I/O is very slow for FreeBSD 10.3 amd64 guest running on Citrix XenServer 6.5

[Rainer Duffner]

Hi,

I had to realize this week that my VMs on Citrix XenServer are very slow, compared to Linux.

I’m getting maybe 8 or 10 MB/s, wheres an Ubuntu 14 guest gets 110+ MB/s (Megabyte).
Independent of the filesystem, just wiping the disks with dc3dd.

This went unnoticed, because not much I/O is done in these VMs. But recently, a customer complained and I had to look into it.

The VM is running stock 10.3-RELEASE-p6.

The OS-type is set to FreeBSD 10 64 bit.
Same thing happens with FreeBSD 11-RC1.

This is what I get in 11-RC1 from sysctl:

(freebsd11 </root>) 0 # sysctl -a |grep xen
kern.vm_guest: xen
device	xenpci
vfs.pfs.vncache.maxentries: 0
dev.xenbusb_back.0.%parent: xenstore0
dev.xenbusb_back.0.%pnpinfo:
dev.xenbusb_back.0.%location:
dev.xenbusb_back.0.%driver: xenbusb_back
dev.xenbusb_back.0.%desc: Xen Backend Devices
dev.xenbusb_back.%parent:
dev.xn.0.xenstore_peer_path: /local/domain/0/backend/vif/245/0
dev.xn.0.xenbus_peer_domid: 0
dev.xn.0.xenbus_connection_state: Connected
dev.xn.0.xenbus_dev_type: vif
dev.xn.0.xenstore_path: device/vif/0
dev.xn.0.%parent: xenbusb_front0
dev.xbd.1.xenstore_peer_path: /local/domain/0/backend/vbd3/245/768
dev.xbd.1.xenbus_peer_domid: 0
dev.xbd.1.xenbus_connection_state: Connected
dev.xbd.1.xenbus_dev_type: vbd
dev.xbd.1.xenstore_path: device/vbd/768
dev.xbd.1.%parent: xenbusb_front0
dev.xbd.0.xenstore_peer_path: /local/domain/0/backend/vbd3/245/832
dev.xbd.0.xenbus_peer_domid: 0
dev.xbd.0.xenbus_connection_state: Connected
dev.xbd.0.xenbus_dev_type: vbd
dev.xbd.0.xenstore_path: device/vbd/832
dev.xbd.0.%parent: xenbusb_front0
dev.xenbusb_front.0.%parent: xenstore0
dev.xenbusb_front.0.%pnpinfo:
dev.xenbusb_front.0.%location:
dev.xenbusb_front.0.%driver: xenbusb_front
dev.xenbusb_front.0.%desc: Xen Frontend Devices
dev.xenbusb_front.%parent:
dev.xs_dev.0.%parent: xenstore0
dev.xctrl.0.%parent: xenstore0
dev.xenballoon.0.%parent: xenstore0
dev.xenballoon.0.%pnpinfo:
dev.xenballoon.0.%location:
dev.xenballoon.0.%driver: xenballoon
dev.xenballoon.0.%desc: Xen Balloon Device
dev.xenballoon.%parent:
dev.debug.0.%parent: xenpv0
dev.privcmd.0.%parent: xenpv0
dev.evtchn.0.%parent: xenpv0
dev.xenstore.0.%parent: xenpv0
dev.xenstore.0.%pnpinfo:
dev.xenstore.0.%location:
dev.xenstore.0.%driver: xenstore
dev.xenstore.0.%desc: XenStore
dev.xenstore.%parent:
dev.xen_et.0.%parent: xenpv0
dev.xen_et.0.%pnpinfo:
dev.xen_et.0.%location:
dev.xen_et.0.%driver: xen_et
dev.xen_et.0.%desc: Xen PV Clock
dev.xen_et.%parent:
dev.granttable.0.%parent: xenpv0
dev.xenpv.0.%parent: nexus0
dev.xenpv.0.%pnpinfo:
dev.xenpv.0.%location:
dev.xenpv.0.%driver: xenpv
dev.xenpv.0.%desc: Xen PV bus
dev.xenpv.%parent:
dev.xenpci.0.%parent: pci0
dev.xenpci.0.%pnpinfo: vendor=0x5853 device=0x0001 subvendor=0x5853 subdevice=0x0001 class=0x010000
dev.xenpci.0.%location: slot=3 function=0 dbsf=pci0:0:3:0 handle=\_SB_.PCI0.S18_
dev.xenpci.0.%driver: xenpci
dev.xenpci.0.%desc: Xen Platform Device
dev.xenpci.%parent:
dev.xen.xsd_kva: 18446735281894703104
dev.xen.xsd_port: 3
dev.xen.balloon.high_mem: 0
dev.xen.balloon.low_mem: 0
dev.xen.balloon.hard_limit: 18446744073709551615
dev.xen.balloon.driver_pages: 0
dev.xen.balloon.target: 2097152
dev.xen.balloon.current: 2096128

I’ve tried switching the „OS Type“ to something like „other PV“ and get a bit more throughput. But nowhere near enough to make this useful.

Over at freebsd-xen, Roger thinks it looks right from the FreeBSD-side.

I’m not the administrator of the Xen-Server itself (it’s part of an Apache CloudStack private cloud cluster setup), but I can have pretty much any setting checked/tried I need.