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    Poor VM performance after migrating from VMWare to XCP-NG

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Migrate to XCP-ng
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    • DanpD Offline
      Danp Pro Support Team
      last edited by

      A few questions for you --

      • Are you booting in BIOS or UEFI mode? FWIW, I've read where others found the migrated VM ran better in UEFI mode.

      • How did you migrate the VM (XO's V2V tool vs manual export / import)?

      • Have you tried creating a brand new VM using the appropriate template and then attaching the existing disk in place of the default one?

      M 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • M Offline
        markds @Danp
        last edited by

        1. Booting via BIOS mode (both in VMWare and XCP-NG)

        2. Used XO's vmware import tool
          (from memory I believe the VM was powered off and then imported vs taking a snapshot then importing, but can not be sure)

        3. Have not tried creating a brand new VM and attaching the disk. Do you suspect the import has copied over some strange config impacting performance?

        BTW thanks for the prompt response @Danp

        DanpD R 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • DanpD Offline
          Danp Pro Support Team @markds
          last edited by

          @markds said in Poor VM performance after migrating from VMWare to XCP-NG:

          Have not tried creating a brand new VM and attaching the disk

          You should definitely try this. It was reported elsewhere on this forum that this improved performance, but I don't recall if this was for all VMs or specific to Windows.

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          • M Offline
            markds @Danp
            last edited by

            @Danp

            No luck... still

            • I created a full clone of the migrated VM
            • Ensured the clone was shutdown.
            • Create a new VM via the template (no disks, attached a cdrom, same mac as clone)
            • Edited the new VM
              - removed the reference the cdrom
              - attached the cloned disk using the uuid reference (which is a cool feature)
              - changed the boot order so that harddrive was first
            • ran our ip tables and the same issue 2mins 7 secs so I suspect the underlaying issue still exists...

            how do I confirm that the xen network drivers are in use:
            lsmod | grep xen
            xenfs 17639 1
            xen_netfront 22032 0
            xen_blkfront 17478 5

            does that not indicate that whilst xen_netfront module is loaded, no device is using that module?

            DanpD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • DanpD Offline
              Danp Pro Support Team @markds
              last edited by

              @markds Looks that way. What output do you get for sudo dmesg | grep xen?

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              • M Offline
                markds @Danp
                last edited by

                @Danp

                [ 0.824078] xen/balloon: Initialising balloon driver.
                [ 0.825817] xen-balloon: Initialising balloon driver.
                [ 0.848060] Switching to clocksource xen
                [ 0.861416] xen: --> pirq=16 -> irq=8 (gsi=8)
                [ 0.861486] xen: --> pirq=17 -> irq=12 (gsi=12)
                [ 0.861531] xen: --> pirq=18 -> irq=1 (gsi=1)
                [ 0.861580] xen: --> pirq=19 -> irq=6 (gsi=6)
                [ 0.861632] xen: --> pirq=20 -> irq=4 (gsi=4)
                [ 0.861692] xen: --> pirq=21 -> irq=7 (gsi=7)
                [ 0.916200] xen: --> pirq=22 -> irq=23 (gsi=23)
                [ 1.135771] xen: --> pirq=23 -> irq=28 (gsi=28)
                [ 1.936447] vbd vbd-5696: 19 xenbus_dev_probe on device/vbd/5696

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                • M Offline
                  markds @Danp
                  last edited by

                  @Danp

                  Actually maybe its a red herring...

                  ethtool -i eth3
                  driver: vif
                  version:
                  firmware-version:
                  bus-info: vif-2

                  Also I tested using iperf:
                  vm <-> vm: 9.78 Gbits/sec (on the same xcp-ng host)
                  vm <-> exsi: 0.97 Gbits/sec (network is 1GB)

                  As a final test I ran:
                  rmmod xen_netfront
                  and as expected the vms lost network access

                  So maybe the issue is elsewhere

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                  • olivierlambertO Offline
                    olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                    last edited by olivierlambert

                    Can you reproduce the issue by creating a new Linux VM from scratch on XCP-ng? (ie installing the OS etc.) This will help to understand if it's a setup-wise or VM wise issue

                    M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • M Offline
                      markds @Danp
                      last edited by

                      @Danp
                      I should also correct my previous answer...

