Profile Targets on a KVM* Guest System

Configure the Intel® VTune™ Profiler to analyze performance on a KVM guest system.

Performance analysis for the host and virtual machine(s) in cloud environments helps identify such issues as resource contention (for example, CPU/vCPU time) and network/IO activity. VTune Profiler uses Perf*-based driverless collection to enable performance analysis of the guest Linux* operating system via Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) from the host system.

Unlike other virtual machine systems, systems using KVM on a Linux* host to access a Linux guest can have VTune Profiler installed on either the host system to analyze performance on the guest system or installed directly on the guest system to analyze the guest system. Additional information about installing VTune Profiler is available from the Linux installation guides.

Depending on your analysis target, you may choose any of the supported usage modes for KVM guest OS profiling.

Profiling Modes

Currently, the VTune Profiler supports the following usage modes for KVM guest OS profiling, and each of them has some limitations:

Profiling System

KVM Guest OS (User Apps)

KVM Guest OS (User and Kernel Space)

Host and KVM Guest OS (User and Kernel Space)

(preview feature)

Supported analysis

User-mode sampling: Hotspots and Threading

Event-based sampling: Hotspots and limited Microarchitecture Exploration

Event-based sampling: all types with accurate attribution of user-space activity to the user processes on the guest

Target type

Applications in the Launch and Attach modes

  • Applications in the Launch and Attach modes
  • System-wide analysis

System-wide analysis (host and guest OS)

VTune Profiler installation mode

On the guest OS

On the guest OS

On the host and guest OS (VTune Profiler custom collector)

Limitations

No system-wide analysis for user-mode sampling

  • Limited event-based sampling analysis due to a limited set of virtualized PMU events and unavailable uncore events
  • No information from the host
  • Additional debugfs and custom collector configuration is required
  • Access to the host system running VM is required
  • Not applicable to cloud environments

Configuration

Learn more

PMU event virtualization required for Event-based sampling

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Analyze KVM guest OS option

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See Also