/15529/what-is-kvm-best-management-tools-in-2017/

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • S
        scottalanmiller
        last edited by

        And...

        https://mangolassi.it/topic/15540/kvm-on-fedora-26-server-edition/

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • K
          krisleslie
          last edited by

          Just more reason I like open source I think I’m gonna switch to kvm at home

          S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • S
            scottalanmiller @krisleslie
            last edited by

            @krisleslie said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

            Just more reason I like open source I think I’m gonna switch to kvm at home

            I've been using KVM instead of Hyper-V or VirtualBox for desktop use for the last ~year and it is great. So much better.

            K 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • K
              krisleslie @scottalanmiller
              last edited by

              @scottalanmiller well like they say all good things come to an end šŸ™‚ XS

              I like XO I hope he considers porting to KVM.

              S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • O
                Obsolesce
                last edited by Obsolesce

                A co-worker has the same laptop as I do, except the 15" version. Everything else is the exact same.

                He's using EXT4 + LVM, and qcow2 for virtualdisks.

                I'm using XFS + LVM, and RAW (.img) for virtual disks.

                My Win10 VM gets twice the I/O as his. We both had nothing in the background running.

                I know this doesn't help with Xen, but food for thought. (we're both using m.2 SSDs) Mine was over 2k MBps reads, his was 1k, mine was 400 MBps writes, his was 200

                Edit: We're both running Fedora 26. At that time I was running Gnome and him Cinnamon.

                K S F 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • K
                  krisleslie @Obsolesce
                  last edited by

                  @tim_g what would be the comparison speed of a raid 10 off spinning rust to 1 ssd in iops?

                  S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • S
                    scottalanmiller @krisleslie
                    last edited by

                    @krisleslie said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                    @scottalanmiller well like they say all good things come to an end šŸ™‚ XS

                    I like XO I hope he considers porting to KVM.

                    Oh he is considering it. Just don't know what he decided.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • S
                      scottalanmiller @Obsolesce
                      last edited by

                      @tim_g said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                      A co-worker has the same laptop as I do, except the 15" version. Everything else is the exact same.

                      He's using EXT4 + LVM, and qcow2 for virtualdisks.

                      I'm using XFS + LVM, and RAW (.img) for virtual disks.

                      My Win10 VM gets twice the I/O as his. We both had nothing in the background running.

                      I know this doesn't help with Xen, but food for thought. (we're both using m.2 SSDs) Mine was over 2k MBps reads, his was 1k, mine was 400 MBps writes, his was 200

                      Edit: We're both running Fedora 26. At that time I was running Gnome and him Cinnamon.

                      But both on KVM, right? No Xen involved?

                      O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • S
                        scottalanmiller @krisleslie
                        last edited by

                        @krisleslie said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                        @tim_g what would be the comparison speed of a raid 10 off spinning rust to 1 ssd in iops?

                        A SATA 7200 RPM drive is ~100 IOPS. So four of them in RAID 10 is 400 Read IOPS.

                        A typical SATA SSD is 10K - 100K IOPS.

                        You would need hundreds of SATA drives in a massive RAID 10 with huge cache to come close to a single $100 SSD drive, let alone a nice M.2 drive.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • O
                          Obsolesce @scottalanmiller
                          last edited by

                          @scottalanmiller said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                          @tim_g said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                          A co-worker has the same laptop as I do, except the 15" version. Everything else is the exact same.

                          He's using EXT4 + LVM, and qcow2 for virtualdisks.

                          I'm using XFS + LVM, and RAW (.img) for virtual disks.

                          My Win10 VM gets twice the I/O as his. We both had nothing in the background running.

                          I know this doesn't help with Xen, but food for thought. (we're both using m.2 SSDs) Mine was over 2k MBps reads, his was 1k, mine was 400 MBps writes, his was 200

                          Edit: We're both running Fedora 26. At that time I was running Gnome and him Cinnamon.

                          But both on KVM, right? No Xen involved?

                          Correct.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • F
                            FATeknollogee @Obsolesce
                            last edited by

                            @tim_g said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                            A co-worker has the same laptop as I do, except the 15" version. Everything else is the exact same.

                            He's using EXT4 + LVM, and qcow2 for virtualdisks.

                            I'm using XFS + LVM, and RAW (.img) for virtual disks.

                            Why RAW (.img), I thought qcow2 is/was preferred?

                            O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • O
                              Obsolesce @FATeknollogee
                              last edited by Obsolesce

                              @fateknollogee said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                              @tim_g said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                              A co-worker has the same laptop as I do, except the 15" version. Everything else is the exact same.

