Re: [qubes-users] Re: Slow performance of Docker containers in AppVMs

2017-01-23 Thread Garrett Robinson
On 01/23/2017 06:17 PM, Grzesiek Chodzicki wrote:

> Have You tried using StandaloneVMs to host Docker? StandaloneVMs don't use 
> copy-on-write afaik so it should be at least a little faster.

Great suggestion! Unfortunately, I just tried using a StandaloneVM and
there was no noticeable performance improvement :(

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[qubes-users] Re: Slow performance of Docker containers in AppVMs

2017-01-23 Thread Grzesiek Chodzicki
W dniu poniedziałek, 23 stycznia 2017 20:55:31 UTC+1 użytkownik Garrett 
Robinson napisał:
> I am working on transitioning my day-to-day software development work to
> Qubes. The primary challenge that I face is widespread use of Vagrant
> for provisioning development environments. I am aware of the challenges
> and concerns around hacking Qubes to achieve nested virtualization, so I
> am trying to avoid going down that road.
> 
> A potential alternative is to use Docker, because there are no inherent
> issues with using Linux containers inside virtual machines. Vagrant
> supports using Docker as a "provider," so this seems like a viable
> solution that could allow me to use my existing Vagrant-based
> development environments on Qubes with only minor modifications.
> 
> I set up a new TemplateVM (based on Fedora 24) and AppVM to experiment
> with setting up a Vagrant+Docker-based development environment. It was
> surprisingly easy; however, after some initial testing, I realized an
> unfortunate truth: operations inside the Docker container are *very
> slow* - so slow as to create an unacceptable level of overhead for
> day-to-day development work.
> 
> The slowdown appears to be due to slow disk IO. Running htop shows that
> processes in the container have status "D", meaning "disk sleep
> (uninterruptible)", for long periods of time. I tried switching the
> Docker storage backend to "overlay" instead of the Fedora default of
> devicemapper with loopback devices, which is a well-known technique for
> improving Docker performance on Fedora. This was an improvement, based
> on my experience as well as some simple dd-based IO benchmarks, but
> overall performance is still much too slow--borderline unusable.
> 
> My gut feeling is that this is due to the combination of Qubes' overlay
> filesystem with Docker's overlay filesystem - I imagine that nesting COW
> filesystems is naturally a prescription for degraded performance.
> Unfortunately, I do not know enough about Qubes/Docker/filesystems to
> know of the best way to test this hypothesis.
> My questions for the list are:
> 
> 1. Is anybody else successfully using Vagrant and/or Docker on Qubes? Do
> you have any tips/tricks to share?
> 2. Does anybody know or have any alternative theories as to what might
> be causing these performance problems? 3. Even better: does anybody have
> good advice for how to experimentally analyze these problems? Good ideas
> for how to analyze the source of the slowdown, ideas for benchmarks,
> useful analysis tools or techniques, etc.?
> 
> I have some notes on my experience and a Docker environment for basic IO
> benchmarking, which I am happy to share if anybody's interested.
> 
> Thanks,
> Garrett

Have You tried using StandaloneVMs to host Docker? StandaloneVMs don't use 
copy-on-write afaik so it should be at least a little faster.

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