On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 4:02 PM, <dt...@drizzle.com> wrote:
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> Josh Archambault wrote:
>
>> I'm fairly confident that using anything other than the default "e1000"
>> network device with 64-bit guests is discouraged by VMWare.
>
> It would appear that you're correct. Though the documentation does not
make
> that clear, I do find this point made in their forums.
>
>> At the very least, e1000 is what new 64-bit guests default to, and I've
>> personally had plenty of success using the "em" driver with all sorts of
>> 64-bit *BSD guests in this configuration.
>
> Likewise, I'm using the e1000 with em, and it's fine. There is known to be
> a non-trivial difference in measured (though not necessarily real-world)
> performance between vmxnet and e1000 on 32 bit guests, so all else being
> equal, one would naturally prefer vmxnet. I didn't realize that this did
> not necessarily generalize to 64 bit guests. Thanks for bringing that to my
> attention.
>
> In other news, for the benefit of anyone else using this combination of OS
> and hypervisor:
>
> I discovered a severe performance problem, wherein an OpenBSD guest would
> run fine for some period of hours, and then become horribly bogged down
> during disk operations, to the point of unusability. This was true even
> when the guest was nearly idle and the VM host had abundant uncommitted
> resources, and was equally true on 32 bit and 64 bit OpenBSD guests.
>
> This was a showstopper, but the problem appears to have been "resolved" by
> lying to the hypervisor. Since I told it that the guest was "Red Hat
> Enterprise Linux 64 bit", instead of "Other 64 bit", the problem has so far
> not recurred.
>
> Cheers -d
>
> - --
> David Talkington
> dt...@drizzle.com
> - --
> PGP key: http://www.flyingjoke.org/keys/801E3976.asc
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>
Hi.
Just to share my experience, i have been running OpenBSD 4.3/i386 and
now 4.4/i386 for a while in VMware ESX 3.5 and it runs fine. I didn't
have any stability problem with it, but the disk I/O operations are
just too slow. To unpack ports.tar.gz for example, it took about 8
minutes. But, as the machine doesn't do much disk I/O, it's fine.The
network performance i didn't measure too, but for "normal" usage it's
ok and didn't get any "timeout" from the card. I'm using softdep and
noatime, to increase the I/O performance a little bit:
/dev/sd0a on / type ffs (local, noatime, softdep)
/dev/sd0d on /var type ffs (local, noatime, nodev, nosuid, softdep)
Here's a dmesg:
OpenBSD 4.4 (GENERIC.MP) #2: Mon Nov 10 16:19:31 BRST 2008
r...@kyubi.openbsd-sp.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC.MP
cpu0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5335 @ 2.00GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 2 GHz
cpu0:
FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUS
H,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,SSE3
real mem = 2146988032 (2047MB)
avail mem = 2067566592 (1971MB)
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+ BIOS, date 01/30/08, BIOS32 rev. 0 @
0xfd880, SMBIOS rev. 2.31 @ 0xe0010 (45 entries)
bios0: vendor Phoenix Technologies LTD version "6.00" date 01/30/2008
bios0: VMware, Inc. VMware Virtual Platform
acpi0 at bios0: rev 0
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP APIC BOOT
acpi0: wakeup devices USB_(S1)
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: apic clock running at 65MHz
cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor)
cpu1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5335 @ 2.00GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 2 GHz
cpu1:
FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUS
H,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,SSE3
cpu2 at mainbus0: apid 2 (application processor)
cpu2: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5335 @ 2.00GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 2 GHz
cpu2:
FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUS
H,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,SSE3
cpu3 at mainbus0: apid 3 (application processor)
cpu3: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5335 @ 2.00GHz ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 2 GHz
cpu3:
FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUS
H,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,SSE3
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 4 pa 0xfec00000, version 11, 24 pins
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpicpu0 at acpi0
acpicpu1 at acpi0
acpicpu2 at acpi0
acpicpu3 at acpi0
acpibat0 at acpi0: BAT1 not present
acpibat1 at acpi0: BAT2 not present
acpiac0 at acpi0: AC unit online
bios0: ROM list: 0xc0000/0x8000 0xc8000/0x1e00! 0xca000/0x1000
0xdc000/0x4000! 0xe0000/0x4000!
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (no bios)
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82443BX AGP" rev 0x01
ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "Intel 82443BX AGP" rev 0x01
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
piixpcib0 at pci0 dev 7 function 0 "Intel 82371AB PIIX4 ISA" rev 0x08
pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1 "Intel 82371AB IDE" rev 0x01: DMA,
channel 0 configured to compatibility, channel 1 conf
igured to compatibility
atapiscsi0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0
scsibus0 at atapiscsi0: 2 targets, initiator 7
cd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: <NECVMWar, VMware IDE CDR00, 1.00> ATAPI
5/cdrom removable
cd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2
pciide0: channel 1 ignored (disabled)
piixpm0 at pci0 dev 7 function 3 "Intel 82371AB Power" rev 0x08: SMBus
disabled
vga1 at pci0 dev 15 function 0 "VMware Virtual SVGA II" rev 0x00
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
drm at vga1 unsupported
mpi0 at pci0 dev 16 function 0 "Symbios Logic 53c1030" rev 0x01: apic
4 int 17 (irq 9)
scsibus1 at mpi0: 16 targets, initiator 7
sd0 at scsibus1 targ 0 lun 0: <VMware, Virtual disk, 1.0> SCSI2 0/direct
fixed
sd0: 25600MB, 3263 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sec, 52428800 sec total
mpi0: target 0 Sync at 160MHz width 16bit offset 127 QAS 1 DT 1 IU 1
vic0 at pci0 dev 17 function 0 "AMD 79c970 PCnet-PCI" rev 0x10: apic 4
int 18 (irq 11), address 00:0c:29:f9:62:58
isa0 at piixpcib0
isadma0 at isa0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8/8 irq 3: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
pmsi0 at pckbc0 (aux slot)
pckbc0: using irq 12 for aux slot
wsmouse0 at pmsi0 mux 0
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
midi0 at pcppi0: <PC speaker>
spkr0 at pcppi0
lpt0 at isa0 port 0x378/4 irq 7
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: reported by CPUID; using exception 16
fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0/6 irq 6 drq 2
fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.44MB 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support
softraid0 at root
root on sd0a swap on sd0b dump on sd0b
