509837 - Slow performance for disk access in virtual machine

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(mozilla.org Graveyard :: Server Operations, task)

Description

[Rob Arnold [:robarnold]]

I notice that whenever I open a file in the vm (via vim or some other program), the cpu usage (and kernel times) shoot up to 100% and make the rest of the vm very unusable.

Although I expect IO to be expensive in a VM, this is excessive and severely affects usability - I am back to doing what development I can on my native machine.

Complicating debugging is that the issue is transient - currently the VM is responsive while it is building but at other times it will take upwards of 30 seconds to open a new msys terminal (perhaps the disk cache is hiding the problem now that the VM is warm from the build).

Comment 1

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

Phong which ESX host and storage is Rob's Vm running on ? How's the load there ?

Comment 2

[Phong Tran [:phong]]

eql01-dev01.  it's on the slower SATA array.

Comment 3

[alice nodelman [:alice] [:anode]]

Should this be in Release Eng?  I would think that it might get more attention from server ops...

Comment 4

[matthew zeier [:mrz]]

Which VM?

Comment 5

[Rob Arnold [:robarnold]]

sm-rarnold-test.mozilla.com (10.2.76.146)

Comment 6

[chizu]

The host this VM is on is somewhat overloaded. We'll move this over the another ESX host to improve the performance.

Can this be done at any time? It will be some brief downtime.

Comment 7

[John O'Duinn [:joduinn] (please use "needinfo?" flag)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> The host this VM is on is somewhat overloaded. We'll move this over the another
> ESX host to improve the performance.
> 
> Can this be done at any time? It will be some brief downtime.

This is not a production VM. Its being used for experiment by robarnold, so you could take VM down anytime that robarnold says is ok.

Comment 8

[Rob Arnold [:robarnold]]

You can take it down now. Once this bug is resolved, I'll resume work on the SDK.

Comment 9

[Rob Arnold [:robarnold]]

Any update here? Would really like this to assist the Windows 7 SDK bringup.

Comment 10

[matthew zeier [:mrz]]

dropped the ball, moving it right now.

Comment 11

[matthew zeier [:mrz]]

VM moved and powering back up.  Re-open if you're still performance issues.