From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Aug 26 07:23:42 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D7CEB815 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2014 07:23:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.akips.com (mail.akips.com [65.19.130.19]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C51DD32A0 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2014 07:23:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: from akips.com (CPE-120-146-191-2.static.qld.bigpond.net.au [120.146.191.2]) by mail.akips.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 5A39915 for ; Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:17:19 +1000 (EST) Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:16:57 +1000 From: Paul Koch To: Subject: 10.0 interaction with vmware Message-ID: <20140826171657.0c79c54d@akips.com> Organization: AKIPS X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.10.1 (GTK+ 2.24.22; amd64-portbld-freebsd10.0) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=UNPARSEABLE_RELAY, URIBL_BLOCKED autolearn=disabled version=3.4.0 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on host1.akips.com X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 07:23:42 -0000 Curious if anyone has an understanding of what actually goes on with VMWare memory control of a FreeBSD 10 guest when open-vm-tools is installed and how it could affect performance. Our typical customer environment is a largish VMWare server with an appropriate amount of RAM allocated to the guest, which currently runs FreeBSD 10.0p7 + our software, UFS root, and data stored on a ZFS partition. Our software mmaps large database files, does rather largish data collection (ping, snmp, netflow, syslog, etc) and mostly cruises along, but performance drops off a cliff in low memory situations. We don't install open-vm-tools at the moment, therefore we have a known amount of memory to work with (ie. what the customer initially=20 configured the guest for), but our customers (or in particular, their VM guys) would really like vmware tools or open-vm-tools by default. =46rom what we gather, many sites choose to "over provision" the memory in the VM setups, and when memory gets low, the host takes back=20 some of the RAM allocated to the guest. How does this work actually work ? Does it only take back what FreeBSD considers to be "free" memory or can the host start taking back "inactive", "wired", "zfs arc" memory ? We tend to rely on stuff being in inactive and zfs arc. If we start swapping, we are dead. Also, is there much of a performance hit if the host steals back free memory, and then gives it back ? We'd assume all memory the host gives to the guest is pre-bzero'ed so the FreeBSD wouldn't need to also bzero it. Paul. --=20 Paul Koch | Founder, CEO AKIPS Network Monitor http://www.akips.com Brisbane, Australia