Artem Trunov wrote:
> Dear experts,
> 
> It may not be SL specific, but I am sure there are a lot of experts here.
> Have you had a good experience with KVM in the latest SL5.4? Is it 
> production-worthy?
> 

It works for me, quite well actually.


> I have the following issues:
> 

One thing you haven't mentioned is what OS you are running on KVM.
Note that all of my answers deal with SL3-SL5 and Fedora based virtual 
machines.
I am runing on SL 5.4 with the latest kernels and security updates, but 
no fastbugs updates.

> 1. Boot is only possible from ide bus, and drives are named hda. It 
> seems this is a feature of KVM?

By default, this appears to be the case.
It hasn't been an issue with me.

> 2. Virtual machine can not use more than 1 host core, even if 2 virtual 
> cpus are configured for it.

All of mine are setup to have 2 cpu's and they appear to be using them.
How many physical CPU's do you have?  And how many cores per CPU?

> 3. some times virtual machines lock up and go into a cpu curning loop, 
> consuming 100% of a host core. The solution is to kill qemu process.

I haven't run into this except for when it is expected, like my virtual 
machines are running prelink, or compiling something.  Then I expect 
them to use up a whole CPU or two.

> 4. virt-manager crashes shortly after first start up and few operations. 
> Subsequent restart of virt-manager doesn't lead to more crashes..

I haven't ever run into this.  Sorry.

> 5. It's slow, presumably because of disk operations. I see some 5MB/s 
> max read/write. I run a qemu native image format, stored on gpfs.
> 

Disk speeds are the slow point, particual when all my virtual machines 
want to access the disk at the same time.  But as long as they aren't 
all fighting for the disk they have been fine.
I have no idea what my image format is.  I run mine as file images and 
build the file image in the virt-manager during the install.  So I'm 
running whatever the default is.

> My host system has all latest kernels and patches.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Artem.

I know I haven't answered too many questions, but hopefully it get's the 
conversation rolling along.

Troy

-- 
__________________________________________________
Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/LSCS/CSI/USS Group
__________________________________________________