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Date:      Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:55:08 +0200
From:      Ivan Voras <ivoras@freebsd.org>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Extreme console latency during disk IO (8.0-RC1, previous    releases also affected according to others)
Message-ID:  <hb6rhk$8t8$1@ger.gmane.org>
In-Reply-To: <9bbcef730910131057i71db846et1f0d4aeadef5e302@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <E316139E-FFCF-432F-8DCE-62B120C38E55@exscape.org> <CC16B639-7A75-4016-A8A8-5C59E9CD5E95@exscape.org>	<hb1qs0$qjd$1@ger.gmane.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.0910131406340.26071@fledge.watson.org>	<9bbcef730910130633w150571a0k461fb4e67a51fb1d@mail.gmail.com> <B5BA3ACC-BC06-4042-8434-0D9395A0F478@freebsd.org>	<hb23i7$opq$1@ger.gmane.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.0910130957540.26159@thebighonker.lerctr.org> <9bbcef730910131057i71db846et1f0d4aeadef5e302@mail.gmail.com>

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Ivan Voras wrote:
> 2009/10/13 Larry Rosenman <ler@lerctr.org>:
> 
>>>>> note huge packet loss. It looks like it's VM fault or something like it.
>>>> It sounds like the VM is failing to execute the guest during certain
>>>> types of I/O. A bit of scheduler tracing in the host OS probably wouldn't go
>>>> amiss to confirm that the VM really is suspending the guest
>>> It's VMWare ESXi underneath, which is *Officially Not Linux* though some
>>> ducks may disagree - anyway, I suspect tracing the host in this way is next
>>> to impossible without some kind of diamondium-level contract.
>>>
>> What information do you need?  I have a platinum VMWare contract.
>>
>> What version of ESXi?
> 
> Hi,
> 
> It is ESXi 3.5 - but if the problem is really in ESXi I presume anyone
> could reproduce it. My setup is nothing special - Xeon 5405, 8 GB RAM,
> SATA drives on ICH9.
> 
> As for what data is needed, it depends on what you can get - from this
> discussion thread it looks like it would be enough to verify that disk
> IO doesn't leave VM processes waiting (i.e. that disk IO doesn't
> interfere with CPU-bound or idle virtual machines). Though now when I
> think of it - doesn't Linux ATA driver poll IO in some funky way,
> expecting to get lower latency that way?

Another data point - the OS in the VM in question hanged today sometime 
after 5 AM in the following way:

	* console nonresponsive (also to ctrl-alt-del)
	* ssh login nonresponsive (timeout)
	* ping works (!)

Judging by the last seen timestamp, the machine should have been in the 
process of receiving rsync backups - so IO-bound.




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