vm-timing-report

Copyright (C) 2014 Intel Corporation

Author: Ikey Doherty michael.i.doherty@intel.com

To test this system, please point the script at a valid raw file system that uses systemd.

Firstly, issue the following command:

sudo spin-from-raw.sh $PATHTORAWFILESYSTEM

If you are testing CentOS, please see README.CentOS.md If you are testing Ubuntu, you can generate a compatible raw filesystem using the following command: (This will create a 14.04 system)

sudo gen-ubuntu-rawfs.sh

Once this is complete, you should have a new "rootfs.img" as a backing file for your operating system images. Now you should create some test images:

mkdir vms && cd vms

for i in {0..20} ; do qemu-img create your-os-$i.img -b ../rootfs.img -f qcow2; done

And now, cd back to the directory that the rootfs.img lives in, and execute according to the parameters required by your operating system:

# Booting 8 vms (-n), 340M of memory each (-m), prefix of "your-os" (-p)
# and suffix of ".img" (-s), using -k(ernel) and -i(nitrd) from the
# BFILES directory (auto-saved) and using vms as the vmdir (-v)
sudo vm-timing-report -n 8 -m 340 -p your-os -s .img -k BFILES/vmlinuz -i BFILES/initrd -v vms/

The output is quite verbose, in order to facilitate future integrations via helpful reports.

The last of the output will be related to Virtual Machines reporting to the vm-timing-report tool that they are "up" - these will poweroff 3 seconds after this interval.

You will see an average of times and each VMs internal concept of boot time by way of systemd-analyze output:

Got a connection: 4
Got a connection: 5
Got a connection: 6
Got a connection: 7
Got a connection: 8
Got a connection: 9
Got a connection: 10
Got a connection: 11
VM 2 reported as booted
VM 4 reported as booted
VM 6 reported as booted
VM 7 reported as booted
VM 0 reported as booted
VM 3 reported as booted
VM 5 reported as booted
VM 1 reported as booted
VM 0 booted in: 13.64s: Startup finished in 988ms (kernel) + 1.167s (initrd) + 2.001s (userspace) = 4.158s
VM 1 booted in: 14.48s: Startup finished in 1.785s (kernel) + 950ms (initrd) + 1.540s (userspace) = 4.276s
VM 2 booted in: 8.385s: Startup finished in 898ms (kernel) + 1.518s (initrd) + 1.479s (userspace) = 3.896s
VM 3 booted in: 13.97s: Startup finished in 1.200s (kernel) + 2.031s (initrd) + 966ms (userspace) = 4.199s
VM 4 booted in: 10.3s: Startup finished in 900ms (kernel) + 1.217s (initrd) + 2.039s (userspace) = 4.157s
VM 5 booted in: 14.39s: Startup finished in 1.773s (kernel) + 1.883s (initrd) + 1.504s (userspace) = 5.161s
VM 6 booted in: 13.23s: Startup finished in 1.007s (kernel) + 1.536s (initrd) + 2.028s (userspace) = 4.572s
VM 7 booted in: 13.62s: Startup finished in 1.579s (kernel) + 1.228s (initrd) + 1.723s (userspace) = 4.532s
Average boot: 12.75s
It took 14.48s to boot all VMs

Notes

The spin script (spin-from-raw) requires sudo to do mount, rsync, etc, to construct a new VM template.

You MIGHT not need sudo to run vm-timing-report itself, however please note this is entirely distribution specific. Whilst some distributions automatically give users access to KVM, you may have to either use sudo or add yourself to the 'kvm' group. Please consult your Linux distribution's documentation if you are unsure.