                              He's using EXT4 + LVM, and qcow2 for virtualdisks.

                              I'm using XFS + LVM, and RAW (.img) for virtual disks.

                              Why RAW (.img), I thought qcow2 is/was preferred?

                              I don't need any special features like snapshotting or anything like that, only performance. RAW is presented as-is to the VM and gives the best IO performance.

                              I can always convert if need be, and there are other ways of snapshotting/checkpointing.

                              There are many other differences too, but it's better to google comparisons rather than me try to quickly explain it while preoccupied.

                              stacksofplatesS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • stacksofplatesS
                                stacksofplates @Obsolesce
                                last edited by

                                @tim_g said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                                @fateknollogee said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                                @tim_g said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                                A co-worker has the same laptop as I do, except the 15" version. Everything else is the exact same.

                                He's using EXT4 + LVM, and qcow2 for virtualdisks.

                                I'm using XFS + LVM, and RAW (.img) for virtual disks.

                                Why RAW (.img), I thought qcow2 is/was preferred?

                                I don't need any special features like snapshotting or anything like that, only performance. RAW is presented as-is to the VM and gives the best IO performance.

                                I can always convert if need be, and there are other ways of snapshotting/checkpointing.

                                There are many other differences too, but it's better to google comparisons rather than me try to quickly explain it while preoccupied.

                                If you preallocate the qcow2s you get close to raw speeds.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • F
                                  FATeknollogee
                                  last edited by

                                  For what I'm doing qcow2 is fine, except I can't snapshot "q35/uefi"...a fix is coming sometime in the future.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • K
                                    krisleslie
                                    last edited by

                                    Scott I knew it was vast difference but not 100x!!!! Dude a 4 ssd raid 10 is Basiclally all you need !!!

                                    S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • S
                                      scottalanmiller @krisleslie
                                      last edited by

                                      @krisleslie said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                                      Scott I knew it was vast difference but not 100x!!!! Dude a 4 ssd raid 10 is Basiclally all you need !!!

                                      Absolutely, that's why no one uses RAID 10 for SSDs, doesn't make sense as the leap in performance is so big. That's why RAID 5 is about all that is used.

                                      jmooreJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • BRRABillB
                                        BRRABill @scottalanmiller
                                        last edited by

                                        @scottalanmiller said

                                        You can also install the GUI on the server and have local management tools. Obviously managing purely remotely is better. But as this is a desktop anyway, local management tools are not out of the question and you can switch later once you are comfortable with it. There is no lock in to your GUI or tools choices like with Hyper-V.

                                        "Obviously"

                                        Hey do you consider cockpit a GUI?

                                        K S 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • K
                                          krisleslie @BRRABill
                                          last edited by

                                          @scottalanmiller
                                          Hey Scott, I'm going to switch my SATA 7200 RPM spinning rust probably tonight. I'll go ahead and switch to a SSD (luckily I have a bunch sitting around). With that in mind, I'm trying to wrap my head around the performance impact per machine with SSD vs a HDD. I realize the RPM's drop per "vm" I have with spinning rust. Does my IOPS drop per vm with SSD?

                                          Also just to give some context, on my two Dell R530 @ work (thank God remember those oldy goldy days SAM I had haha), I went with SAS 7200's with my H700 512 MB Cache. The thing runs like a champ with just my four 2 TB HDD's in Raid 10. I have literally no IOPS problems that I've experienced. I have about 30 VM's running. With that in mind, does it make sense at work to consider the swap to full SSD?

                                          The only server i have that takes pure storage is a Ubiquiti NVR, short of that nothing else runs slow or has even blimped at me wrong. No startup sprawl either which when I look back at my old craptacular Dell Tower T110 i, it died from sprawl.

                                          S 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • jmooreJ
                                            jmoore @scottalanmiller
                                            last edited by

                                            @scottalanmiller said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                                            @krisleslie said in Need to Improve Disk Utilization on XenServer 7.2:

                                            Scott I knew it was vast difference but not 100x!!!! Dude a 4 ssd raid 10 is Basiclally all you need !!!

                                            Absolutely, that's why no one uses RAID 10 for SSDs, doesn't make sense as the leap in performance is so big. That's why RAID 5 is about all that is used.

                                            If you used 4 ssd in a raid 10 do you still get ever increasing levels of performance?

                                            S K 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • 1
                                            • 2
                                            • 3
                                            • 4
                                            • 5
                                            • 2 / 5
                                            • First post
                                              Last post