Epyc VM to VM networking slow

gduperrey

The fix, which was proposed as a test to resolve some of the issues encountered, has been integrated into an official update candidate which will be released to everyone next time we publish updates. For more information on this update, you can consult the following post: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/96135

ksyblast

Hello!
First of all thank you very much for providing the fix!

Following the blog post https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/09/01/september-2025-maintenance-update-for-xcp-ng-8-3/:

The change only affects Linux guests. To make it effective, their kernel must support the feature which enables this fix. Linux distributions that have recent enough kernels or apply fixes from the mainline LTS kernels support it. Older ones don't (example: Ubuntu 20.04). Some currently supported LTS distros don't have the required patch yet, notably RHEL 8 and 9 and their derivatives. This might change if we can convince them to apply the patch to their kernel.

Where can we find the list of the supported OS and kernels to run some?

olivierlambert

Because that would be a pretty big list. Which distros you have in mind?

ksyblast

@olivierlambert we are using Oracle Linux, is OEL8/9/10 supported? As I understand OEL8 and 9 do contain a fix. We can also try with any other OS suggested by you. Thanks!

olivierlambert

Question for @Team-Hypervisor-Kernel

stormi

OEL 8 & 9 wouldn't contain the fix unless they applied extra patches for this to the RHEL 8 & 9 kernel(s). I'll let the hypervisor team check the current status.

dinhngtu

kernel-4.18.0-553.71.1.0.1.el8_10 (OL8) and kernel-5.14.0-570.37.1.0.1.el9_6 (OL9) do not contain the fix. kernel-6.12.0-55.29.1.0.1.el10_0 (OL10) does.

olivierlambert

Thanks @dinhngtu and @stormi

Forza

Tested the new updates on my prod EPYC 7402P pool with iperf3. Seems like quite a good uplift

Ubuntu 24.04 VM (6 cores) -> bare metal server (6 cores) over a 2x25Gbit LACP link.

Pre-patch

iperf3 -P1 : 9.72Gbit/s
iperf3 -P6 : 14.6GBis/s

Post Patch

iperf3 -P1 : 11.3GBit/s
iperf3 -P6 : 24.2GBit/s

Ubuntu 24.04 VM (6 cores) -> Ubuntu 24.04 VM (6 cores) on the same host

Pre Patch

Forgot to test this...

Post Patch

iperf3 -P1 : 13.7GBit/s
iperf3 -P6 : 30.8GBit/s
iperf3 -P24 : 40.4GBit/s

Our servers have Last-Level Cache (LLC) as NUMA Node enabled as most our VMs do not have huge amount of vCPUs assigned. This means for the EPYC 7402P (24c/48t) we have 8 NUMA nodes. We however do not use xl cpupool-numa-split.

olivierlambert

That's nice! It means it scales relatively well with many threads, it's a good result

Forza

@olivierlambert Can we get an updated XOA with this patch?

stormi

@Forza What patch are you referring to that would relate to XOA?

Forza

@stormi said in Epyc VM to VM networking slow:

@Forza What patch are you referring to that would relate to XOA?

It seems only recent kernels can take advantage of the improvements. From the blog post mentioned above:

The change only affects Linux guests. To make it effective, their kernel must support the feature which enables this fix.

Iperf inside XOA is much slower than other VMs (like the Ubundu 24.04 above).

When I run on the same host (pool master) against our NFS SR:

Ubuntu 24.04 (kernel 6.8):

# iperf3 -c 10.12.9.4
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  16.0 GBytes  13.7 Gbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  16.0 GBytes  13.7 Gbits/sec                  receiver

# iperf3 -c 10.12.9.4 P4
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  6.26 GBytes  5.37 Gbits/sec  8861             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  6.25 GBytes  5.37 Gbits/sec                  receiver
[  7]   0.00-10.00  sec  8.57 GBytes  7.36 Gbits/sec  8372             sender
[  7]   0.00-10.00  sec  8.57 GBytes  7.36 Gbits/sec                  receiver
[  9]   0.00-10.00  sec  9.05 GBytes  7.77 Gbits/sec  10192             sender
[  9]   0.00-10.00  sec  9.05 GBytes  7.77 Gbits/sec                  receiver
[ 11]   0.00-10.00  sec  6.12 GBytes  5.25 Gbits/sec  7144             sender
[ 11]   0.00-10.00  sec  6.11 GBytes  5.25 Gbits/sec                  receiver
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  30.0 GBytes  25.8 Gbits/sec  34569             sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  30.0 GBytes  25.8 Gbits/sec                  receiver

