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    How good is the virtio (KVM) network performance in 2.2?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Virtualization
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    • D
      diablo266
      last edited by

      I have an older machine (dual E5530's…may upgrade to L5640's since they're so cheap) that I used to run pfsense on virtualized as part of an all-in-one server with proxmox as the hypervisor.  I previously ran esxi and pfsense was able to route gigabit traffic without issue. About a year ago I switched to proxmox and the virtio support under pfsense just wasn't there with my old hardware, nothing near gigabit was achievable. I was forced to switch to ipfire (which is fine, just missing some features of pfsense) but it pushes gigabit speeds without breaking a sweat. Long story short, does anyone know if 2.2 brought any massive improvements to virtio network performance?

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      • F
        FauxShow
        last edited by

        No experience with proxmox as a hypervisor, but there wasn't a significant change in networking speed between 2.1 and 2.2 with ESXi as a hypervisor. Been able to get over 2Gb/s through pfSense using para-virtualized adapters.

        brb; gotta reboot my pfsense

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        • M
          michaelvv
          last edited by

          Hi…

          The virtio network performance was the most significant improvement going from 2.1 to 2.2.

          I'm using Proxmox (3.2) and PfSense 2.2 (i386).

          Still no luck with PfSense 2.2 (64-bit).

          Have this famous boot hang, still present on never CPU's.

          /Michel

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          • D
            diablo266
            last edited by

            Thanks for the reply michaelvv.

            What kind of speeds are you pushing through the virtio interface? Also, it's strange to hear 64bit 2.2 isn't working for you. I'm running pfsense 2.2.2 64bit on proxmox 3.4 without issue (cpu = host option, to allow aes-ni passthrough from an E3-1230v2).

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            • ?
              Guest
              last edited by

              It doesn't bring optimisations, it brings 'support'. The problem wasn't performance, it was that VirtIO wasn't supported at all.

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