4.3.10 virtio bridged networking performance

[Chris Brown]

virtio with 4.3.10 is totally unusable. This is observed on all host types and different hardware configurations.

Simple Test case: Load an EL or OEL 6.x guest and configure it with a bridged virtio nic. Perform a simple network operation in the guest such making/removing a directory and some files on NFS v3 mounted filesystem in the guest.

EG: mkdir foobar time { for i in seq 0 1000; do echo foo > foobar/file_${i}; done } time rm -rf foobar

Windows Host Example:

• Windows 7 Dual Intel x5570 CPU 48Gb Ram 10K SAS disks
• SL 6.5 Guest 2 vcpu 4GB RAM 20GB vdi

With virtio: --create-- real: 1m10.749s user: 0m0.151s system: 0m0.607s

--remove-- real: 0m39.892s user: 0m0.000s system: 0m0.418s

With 82545EM: --create-- real: 0m2.616s user: 0m0.119s system: 0m0.646s

--remove-- real: 0m1.746s user: 0m0.002s system: 0m0.540s

OEL 6.5 Host Example:

• OEL 6.5. Dual Intel e5540 CPU 73Gb Ram 10K SAS disks
• SL 6.5 Guest 2 vcpu 4GB RAM 20GB vdi

With virtio: --create-- real: 1m1.833s user: 0m0.131s system: 0m0.402s

--remove-- real: 0m31.232s user: 0m0.001s system: 0m0.401s

With 82545EM: --create-- real: 0m2.100s user: 0m0.112s system: 0m0.623s

--remove-- real: 0m0.931s user: 0m0.001s system: 0m0.311s