8/12/2019 Speed Up Downloads On Hyper-v
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Hi all, this is Kevin Kelling and I’m a PFE with Microsoft focused on both Hyper-V and Azure. Today I’d like to talk about the performance of Linux workloads on both Hyper-V and Azure. Every now and then we are asked how well Linux performs on Hyper-V. We’ve done extensive testing and most of the time it runs quite well, but we’ve found a few cases, where some tuning can make all the difference.
I recently worked on an issue where a Linux application on Hyper-V (Windows Server 2016) was showing benchmarks of between 30-35% slower than other hypervisors. We instinctively felt something was wrong, so we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
After some effort from our outstanding product engineering team, we found that this gap was completely eliminated by tuning some settings in the BIOS, tweaking some Linux kernel parameters, and keeping the in-guest tools current.
No changes were made to the Windows Server or Hyper-V configuration – just BIOS settings, and some changes within the Linux guest VMs. In other words, Hyper-V delivers great performance, but sometimes we need to tune the environment to take full advantage of it.
What changes made up for what initially was a significant difference in performance? Let’s go take a look!
TURN THOSE C-STATES OFF!
Many systems have power management profiles in the BIOS, and while many environments correctly have this set to “performance”, many systems will still have additional options for individual C-states. If you want a primer on what a C-state is, there’s a good article here from Intel, but basically it’s a power management method.
Hyper-V tries to aggressively leverage C-states to reduce power consumption, but if you want the best possible CPU performance on your host servers, turn it all off!
In this case, we observed a 15% performance improvement after disabling all C-states in the host server’s BIOS.
Upgrade Linux Integration Services (LIS)
Linux Integration Tools consists of optimized synthetic device drivers and other “virtualization helpers” that go into the guest OS. Fifa 07 download pc. Windows servers have integration services built in and get can updates via Windows Update. Linux is similar in that the various distributions will build LIS into their images, and — depending on what version you are running — updates are distributed through their respective patch channels.
LIS 4.1.3 was released in December of 2016 (download here) and we found that simply updating to this version of LIS there was a 10% performance increase. The performance difference of course will vary based on the application, the version of Linux and the current version of the tools, but in this case the difference was quite significant.
A few notes here — some Linux distributions will not support LIS unless it is released through their patch distribution. Before you manually install LIS, make sure you understand if there are any support implications from your Linux vendor.
On the topic of LIS one final important point to keep in mind is that it makes a big difference what version of Linux you are running, as not all features are supported on all versions of Linux. If you visit the Hyper-V Linux support page, you will see sections for RHEL/CentOS, Debian, Oracle, Ubuntu, SUSE and FreeBSD. In each of these sections you can find details on which Hyper-V features are supported in which Linux versions.
Bottom line again, is that in this case, simply upgrading LIS to the current version of 4.1.3 delivered a 10% performance improvement.
Set the Linux Clock Source
Let’s say you didn’t want to upgrade to the latest LIS. You can still capture much of the performance improvement here simply by tuning the Linux clock.
Changing the Linux kernel’s clock source to “tsc” which stands for “Time Stamp Counter” resulted in a performance improvement of 6%. This particular application had a lot of context switches and made heavy use of clocks and timers, so your mileage may vary here.
A bit of information on this parameter is available here.
How Many CPUs?
Linux kernels have an optional parameter where you limit the number of possible CPUs by setting the “possible_cpus” kernel parameter. For example, if you have 8 virtual CPUs in the guest, edit the kernel parameters to include “possible_cpus = 8”. By setting this parameter, additional overhead processing was removed from the Linux CPU scheduler.
In this application, a performance improvement of 2% was observed after applying this setting.
CPU Load Balancing
Hyper-V presents a somewhat different view of the hardware to the guest OS than some other hypervisors do, in regard to how the L3 cache is presented. As a result, the Linux scheduler was not being sufficiently aggressive in scheduling the workload and some vCPUs were going into an idle state when they shouldn’t have.
By writing a simple shell script to run at boot, the Linux CPU scheduler used all of the vCPUs more efficiently, resulting in a 6% performance improvement for this application.
The Bottom Line
IT is often complicated. There’s so many distros, Linux versions and workload patterns generated by applications and other variables to consider — your mileage may vary.
