[mat-wg] New on RIPE Labs: Further Virtualisation Testing for RIPE Atlas Anchor

Hi Randy,

On 13/09/13 20:10 , Randy Bush wrote:
> hi mirjam and atlas crew,
> 
> as you know, i am interested in this type of calibration work for wider
> application than atlas anchors.  so please excuse my poking at it.

Thanks for your questions and good to see that you have an interest.
I'll try to clear up the confusion.

Previously (last year), work was done with three virtualisation
technologies, OpenVZ, VMware, KVM. A summary report on that work was
published earlier this year [1], with details described here [2]. Based
on that first phase we concluded that OpenVZ was the most promising of
the investigated alternatives. We followed up with some more work, this
time only looking at OpenVZ. The last summary article on Labs (announced
by Mirjam this Friday) is referring to the follow up work done with
OpenVZ, so no VMware or KVM there.

With regard to your other questions:

> precious little information about
>   o network configs (natted/bridged/...)

All tests were done with a bridged setup. VMware tests in the first
phase of the project used the VMware VMXnet3 driver, KVM tests used
virtio. OpenVZ tests were done with 'plain' linux virtual interfaces.
This was described in the phase I report mentioned above (see [2], p. 29).

>   o other loads on network, processors, ...
In the last series of tests (OpenVZ only), the test systems were only
loaded with ping tests as described. However, the switch that connected
the test systems was also connecting other systems.

In the earlier test, many combinations of cpu/disk/io/network loads were
tested. See [2] for an extensive description and discussion of that.

>   o what hvisors were tested in the tables, and no differentiation
>     between them?

The last report was only about OpenVZ, so indeed no differentiation. The
earlier work investigated OpenVZ, VMware and KVM - lots of
differentiation there. :) Details, again, in [2].

> i am also confused between testing of openvz, kvm (on which
kernel(s)?), vmware, ...

Please see my note above.

Hope this answers your questions. Let me know if you have more.

Best regards,
Romeo
[1]https://labs.ripe.net/Members/romeo_zwart/ripe-atlas-anchor-to-ripe-ncc-service-node
[2]
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/romeo_zwart/LuigiCorselloAtlasanchorvirtualisationfinalreport.pdf