Issues With Ubuntu 14 As A Guest VM, And Network Throughput..

Home » CentOS-Virt » Issues With Ubuntu 14 As A Guest VM, And Network Throughput..
CentOS-Virt 4 Comments

I have a CentOS 6.5 server running as a host for about a dozen other VM‘s, and all were running just fine. I had a mix of CentOS, Ubuntu, and FreeBSD
VM’s running, no problem at all.

I then updated the Ubuntu VM’s to the newer 14.x release, and that installed a 3.13 linux kernel, and after that (which I didn’t notice right at the start) the network throughput outbound was abysmal at best. Where before I could move an ISO image in just moments, trying to send out an image from the VM now took forever, with constant timeouts. I tried it on multiple Ubuntu VM’s and all have the exact same issue. I thought this is strange, the older 12.x stuff ran just fine, so I thought well the networking is in the kernel so let’s back up the kernel.

So I grabbed a 3.11 kernel and loaded it, and that was a good improvement, but still no winner, so then I backed off to a 3.8.13 kernel which seemed to be the newest of the 3.8’s, and bingo everything started working fine. I
then tried a couple Ubuntu machines that were standalone boxes (not VM’s)
with the newer 3.13 it loads by default, and running independent like that throughput is great, so it’s some interaction with the qemu/kvm host.

Has anyone run into this, or have any idea, or know of any tunable changes I can make that would make the VM play nice with the newer recommended kernel? I was actually stunned changing kernels made the diff between getting hundreds of megs of throughput on the host, to getting a meg or two if lucky, with constant pauses. At the same time, my other CentOS and FBSD VM’s seem to run fine, but then again CentOS sticks with an older kernel it seems.

–

4 thoughts on - Issues With Ubuntu 14 As A Guest VM, And Network Throughput..

  • Hi,

    as you already figured out, this seems to be an ubuntu or kernel issue
    (maybe virtio drivers are missing in these kernels?). So it would be best to contact canonical or kernel folks about it. Furthermore you didn’t bother to say if you are running kvm or xen or something completely different?

    HTH

    —
    Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Regards

    Sven Kieske

    Systemadministrator Mittwald CM Service GmbH & Co. KG
    Königsberger Straße 6
    32339 Espelkamp T: +49-5772-293-100
    F: +49-5772-293-333
    https://www.mittwald.de Geschäftsführer: Robert Meyer St.Nr.: 331/5721/1033, USt-IdNr.: DE814773217, HRA 6640, AG Bad Oeynhausen Komplementärin: Robert Meyer Verwaltungs GmbH, HRB 13260, AG Bad Oeynhausen

  • Your right, I didn’t, and I could have sworn I had put that in the message. I am running KVM, and I thought it would seem funny for the virtio stuff to be missing in the Linux kernel, well the newer ones at that.

    —
    Howard Leadmon

  • I don’t know if ubuntu includes all the drivers in the newest versions. they did for ubuntu 12.04, but they also offer special kernels for virtualization guests, it might be worth it to check them out.

    —
    Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Regards

    Sven Kieske

    Systemadministrator Mittwald CM Service GmbH & Co. KG
    Königsberger Straße 6
    32339 Espelkamp T: +49-5772-293-100
    F: +49-5772-293-333
    https://www.mittwald.de Geschäftsführer: Robert Meyer St.Nr.: 331/5721/1033, USt-IdNr.: DE814773217, HRA 6640, AG Bad Oeynhausen Komplementärin: Robert Meyer Verwaltungs GmbH, HRB 13260, AG Bad Oeynhausen

  • There is an open bug regarding the hypervisor low performance in 14.04. This is probably a kernel issue and they had a patch for it as far as I can remember hat tested the issue.

    You can try to contact the mailing list of ubuntu servers and lookup the bug at the bugzilla.

    Eliezer
    —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—