Yes, to test CPU pinning/NUMA with libvirt you ought to use Nested KVM. Please report results after testing with that.
That said, some notes below. Quoting Dan Berrange from a different review with a complete response on *why*: It is fundamentally impossible to test CPU pinning with TCG (aka plain QEMU) because TCG only has a single thread for all virtual CPUs. As such there is no mechanism to pin vCPU threads with TCG. Nested KVM is thus the only possible option for testing any of the NUMA / CPU pinning stuff. Instructions for nested KVM setup on a KVM host are documented here http://docs.openstack.org/developer/nova/devref/testing/libvirt- numa.html#provisioning-a-virtual-machine-for-testing >From my testing, a Nova guest booted with a NUMA flavor, will have the below contextual XML snippets w.r.t vCPU placement: . . . <vcpu placement='static'>4</vcpu> <cputune> <vcpupin vcpu='0' cpuset='0-3'/> <vcpupin vcpu='1' cpuset='0-3'/> <vcpupin vcpu='2' cpuset='0-3'/> <vcpupin vcpu='3' cpuset='0-3'/> <emulatorpin cpuset='0-3'/> </cputune> <numatune> <memory mode='strict' nodeset='0'/> <memnode cellid='0' mode='strict' nodeset='0'/> </numatune> . . . <cpu> <topology sockets='4' cores='1' threads='1'/> <numa> <cell id='0' cpus='0-3' memory='1048576' unit='KiB'/> </numa> </cpu> . . . Here's the working example XMLs from my testing. Libvirt XML for the guest hypervisor (also called L1), running DevStack and will host Nova instances which are nested guests: https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/virt/openstack/nova-libvirt-numa- testing/devstack-vm-libvirt.xml And, Nova guest XML, booted with a NUMA flavor: https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/virt/openstack/nova-libvirt-numa- testing/nova-guest-libvirt.xml ** Changed in: nova (Ubuntu) Status: Confirmed => Incomplete -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Server Team, which is subscribed to nova in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1439280 Title: Libvirt CPU affinity error To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nova/+bug/1439280/+subscriptions -- Ubuntu-server-bugs mailing list Ubuntu-server-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server-bugs