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Linux on Azure...and, how to tell which virtualization is in use?
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
My employer funds an MSDN subscription for me...which I have just used to get a Linux VPS on Azure :-)
How can I tell which virtualization is in use?
Some random things...this is the Medium VM (2x1.66Ghz CPU, 3.5GB RAM). Supposedly they're using SSD disk exclusively (not sure how I'd verify that). I accidentally provisioned in West Europe so I'm tearing down now to move to the states but I assume this is representative of their configs.
Linux somehostname 2.6.32-220.17.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed May 16 00:01:37 BST 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 16 model : 8 model name : AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 4171 HE stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 2094.694 cache size : 512 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 0 cpu cores : 2 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 5 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good extd_apicid unfair_spinlock pni cx16 popcnt hypervisor lahf_lm cmp_legacy cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw bogomips : 4189.38 TLB size : 1024 4K pages clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: processor : 1 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 16 model : 8 model name : AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 4171 HE stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 2094.694 cache size : 512 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 1 cpu cores : 2 apicid : 1 initial apicid : 1 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 5 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good extd_apicid unfair_spinlock pni cx16 popcnt hypervisor lahf_lm cmp_legacy cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw bogomips : 4192.09 TLB size : 1024 4K pages clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync 16384+0 records in 16384+0 records out 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 125.883 s, 8.5 MB/s
Ouch.
Nice control panel, though! It's actually amazingly slick - async notification, task queues, etc. Nicer than Amazon's EC2.
Comments
I would first look at running kernel modules and if you can modprobe any new ones.
I wonder how that panel looks, can you take a screenshot?
From what Google tells me, it could be Xen or KVM or Hyper V
Leaning towards Hyper V considering it's Microsoft's product.
Linux (EL6) in Hyper-V is pretty slick with the kmod rpm loaded, KVM still kicks it's ass though. On a 16 disk array that I was pulling 500+MB/s with CentOS6 loaded on the machine, I am lucky to see 150MB/s in a CentOS 6 VM with the Linux Integration Services. I've yet to run GeekBench to see how it benches, but overall it's not terrible.
Some examples...
The beauty is in the notifications, queue, etc. which is hard to show in just a screen shot.
Lol that makes solusvm look like toy, vs enterprise suite.
Amazon EC2 has a nice panel...Microsoft's is just slicker because it's new.
They also have a suite of command-line tools that run on Linux...
https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/linux/how-to-guides/command-line-tools/
As long as you remain with a supported kernel, I loaded the ovz kernel and none of the Linux Integration Services worked. This is on the theory Azure is Hyper-V
Considering that the hv_storvsc, hv_vmbus, hv_netvsc, hid_hyperv, hv_utils and hv_timesource modules are loaded, I'm going go out on a limb and say that it's Hyper-V...
I think the azure cli tool uses their web api behind the scenes. Everything is "azure ..." and you use it to build/destroy VMs, start/stop, etc
Some more info about that here.
Further info...
My first test was in the VM's root volume (/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root). I just reran it on a VM provisioned in the US West region and got similar data:
I created a small separate data disk and mounted it, then reran the test in that space:
Much better but hardly exciting.
I believe Azure VMs work like EC2 - there is a certain amount of local disk attached and then you can create storage volumes and attach/detach those as you wish. In the Azure case, it's a 28GB root and 66GB mounted as "/mnt/resource". No idea where that name comes from - it's just an ext4 filesystem.
Reputedly, they are going all-SSD:
http://gigaom.com/cloud/new-windows-azure-goes-all-ssd-to-one-up-amazon-in-the-cloud/
Something to know about Windows Azure in the EU.
Same applies to Amazon however.
Speaking of Amazon...same test writing to EBS on a Micro instance:
That is true.
And:
Nice panel! Do they have UK-based SSD VPS?
EC2 is too overloaded IMO - I don't even understand what most of the buttons there do...