But what at first appeared to be a big difference in performance, was completely eliminated by making absolutely no change to the Windows Server operating system – only changes in the BIOS (hardware) and within the Linux guest were needed to eliminate the performance difference.
In other words, you can rest assured that Hyper-V 2016 is capable of delivering strong performance for Linux workloads. Furthermore, you can expect some improvements in future updates to LIS (Linux Integration Services) to automatically exploit some of these tweaks, with the benefits extending to Linux workloads on not just Hyper-V, but to Linux on Azure as well.
If you are concerned that your Linux workloads may be running slower than they could be on Hyper-V check these three basic things:
And if you suspect a problem with idle cores not being utilized, you may be able to further improve performance by tweaking the Linux scheduler (guest OS).
For one application, these above steps resulted in a performance improvement of over 30%.
So if you have any concerns about Linux performance in Hyper-V, you can have the confidence that Hyper-V and Azure are capable of delivering strong performance. There may be cases where you may want to tweak some guest level settings in the Linux OS in order to achieve maximum performance.
We at Monitis like to keep you informed and we want to make your job as a system admin or webmaster as easy as possible. We’re all about reducing the pressure! So, lately we’ve been creating all kinds of online resources for you to access that offer tips on everything from monitoring server metrics with WMI, to tracking IIS with VBScript, to picking the most effective NoSQL database tool. The list goes on!
Today, we’d like to offer some tips on hyper-v virtualization. What exactly is that? some of you may be asking, and why should I care? According to Wikipedia, Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian and formerly known as Windows Server Virtualization, is a hypervisor-based virtualization system for x86-64 systems. Released as a beta version, Hyper-V has since been released in a free stand-alone version, and has been upgraded to Release 2 (R2) status.
So what does Hyper-V do? Again, according to Wikipedia, Hyper-V supports isolation in terms of a partition. A partition is a logical unit of isolation, supported by the hypervisor, in which OSs execute. A hypervisor instance has to have at least one parent partition, running Windows Server 2008. The virtualization stack runs in the parent partition and has direct access to the hardware devices. The parent partition then creates the child partitions which host the guest OSs. A parent partition creates child partitions using the hypercall API, which is the application programming interface exposed by Hyper-V.
All in all, Hyper-V makes virtualization possible. And virtualization lets sysadmins do more with fewer resources. And isn’t that what every business wants today?
So, to make your life easier, here are some tips for working with Hyper-V:
1. Don’t share the Hyper-V hardware with other services
Your Hyper-V host resources should be dedicated to run a Virtual Machine. If you install and run other services such as SQL Server or Exchange on the host, they will not only consume resource but will also make troubleshooting more difficult.
2.Install Hyper-V on Windows Server Core.
The Server Core installation option of the Windows Server 2008 operating system installs a minimal server installation of Windows Server 2008 to run supported server roles such as the Hyper-V role. When you select this installation type, the Windows setup program installs only the files that are required for the supported server roles, the GUI and other non-essentials subsystem are not installed and that reduces memory and storage requirements.
3. Create performance baselines
In order to keep the optimal level of performance on your Hyper-V installation, you need to be able to quickly identify and react to changes in resource consumption as your system runs. You will only be able to identify changes if you have first created a baseline; in other words you have to know how your system performs when everything goes well. You can get instantaneous updates of your resource picture with a 24/7 monitoring tool like Monitis.
4. Allocate plenty of CPU and Disk Resources to the Hyper-V Virtual Machines
Plan to put to use 110% to 125% of the CPU resources and 105% – 110% of the disk resources required by a physical hardware solution to the Hyper-V virtual machines that you’re using. By configuring the Hyper-V virtual machine with additional resources, you will make certain that you’re providing performance on par with physical hardware — while accommodating any overhead required by Hyper-V virtualization technology.
5. A 64-bit guest operating system is preferable
32-bit Windows operating systems can only address up to 2GB of virtual address space per process. Pretty paltry! Meanwhile, a 64-bit operating system allows applications to take full advantage of the memory installed on the Hyper-V host.
6. Optimize workloads inside the VMs
Depending on the the availability of resources on your Hyper-V host, if one of the VMs is using too much resources, the performances of other VMs will be affected. Keep monitoring the workload of each VM, follow best practices and be prepared to react quickly if anything goes wrong. This is why instant notification by a trusted partner is so important.
