Bug 437423

Summary:	Add Xen disk and network paravirtualized drivers to bare-metal kernel
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4	Reporter:	Don Dutile (Red Hat) <ddutile>
Component:	kernel-xen	Assignee:	Don Dutile (Red Hat) <ddutile>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Martin Jenner <mjenner>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	high
Version:	4.6	CC:	ddomingo, mmcallis, xen-maint
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	RHSA-2008-0665	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2008-07-24 19:27:25 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	391231, 424871, 446099

Description Don Dutile (Red Hat) 2008-03-13 23:46:48 UTC

Description of problem:
Performance of a bare-metal kernel as a fully-virtualized guest (FV guest)
on a Xen host can be significantly improved with the addition of xen
paravirtualized disk and network drivers.
This support is currently provided by a set of asynch drivers
"xenpv", and requires significant hand-holding by a system admin.
in order to use them.
Adding them directly to the bare-metal kernel significantly eases the
use of pv disk and network for FV guests, improving the overall product
in a virtual environment

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 4.7


How reproducible:
Compare a 4.6 kernel FV guest performing disk or network IO in comparison to the
same kernel with the kmod-xenpv, rhel4 package added and using pv disk and
network interfaces.

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
  
Actual results:


Expected results:


Additional info:

Comment 1 Bill Burns 2008-03-14 09:57:34 UTC

Set dev ack for Don.

Comment 3 Don Dutile (Red Hat) 2008-03-19 21:59:07 UTC

Posted patches to 4.7.

Comment 4 Vivek Goyal 2008-04-08 20:23:49 UTC

Committed in 68.32.EL . RPMS are available at http://people.redhat.com/vgoyal/rhel4/

Comment 7 Don Domingo 2008-06-05 05:48:03 UTC

added to RHEL4.7 release notes under "Feature Updates => Virtualization":

<quote>
    This update implements the use of paravirtualized block device and network
drivers, which improve the performance of fully-virtualized guests. These
drivers are provided in the pv-on-hvm package.

    In addition, you can now use more than three virtual network interface
(VNIF) numbers per guest domain.
</quote>

please advise if any further revisions are required. thanks!

Comment 8 Don Dutile (Red Hat) 2008-06-05 14:40:35 UTC

the pv-on-hvm drivers are built into the rhel4.7 kernel package.

The separate, xenpv-<rev>.el4 package(s) are no longer needed 
for 4.7 and beyond.

the pv-on-hvm drivers can be found in the sources under
<kernel-src>/drivers/xenpv_hvm

- Don

Comment 9 Don Domingo 2008-06-23 00:32:03 UTC

revised as follows:

<quote>
    This update implements the use of paravirtualized block device and network
drivers, which improve the performance of fully-virtualized guests.　In
addition, you can now use more than three virtual network interface
(VNIF) numbers per guest domain.
</quote>

please advise if any further revisions are required. thanks!

Comment 11 errata-xmlrpc 2008-07-24 19:27:25 UTC

An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2008-0665.html