<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On 3 May 2016 at 10:01, Daniel P. Berrange </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a href="mailto:berrange@redhat.com" target="_blank">berrange@redhat.com</a>></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hello Operators,<br>
<br>
One of the things that constantly puzzles me when reading the user<br>
survey results wrt hypervisor is the high number of respondants<br>
claiming to be using QEMU (as distinct from KVM).<br>
<br>
As a reminder, in Nova saying virt_type=qemu causes Nova to use<br>
plain QEMU with pure CPU emulation which is many many times slower<br>
to than native CPU performance, while virt_type=kvm causes Nova to<br>
use QEMU with KVM hardware CPU acceleration which is close to native<br>
performance.<br>
<br>
IOW, virt_type=qemu is not something you'd ever really want to use<br>
unless you had no other options due to the terrible performance it<br>
would show. The only reasons to use QEMU are if you need non-native<br>
architecture support (ie running arm/ppc on x86_64 host), or if you<br>
can't do KVM due to hardware restrictions (ie ancient hardware, or<br>
running compute hosts inside virtual machines)<br>
<br>
Despite this, in the 2016 survey 10% claimed to be using QEMU in<br>
production & 3% in PoC and dev, in 2014 it was even higher at 15%<br>
in prod & 12% in PoC and 28% in dev.<br>
<br>
Personally my gut feeling says that QEMU usage ought to be in very<br>
low single figures, so I'm curious as to the apparent anomoly.<br>
<br>
I can think of a few reasons<br>
<br>
1. Respondants are confused as to the difference between QEMU<br>
and KVM, so are saying QEMU, despite fact they are using KVM.<br>
<br>
2. Respondants are confused as to the difference between QEMU<br>
and KVM, so have mistakenly configured their nova hosts to<br>
use QEMU instead of KVM and suffering poor performance without<br>
realizing their mistake.<br>
<br>
3. There are more people than I expect who are running their<br>
cloud compute hosts inside virtual machines, and thus are<br>
unable to use KVM.<br>
<br>
4. There are more people than I expect who are providing cloud<br>
hosting for non-native architectures. eg ability to run an<br>
arm7/ppc guest image on an x86_64 host and so genuinely must<br>
use QEMU<br>
<br>
If items 1 / 2 are the cause, then by implication the user survey<br>
is likely under-reporting the (already huge) scale of the KVM usage.<br>
<br>
I can see 3. being a likely explanation for high usage of QEMU in a<br>
dev or PoC scenario, but it feels unlikely for a production deployment.<br>
<br>
While 4 is technically possible, Nova doesn't really do a very good<br>
job at mixed guest arch hosting - I'm pretty sure there are broken<br>
pieces waiting to bite people who try it.<br>
<br>
Does anyone have any thoughts on this topic ?<br>
<br>
Indeed, is there anyone here who genuinely use virt_type=qemu in a<br>
production deployment of OpenStack who might have other reasons that<br>
I've missed ?<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Daniel<br>
<span class=""><font color="#888888">--<br>
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</font></span></blockquote></div><br><br><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Hi everybody,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">I'm confused too about the use of KVM or QEMU In the computes the file/etc/nova/nova-compute.conf has:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif">virt_type=kvm</font><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif">The output of:</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif">nova hypervisor-show <id> | grep hypervisor_type</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif">is:</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif">hypervisor_type | QEMU<br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif">The virsh dumpxml of the instances shows:</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="verdana, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_extra"><domain type='kvm' id='44'></div><div class="gmail_extra">....</div><div class="gmail_extra"><emulator>/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64</emulator></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">But according to this document [1], it is using QEMU emulator instead of KVM, because it is not using /usr/bin/qemu-kvm</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">So I really don't know if it's using KVM or QEMU.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">[1] <a href="https://libvirt.org/drvqemu.html">https://libvirt.org/drvqemu.html</a></div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Regards,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Sergio Cuéllar</div><br></div><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><b><font style="color:rgb(102,102,102)" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> Sergio Cuéllar<font style="font-weight:normal" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> │DevOps Engineer</font></font></b></div><div dir="ltr"><font color="#666666"> KIO NETWORKS<br> </font><font face="arial narrow, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(102,102,102)">Mexico City Phone (52) 55 8503 2600 ext. 4335</span><br></font></div><div><font face="arial narrow, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(102,102,102)"> Mobile: 5544844298</span></font></div><div><font face="arial narrow, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(102,102,102)"> <a href="http://www.kionetworks.com" target="_blank">www.kionetworks.com</a></span></font></div><div dir="ltr"><img src="http://knt.kionetworks.com/gobig/firmas2.jpg" width="200" height="45"><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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