Re: Regression in throughput between kvm guests over virtual bridge

[Wei Xu <wexu@redhat.com>]

On Fri, Nov 03, 2017 at 12:30:12AM -0400, Matthew Rosato wrote:
> On 10/31/2017 03:07 AM, Wei Xu wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 01:53:12PM -0400, Matthew Rosato wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Are you using the same binding as mentioned in previous mail sent by you? it
> >>> might be caused by cpu convention between pktgen and vhost, could you please
> >>> try to run pktgen from another idle cpu by adjusting the binding? 
> >>
> >> I don't think that's the case -- I can cause pktgen to hang in the guest
> >> without any cpu binding, and with vhost disabled even.
> > 
> > Yes, I did a test and it also hangs in guest, before we figure it out,
> > maybe you try udp with uperf with this case?
> > 
> > VM   -> Host
> > Host -> VM
> > VM   -> VM
> > 
> 
> Here are averaged run numbers (Gbps throughput) across 4.12, 4.13 and
> net-next with and without Jason's recent "vhost_net: conditionally
> enable tx polling" applied (referred to as 'patch' below).  1 uperf
> instance in each case:

Thanks a lot for the test. 

> 
> uperf TCP:
> 	 4.12	4.13	4.13+patch	net-next	net-next+patch
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> VM->VM	 35.2	16.5	20.84		22.2		24.36

Are you using the same server/test suite? You mentioned the number was around 
28Gb for 4.12 and it dropped about 40% for 4.13, it seems thing changed, are
there any options for performance tuning on the server to maximize the cpu
utilization? 

I had similar experience on x86 server and desktop before and it made that
the result number always went up and down pretty much.

> VM->Host 42.15	43.57	44.90		30.83		32.26
> Host->VM 53.17	41.51	42.18		37.05		37.30

This is a bit odd, I remember you said there was no regression while 
testing Host>VM, wasn't it? 

> 
> uperf UDP:
> 	 4.12	4.13	4.13+patch	net-next	net-next+patch
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> VM->VM	 24.93	21.63	25.09		8.86		9.62
> VM->Host 40.21	38.21	39.72		8.74		9.35
> Host->VM 31.26	30.18	31.25		7.2		9.26

This case should be quite similar with pkgten, if you got improvement with
pktgen, usually it was also the same for UDP, could you please try to disable
tso, gso, gro, ufo on all host tap devices and guest virtio-net devices? Currently
the most significant tests would be like this AFAICT:

Host->VM     4.12    4.13
 TCP:
 UDP:
pktgen:

Don't want to bother you too much, so maybe 4.12 & 4.13 without Jason's patch should
work since we have seen positive number for that, you can also temporarily skip
net-next as well.

If you see UDP and pktgen are aligned, then it might be helpful to continue
the other two cases, otherwise we fail in the first place.

> The net is that Jason's recent patch definitely improves things across
> the board at 4.13 as well as at net-next -- But the VM<->VM TCP numbers
> I am observing are still lower than base 4.12.

Cool.

> 
> A separate concern is why my UDP numbers look so bad on net-next (have
> not bisected this yet).

This might be another issue, I am in vacation, will try it on x86 once back
to work on next Wednesday.

Wei

>