7. Shutdown unused VMs
If a VM is no longer providing any service, please shut it down. This will free valuable resources on the host, and think of the kindness you’ll be bestowing on the environment. If a VM is only providing services at a certain time of the day, use automation scripts to start it up only when needed.
8. Choose a processor supporting SLAT
The R2 release of Hyper-V added the support for a new feature that reduces the memory required by the hypervisor for each running virtual machine and also provides a performance boost. With that functionality, the processor itself takes over the place keeping of virtual machine memory and how it maps to the memory on the host. By letting the processor perform this operation, the hypervisor uses less memory, and the amount of processor power required is decreased. Again, go out and hug a tree!
With newer processors from both Intel and AMD, Hyper-V can enable the Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) functionality. SLAT requires a processor that supports either Extended Page Tables (for Intel processors) or Rapid Virtualization Indexing (for AMD processors).
9. Anti virus software should give the VM file the “cold shoulder”
If a virus scanner is running on the host, constant scanning of virtualization-related files may slow down disk performance. Configure your antivirus to exclude the folder containing Virtual Machines VHDs and configuration files. If you need to protect a virtual machine, install an antivirus within the VM itself.
10. Know you workload
By understanding what kind of workload you are running you will be able to focus your efforts and resources on getting the most from your systems. For example, not all workloads are capped by the processing power available to the VM. Some workloads, such as a SQL server, are generally bound to a greater extent by the limits of memory and the disk subsystem than by the processor. In this case, buying a faster processor won’t necessarily provide faster performance to the VMs. Why not use the savings to invest in memory or a faster storage subsystem?
11. Reserve some memory for the host
Set aside at least 512 MB of RAM for the host. That memory is used by Hyper-V’s virtualization stack. Hyper-V won’t allow a VM to launch unless at least 32 MB of RAM is available. Each virtual machine has memory overhead as well—a good baseline figure is 32 MB of RAM for the first gigabyte of virtual RAM allocated, plus 8 MB for each additional gigabyte of virtual RAM.
12. Install multiple storage controllers
A VM will do as much I/O as a physical system, if a VM is doing significant amounts of I/O, it can and will saturate the storage controller. Performance will suffer for any other VMs that are using virtual hard disks (VHDs) available from that storage controller.
13. Segment storage
Provisioning storage for virtualization doesn’t always mean deploying the largest drive available. In many cases, just as with many high-performance workloads, it’s preferable to have multiple smaller disks as opposed to fewer larger disks.
14. Use Multipath I/O (MPIO)
Multipath I/O (also known as MPIO) is a technology that utilizes redundant components—adapters, cables, and switches—to provide multiple “paths” to the same storage array. This provides redundancy in case a connection is lost, because the traffic continues to flow. This functionality is provided for free with Windows Server. MPIO works with both Fibre Channel and iSCSI connections. We highly recommend deploying it for a production virtualization.
Speed Up Downloads On Hyper-v Windows 715. Use high performance disks
You’ll see performance differences based on the rotational speed of the disk as well as the amount of cache available on the disk. The performance gains of moving from a 7,200 RPM disk to a 10,000 RPM or even 15,000 RPM disk are significant and can increase even more past that level. Likewise, you’ll increase performance if you move from 4 MB or 8 MB of cache to 16 MB or 32 MB.
16. Use out-of-band management
Reserve a network interface for your Hyper-V host management. You will use this interface to connect to your host with Hyper-V Manager and other management tools.
Using a separate interface you will be able to transfer your VHDs without affecting the operation of other VMs that may be running. In addition, through this interface you can effectively troubleshoot performance issues when a high-load condition is occurring on your VMs’ production network adapters.
17. Increase network capacity
Whenever possible, segregate VMs onto separate virtual switches. Each virtual switch can be bound to a different physical NIC port on the host, allowing for separation of VM traffic. This is good for security and performance reasons.
18. Segment network traffic when using iSCSI
Will the VMs be using iSCSI, or will the host be using iSCSI?
If the host is using iSCSI (for failover clustering, for example), then it should have a separate adapter port that is different from any adapter port being used for guest VMs.
If a VM is using iSCSI, it is recommended that you create separate virtual networks for the storage and the production workload.