                      Looks like some of the dmesg are in a different case...

                      dmesg | grep -i xen
                      [ 0.000000] DMI: Xen HVM domU, BIOS 4.13 04/11/2024
                      [ 0.000000] Hypervisor detected: Xen HVM
                      [ 0.000000] Xen version 4.13.
                      [ 0.000000] Xen Platform PCI: I/O protocol version 1
                      [ 0.000000] Netfront and the Xen platform PCI driver have been compiled for this kernel: unplug emulated NICs.
                      [ 0.000000] Blkfront and the Xen platform PCI driver have been compiled for this kernel: unplug emulated disks.
                      [ 0.000000] ACPI: RSDP 0x00000000000EA020 00024 (v02 Xen)
                      [ 0.000000] ACPI: XSDT 0x00000000FC00A7C0 00044 (v01 Xen HVM 00000000 HVML 00000000)
                      [ 0.000000] ACPI: FACP 0x00000000FC00A370 000F4 (v04 Xen HVM 00000000 HVML 00000000)
                      [ 0.000000] ACPI: DSDT 0x00000000FC001040 092A3 (v02 Xen HVM 00000000 INTL 20160527)
                      [ 0.000000] ACPI: APIC 0x00000000FC00A470 00260 (v02 Xen HVM 00000000 HVML 00000000)
                      [ 0.000000] ACPI: HPET 0x00000000FC00A750 00038 (v01 Xen HVM 00000000 HVML 00000000)
                      [ 0.000000] ACPI: WAET 0x00000000FC00A790 00028 (v01 Xen HVM 00000000 HVML 00000000)
                      [ 0.000000] Booting paravirtualized kernel on Xen HVM
                      [ 0.000000] Xen HVM callback vector for event delivery is enabled
                      [ 0.113732] Xen: using vcpuop timer interface
                      [ 0.113741] installing Xen timer for CPU 0
                      [ 0.390521] installing Xen timer for CPU 1
                      [ 0.492037] installing Xen timer for CPU 2
                      [ 0.590329] installing Xen timer for CPU 3
                      [ 0.918283] xen/balloon: Initialising balloon driver.
                      [ 0.920100] xen-balloon: Initialising balloon driver.
                      [ 0.952068] Switching to clocksource xen
                      [ 0.967516] xen: --> pirq=16 -> irq=8 (gsi=8)
                      [ 0.967593] xen: --> pirq=17 -> irq=12 (gsi=12)
                      [ 0.967645] xen: --> pirq=18 -> irq=1 (gsi=1)
                      [ 0.967696] xen: --> pirq=19 -> irq=6 (gsi=6)
                      [ 0.967755] xen: --> pirq=20 -> irq=4 (gsi=4)
                      [ 0.967818] xen: --> pirq=21 -> irq=7 (gsi=7)
                      [ 1.025049] xen: --> pirq=22 -> irq=23 (gsi=23)
                      [ 1.228952] xen: --> pirq=23 -> irq=28 (gsi=28)
                      [ 1.571668] XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vbd/5696
                      [ 1.573958] XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vbd/768
                      [ 1.577690] XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vif/0
                      [ 1.579893] XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vif/1
                      [ 1.584074] XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vif/2
                      [ 1.588143] XENBUS: Device with no driver: device/vif/3
                      [ 2.040651] vbd vbd-5696: 19 xenbus_dev_probe on device/vbd/5696
                      [ 2.152854] Initialising Xen virtual ethernet driver.

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                      • M Offline
                        markds @olivierlambert
                        last edited by

                        @olivierlambert
                        So I copied the firewall rules script over to another linux vm (running the current debian version) and that work properly (finished in 5 seconds).

                        It would seem like all the vms that are not performing well are based on legacy versions of Debian.

                        I would have thought a kernel version of 3.2.102 would have been recent enough to get decent performance.

                        Do you know of any issues where Xen performs badly for older Debian versions?

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                        • olivierlambertO Offline
                          olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                          last edited by

                          I would have thought a kernel version of 3.2.102 would have been recent enough to get decent performance.

                          😬 Kernel 3.2 was out in 2012 and EOL since 2018. That's very old and not secure (I doubt anyone would have backported any security patches since then). That's 6 years worth of CVEs.

                          I don't know if PV mode would be better. It's a Debian 32 bit or 64 bit?

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                          • R Offline
                            rtjdamen @markds
                            last edited by

                            @markds we have seen major improvement when booting a vm in uefi, for some reason vms created on vmware with bios are terrible slow on xcp-ng, switching to uefi made them running normal again.

                            Tristis OrisT 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • Tristis OrisT Offline
                              Tristis Oris Top contributor @rtjdamen
                              last edited by

                              @rtjdamen switch from bios to uefi is possible? VM can't startup after that.

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                              • R Offline
                                rtjdamen @Tristis Oris
                                last edited by

                                @Tristis-Oris u need to change the boot records for this, on windows we use a specific tool for this that converts the MBR disk to a GPT disk, i am not shure how the proces work in linux but i know that can be done there as well.

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