Pfsense 2.1-BETA0 running in PV mode on xen 4.1 randomly reboots
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Hi
We have a significant number of pfsense 2.0 firewalls all running in HVM mode on xen 4.1, with which we've been experiencing performance issues recently. In essence, the (virtual) firewall load goes through the roof as we reach a certain throughput level. The xen host server's CPU only runs at 20-30% when this happens.
A first improvement was noticed by switching from the default realtek 8139 drivers (re$x) to the e1000 drivers (em$x).
As the results were still not acceptable, we've attempted to build a xen PV-aware freebsd 8.3-RELEASE-p4 kernel with pfsense 2.1-BETA0 patches, in which we've eventually succeeded. The performance gain was massive. Firewalls that were previously becoming unresponsive at a throughput of 20mbit, would now do 200mbit with a load of max 4.
The issue we're facing with the 2.1-BETA running in PV mode however, is that it randomly crashes and reboots. This does not appear to be load related at all. Happens roughly once a day.
The output on the console when it crashes can be found here: https://gist.github.com/d943d0c97fd4d9fba1e9
Has anyone else been successful in running pfsense in PV mode?
Any experiences to share? Or any pointers towards what the issue could be with our PV kernel?
Thanks in advance
McGlenn
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Hi
FYI - we've switched from freebsd in PV-mode to freebsd in XENHVM-mode, which seems to have solved our issues.
The firewalls are as performant as with the PV kernel and have been stable for a month.
Also, xm shutdown does a proper shutdown of the firewall (instead of just killing it) and xm console works as well.
It's been a long journey, but it looks like we have a robust solution now.
Regards
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Hi,
Is it possible you could provide a guide for building the PV aware kernel? This was something I was very interested in a year ago, but didn't have the time and couldn't find any guides.
Lookd forward to your response