19. Install Integration Services
If you Install Integration Services you will replace legacy generic drivers with drivers delivering the best possible performances for IDE, SCSI and Network virtual controllers.
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20. Avoid mixing VMs that can use Integration Services with those that cannot
Virtual machines that cannot use Integration Services must use legacy network adapters to access the physical network. To accommodate legacy network adapters, you might need to disable some high-end features on the network interface. But doing that can can unnecessarily limit the functionality of the synthetic devices. Additionally, using emulated devices places an extra workload on the Hyper-V server.
21. Take advantage of Dynamic Memory feature
Dynamic Memory is a new feature introduced with Service Pack 1 for Windows 2008 R2.
The positive here is that Dynamic Memory will ensure that the host memory is allocated in the most efficient way to the Virtual Machines. VMs may need different amounts of memory allocated when workload varies. You can’t do this by allocating manual memory. 22. Use fixed-size disks whenever possible
Fixed-size disks space are allocated all at once when you create them resulting on being hosted on contiguous files on the physical storage. Dynamic disk space is allocated as needed and this may result in a fragmented file on your storage. You’ll find that you won’t reap the best possible performance.
23. Close Hyper-V Manager on the host
Don’t manage your Virtual Machines from the Hyper-V host itself as any program you open locally will use resources that can’t flow to VMs. Hyper-V Manager consumes memory and processor resources to keep the application updated with the current snapshot of the screen and the status of the VMs.
24. Allocate 1 virtual processor to each physical core
Keeping this ratio of virtual processor to physical processor cores you will never have to worry about one VM stealing processor resources for another. When this is not possible, use processor Resource Control in each VM to configure which VM has priority over the other.
25. Disable TCP Offloading for Virtual Machine Network Cards
Offloading TCP tasks is only effective with a physical network and not virtual ones.
To disable this feature see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff565746.aspx 26. Enable offload capabilities for the physical network adapter driver in the host.
Offloading TCP tasks to a physical adapter IS effective. So, if possible, enable it on the host. See the same reference article as above for more information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff565746.aspx
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27. When using multiple physical network cards, bind device interrupts for each network card to a single logical processor.
Under certain workloads, binding the device interrupts for a single network adapter to a single logical processor can improve performance for Hyper-V. System administrators can use the IntPolicy tool to bind device interrupts to specific processors. For more information about the IntPolicy tool, see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463378.aspx
28. If possible, enable VLAN tagging for the Hyper-V synthetic network adapter.
The Hyper-V synthetic network adapter supports VLAN tagging. It provides significantly better network performance if the physical network adapter supports NDIS_ENCAPSULATION_IEEE_802_3_P_AND_Q_IN_OOB encapsulation for both large send and checksum offload. Without this support, Hyper-V cannot use hardware offload for packets that require VLAN tagging and network performance could very likely decrease.
29. Install high speed network adapters and configure them for maximum performance
Consider installing 1-GB network adapters on the Hyper-V host computer and configure the network adapters with a fixed speed as opposed to using “auto negotiate.” It is very important that the network speed, duplex, and flow-control parameters are set to correspond to the settings on the switch to which they are connected.
30. Avoid storing System Files on drives used for Hyper-V Storage
Do not store any system files such as Paging File or TEMP directory on drives dedicated to storing virtual machine data. Again, you’ll just waste resources.
and one more tip: Use Monitis!
We hope this information on improving Hyper-V virtualization helps you speed up performance and cut waste. Stay tuned for more helpful advice from Monitis on improving the performance of everyday IT processes.
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I use Windows Server 2008 R2 (it is host) with Hyper-V and a guest running Ubuntu 12.04 LTC. It is my settings:
I also use virtual hard drive with 2 TB
Please, tell me:
1) Do I increase speed, if I use real hard drive?
It is important to know that I use Ubuntu. It is installed on the virtual hard drive. I know that in virtual box I always mount disk to Ubuntu via NAT. So there are not difference between virtual hard drive and real hard drive.
2) How can I set 12 processors?
novicegisnovicegis
1 Answer
Yes, but it should not be relevant - 1-3%. Your main problem likely is that the hard disc is a hard disc which is just slow. It likeiy is not a larger RAID 10 of fast discs or an SSD.
Use a modern version of Hyper-V. Not an outdated one with this low limit. 2012 is current, 2012 R2 coming out in two weeks.
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