XOA 2025.08 (kernel 6.1):

# iperf3 -c 10.12.9.4
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  6.26 GBytes  5.37 Gbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  6.25 GBytes  5.37 Gbits/sec                  receiver

# iperf3 -c 10.12.9.4 -P4
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  4.71 GBytes  4.05 Gbits/sec  3987             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  4.71 GBytes  4.05 Gbits/sec                  receiver
[  7]   0.00-10.00  sec  4.61 GBytes  3.96 Gbits/sec  3086             sender
[  7]   0.00-10.00  sec  4.61 GBytes  3.96 Gbits/sec                  receiver
[  9]   0.00-10.00  sec  6.77 GBytes  5.81 Gbits/sec  7745             sender
[  9]   0.00-10.00  sec  6.77 GBytes  5.81 Gbits/sec                  receiver
[ 11]   0.00-10.00  sec  5.42 GBytes  4.65 Gbits/sec  629             sender
[ 11]   0.00-10.00  sec  5.42 GBytes  4.65 Gbits/sec                  receiver
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  21.5 GBytes  18.5 Gbits/sec  15447             sender
[SUM]   0.00-10.00  sec  21.5 GBytes  18.5 Gbits/sec                  receiver

olivierlambert

XOA's kernel should have the capability already, as it's a Debian 12 with stock kernel. Also, the bottleneck is ONLY between VMs on the same host.

Forza

@olivierlambert said in Epyc VM to VM networking slow:

XOA's kernel should have the capability already, as it's a Debian 12 with stock kernel. Also, the bottleneck is ONLY between VMs on the same host.

OK, but then I do not understand the huge difference.

Tested some VM-VM traffic on the same host:

Ubuntu (kernel 6.8) -> Alpine (kernel 6.12): 13.7Gbit/s, P4 = 23.8 Gbit/s
XOA (kernel 6.1) -> Ubuntu (kernel 6.8) : 5.5 Gbit/s, P4 = 17.5 Gbit/s
XOA (kernel 6.1) -> Alpine (kernel 6.12): 11.9 Gbit/s, P4 = 13.6 Gbit/s

And for measure against the bare metal NFS server:
Alpine -> NFS SR (kernel 6.12): 13.7 Gbit/s, P4 = 23.4 Gbit/s

bleader

@Forza By default XOA VM has 2 vcpus, how many vcpus do your ubuntu have? Althrough iperf isn't running multithreaded in your test, there is one queue on the kernel side of the VM per vcpu to process packets.

Forza

@bleader said in Epyc VM to VM networking slow:

@Forza By default XOA VM has 2 vcpus, how many vcpus do your ubuntu have? Althrough iperf isn't running multithreaded in your test, there is one queue on the kernel side of the VM per vcpu to process packets.

I have 8 CPUS on XOA, 4 CPUs in the Alpine VM and 6 in the Ubuntu VM

P4 uses 4 threads with iperf3.

@bleader Are you saying you do not see any performance differences between XOA and VMs with more recent kernels?

olivierlambert

If you want to compare perf between kernels, do that with the same number of vCPUs ideally (and also the same env, ie different kernel versions with the same iperf version)

Forza

@olivierlambert said in Epyc VM to VM networking slow:

If you want to compare perf between kernels, do that with the same number of vCPUs ideally (and also the same env, ie different kernel versions with the same iperf version)

Sure. but in this context it is not that relevant as all other VMs got a boost while XOA didnt as much.

Does the Debian 6.1 kernel that XOA uses have the backported fixes mentioned in https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/09/01/september-2025-maintenance-update-for-xcp-ng-8-3/

Even if it has, it is clear that more resent kernels are much faster. Why not release a XOA with more recent kernels?

olivierlambert

Kernel version could have an impact and being unrelated to the fix we provided. Get an even more recent kernel on your XOA to test (eg one from testing)