Proxmox VE 1.8 and virtio Network Performance for Windows XP

[teddypicker]

Hi,

first of all thanks for this great Software.
I have installed PVE 1.8 bare metal from the provided iso and setup some virtual machines with kvm, one Ubuntu 10.04 64bit guest and another Windows XP 32bit guest.
The performance with Ubuntu, using the virtio network and storage driver ist great. Even the network speed is near 850 mbit.
Windows XP on the other hand has quite slow speed compared to the Ubuntu guest. I measured it with iperf getting about 200mbit.
Used the search engine in the Forum and Google and found some interesting stuff about performance tweaks on Win XP and Server 2003. With the provided information I created 2 .reg Files and applied it to the registry. According to some people in the Forum this should fix the problem , at least with Versions before 1.8.
I didn't see any improvement, though. The Speed just stays the same. Double checked the Registry manually and the mentioned parameters are there. So could this be a "problem" of Version 1.8 or from the driver provided by Redhat? Used the iso from kvm.net (Red Hat virtio iso virtio-win-1.1.16.iso. )

Thank you very much in advance

tp

 

[udo]

Hi,

first of all thanks for this great Software.
I have installed PVE 1.8 bare metal from the provided iso and setup some virtual machines with kvm, one Ubuntu 10.04 64bit guest and another Windows XP 32bit guest.
The performance with Ubuntu, using the virtio network and storage driver ist great. Even the network speed is near 850 mbit.
Windows XP on the other hand has quite slow speed compared to the Ubuntu guest. I measured it with iperf getting about 200mbit.
Used the search engine in the Forum and Google and found some interesting stuff about performance tweaks on Win XP and Server 2003. With the provided information I created 2 .reg Files and applied it to the registry. According to some people in the Forum this should fix the problem , at least with Versions before 1.8.
I didn't see any improvement, though. The Speed just stays the same. Double checked the Registry manually and the mentioned parameters are there. So could this be a "problem" of Version 1.8 or from the driver provided by Redhat? Used the iso from kvm.net (Red Hat virtio iso virtio-win-1.1.16.iso. )

Thank you very much in advance

tp

Hi,
how much performance do you get with the e1000-driver? This is for windows also my favorite - stable, fast and (important) you don't need to activate your crappy windows again when a new version of virtio came...

Udo

 

[teddypicker]

Hi Udo,

thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately it is even worse with the e1000 driver. I'm getting 170mbit with it.
In the meantime i have tried the registry settings in a virtualbox Windows XP Client and it got up from 250 to 850mbit. Pretty cool Virtualbox used to be slow before, concerning net performance.
Fast network speeds (at least 500-600) are important for me so 250mbit is not really an option. But I think i have used another virtio driver before in that special virtualbox client, cause I didn't have to install new drivers and it was also Intel Pro 1000 MT before virtio in vbox. Actually It must have been a driver from kvm.net that's one year or even 1,5 years old.
So i suppose it has something to do with the 1.1.16 iso from kvm.net or with the lastest proxmox VE 1.8 revision and the updated kvm-qemu hypervisor.
If i get the time tomorrow i can setup a new XP Client in Virtualbox and use the latest kvm iso driver to be sure.

cu

tp