KVM and pfsense CPU overhead

[l0rdraiden]

This CPU diference between running top at hypervisor level (KVM) and inside pfsense is normal?

This is when the firewall is almost idle, qemu process is beween 10 and 25% and pfsense values never go over 1% if you sum up all of them.

I have 2 intel i350 nic passthrough.

Do you experience the same issue?

[segobi]

@l0rdraiden yup same issue here - on esxi and also on kvm.
1Gbit iperf test through pfsense also pumps one 3.9 ghz core (i3 7100) to 100%. On bare metal it barely touches the cpu.

On esxi its getting better when you set hw.pci.honor_msi_blacklist=0 in /boot/loader.conf.local
so the igb driver uses msi-x interrupts instead of msi.

[l0rdraiden]

@segobi said in KVM and pfsense CPU overhead:

hw.pci.honor_msi_blacklist=0 in /boot/loader.conf.local

Do you know the equivalent configuration for KVM? I have my config in xml format.
Or any solution for KVM?

[segobi]

@l0rdraiden Hi,
yea found a solution for virtualizing pfsense. I switched from kvm / esxi to XEN and its working perfectly now.