[Openstack-operators] Starting large VMs takes quite long

Diego Parrilla diego.parrilla at stackops.com
Thu Oct 20 14:03:31 UTC 2011


Hi,

my answers below,

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Boris-Michel Deschenes <
boris-michel.deschenes at ubisoft.com> wrote:

> Hi guys,****
>
> ** **
>
> Just a quick note, I had this setup at some point (NFS-mounted
> /var/lib/nova/instances) which is essential to get live VM migrations if I’m
> not mistaken (live migration was working perfectly).  The problem I had with
> this setup was that the VM startup time was considerably slower than when
> the images were residing on a local disk (and I mean, even after all images
> are “cached”).
>

It's true. The fastest disk and the closest to the drive the better.


> ****
>
> ** **
>
> Basically an image will start the fastest when it is cached locally (local
> drive)
>

Correct.


> ****
>
> Then, not quite as fast when cached but on a NFS-mounted directory
>

Correct. It takes some time to create the local disks. It's very important
to have a good connection to the shared file system (it's not mandatory to
use NFS).


> ****
>
> Then really slowly when residing entirely on another disk and needed to be
> written locally to be cached.
>

Right, it can take several minutes on a 1Gb.


> ****
>
> ** **
>
> These are the observations I made but I realize other factors weigh in (SAS
> vs SATA disk, network speed, etc.)  Please advise if you get the same speed
> in NFS-cached vs local-cached setup as it might convince me to go back to an
> NFS share (also were you using SAS disks to serve the NFS?).
>

No, the performance on local disk is much higher than running a NFS on a
1Gb. For my perspective not only live migration is a must for our customers,
but also the local virtual disks must persists a catastrophic failure of a
nova-compute. That's the reason why recommend 10Gb and a good performant NFS
file server connected. 15K or 10K SAS is not so relevant, the bottleneck is
the network (speed and latency). There are also good solutions combining
10Gb + SSD Cache disks + 7.2KRPM SAS/SATA disks.

I would like to know what the people are using in real life deployments. Any
more thoughts?

Regards
Diego


> ****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks****
>
> ** **
>
> *De :* openstack-operators-bounces at lists.openstack.org [mailto:
> openstack-operators-bounces at lists.openstack.org] *De la part de* Diego
> Parrilla
> *Envoyé :* 20 octobre 2011 04:54
> *À :* Till Mossakowski
> *Cc :* openstack-operators at lists.openstack.org
> *Objet :* Re: [Openstack-operators] Starting large VMs takes quite long***
> *
>
> ** **
>
> Hi, ****
>
> ** **
>
> my answers below.****
>
> ** **
>
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:12 PM, Till Mossakowski <
> Till.Mossakowski at dfki.de> wrote:****
>
> Hi,****
>
> my answers below,****
>
>
> many thanks for your quick answer.****
>
> ** **
>
>    I have set up openstack using stackops.
>
>
> Good choice ;-)****
>
> ** **
>
> Yes, the stackops GUI is very nice. However, stackops is based on cactus,
> right? Is there a way of using diablo with stackops? Perhaps it is possible
> to upgrade the Ubuntu lucid distro that is coming with stackops to natty or
> oneiric and then upgrade to diablo using the source
> ppa:openstack-release/2011.3 for openstack?****
>
> ** **
>
> Yes, the 0.3 version with Diablo release is coming. We detected some QA
> issues. But things are working much better now.****
>
>  ****
>
> ** **
>
> 5GB image it's not too big... we use NFS to share instances among nodes
> to help with the live migration and performance it's acceptable. How
> much is 'quite a while' in seconds?****
>
> ** **
>
> between half a minute and a minute (I haven't taken the exact time...).
> This is too long for our users.****
>
> ** **
>
> If the virtual disks are cached, launching a 40GB virtual machine takes
> less than 5 seconds in our test platform (IBM x3550M3 Dual Xeon 5620 64GB
> with NFS as shared storage on 1Gb)****
>
>  ****
>
> ** **
>
> If you share the /var/lib/nova/instances with NFS, during the 'launch'
> process the base virtual image is copied to '_base'. Depending on the
> size of this file it will take longer. Once it's copied next time you
> use this image it should go much faster.
>
> Note: I have tested right now with a 1Gb launching a >25GB Windows VM
> and it took 3-4 minutes the first time. New Windows images, it took only
> a few seconds.****
>
> ** **
>
> This is interesting. Is there a way of telling the scheduler to prefer a
> compute node that already has copied the needed image?****
>
> ** **
>
> Try this:****
>
> ** **
>
> 1) Configure the compute nodes to use a shared directory with NFS on
> /var/lib/nova/instances****
>
> 2) Launch ALL the virtual disks you need at runtime. It will take a while
> the first time.****
>
> 3) Virtual disks are now cached in /var/lib/nova/instances/_base****
>
> 4) Try to launch now the virtual disks again. They should start very fast.
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> If you need some kind of assistance, please let me know.****
>
> ** **
>
> Regards****
>
> Diego****
>
>  ****
>
>
>
> Best, Till
>
> --
> Prof. Dr. Till Mossakowski  Cartesium, room 2.51 Phone +49-421-218-64226
> DFKI GmbH Bremen                             Fax +49-421-218-9864226
> Safe & Secure Cognitive Systems             Till.Mossakowski at dfki.de
> Enrique-Schmidt-Str. 5, D-28359 Bremen   http://www.dfki.de/sks/till
>
> Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH
> principal office, *not* the address for mail etc.!!!:
> Trippstadter Str. 122, D-67663 Kaiserslautern
> management board: Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster (chair), Dr. Walter Olthoff
> supervisory board: Prof. Hans A. Aukes (chair)
> Amtsgericht Kaiserslautern, HRB 2313****
>
> ** **
>
>
> -- ****
>
> Diego Parrilla
> *CEO*
> *www.stackops.com | * diego.parrilla at stackops.com | +34 649 94 43 29| skype:diegoparrilla
> *
> * <http://www.stackops.com/>****
>
> *[image: Description : Image supprimée par l'expéditeur.]***
>
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>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>


-- 
Diego Parrilla
<http://www.stackops.com/>*CEO*
*www.stackops.com | * diego.parrilla at stackops.com** | +34 649 94 43 29 |
skype:diegoparrilla*
* <http://www.stackops.com/>
*

*

******************** ADVERTENCIA LEGAL ********************
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tampoco su integridad o su correcta recepción, por lo que STACKOPS
TECHNOLOGIES S.L. no asume responsabilidad alguna por tales circunstancias.
Si no consintiese en la utilización del correo electrónico o de las
comunicaciones vía Internet le rogamos nos lo comunique y ponga en nuestro
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cualquiera que fuera su finalidad, están prohibidas por la ley.

***************** PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL ****************
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not assume any liability for those circumstances. Should you not agree to
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