Pfsense 2.0beta5 on Hyper-V - Single to dual core

PistolPete · Jan 17, 2011, 5:35 PM

Hi All,

I've been running 2.0 for a little while in Hyper-V and not getting the performance I was expecting.
I've been watching the CPU utilisation and noticed it's really high when I start to crack up the speed (even tho the CPU is more than double the clock speed of the old hardware firewall I used without issues) so I have decided to allocate the VM 2 CPUs instead of one.

All is well, except whilst Pfsense reports that it has 2 CPUs, but barely touches one of them (CPU0) and leave CPU1 struggling.

Do I need to reinstall Pfsense or can I get it to start using the other CPU properly?

Pete

berniem · Jan 18, 2011, 6:36 PM

Well, since pfSense does ask you whether you're running a single CPU or multi, it's a safe bet (including also your emperical observation(s) that the second virtual CPU is being ignored) that you'd have to install again.

PistolPete · Jan 21, 2011, 1:53 PM

Not the answer I was hoping for :'(

Oh well - something else to add to my every growing 'to do' list.

jimp · Jan 21, 2011, 3:20 PM

No need to reinstall to switch kernels.

http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Switching_Kernels

PistolPete · Jan 21, 2011, 9:17 PM

Thanks - came just in time. I came in here as I couldn't remember the location of my start script and I spotted this.

However, still getting the same problem - one CPU almost rammed and the other at 2-3% and throughput still all over the place.
I reckon it's probably due to the crap virtual NICs.

Sawpped back to my old Watchguard and can max my line again - Time for a hardware upgrade and to forget Hyper-V

Kharcoff · Jan 27, 2011, 1:37 AM

As I managed to get it working, will give a piece of advice, just save your current configuration by going to Diagnostics>Restore/Backup and get an iso from the latest release and re-install it, it takes 5 minutes max, and you can after just restore your backup to have everything in place. Just pay attention to create the VM with two cpus, legacy network adapters, enough memory (1gb), is better than try to adjust your current install. Oh, don;t forget that on Hyper-V and on 2.0, every time you boot the machine (after updates), or manually, you have to restart the interfaces, by going on the Hyper-V manager, opening the VM and selecting the Shell and then enter this:
ifconfig <name of="" your="" interface0="">down
ifconfig <name of="" your="" interface0="">up
ifconfig <name of="" your="" interface1="">down
ifconfig <name of="" your="" interface1="">up
in my case interfaces are de0, de1.

Good luck!
K</name></name></name></name>

PistolPete · Jan 28, 2011, 11:12 PM

I'm already running legacy adaptors, but will it seriously need 1GB ram?? I've got plenty in the Hyper-V server so it's not an issue.

Update: Still the same.

Jan 29, 2011, 5:48 PM

hmm, i am watching this thread with great interest, i was going to invest in a hyper-v server and run pfsense on it; but i have read a few posts now stating there are bandwidth issues, is this the case with all hyper-v servers? or just a misconfiguration?

thanks.

berniem · Jan 29, 2011, 10:23 PM

It must vary from config to config because when I run pfSense under Hyper-V, I do see a bit of a performance hit, but not like what others are reporting. I also have never had to do any of the interface down/up hacks that some seem to need.

I guess it's very much ymmv. :-)