Instructions for running the experiments described in the paper.

We provide 2 VM images on the provisioned machines: fed32-svm and fed32. fed32-svm is used for all experiments requiring SVM. fed32 is used for both non-PEF and PEF enabled hardware but non-SVM experiments. (Provisioned machines are not publicly accessible).

NOTE: To use your own SVM image, see fed32-enc-svm.swiotlb256.22GB.xml for example of KVM VM specification to use.

Part I: Run SVM and PEF-no-SVM experiments.

SVM experiments:

• sudo virsh start fed32-svm
• sudo virsh domifaddr fed32-svm (to get IP address)
• ssh root@<fed32-svm IP>
• Go to <Experiments to run inside the (S)VMs> section and run all the experiments there

PEF-no-SVM experiments:

• sudo virsh start fed32
• sudo virsh domifaddr fed32 (to get IP address)
• ssh root@<fed32 IP>
• Go to <Experiments to run inside the (S)VMs> section and run all the experiments there

Part II: Run non-PEF experiments.

• (Skip if using provided machine) Disable PEF on the system and power-cycle described in Enabling/Disabling PEF below.
• sudo virsh start fed32
• sudo virsh domifaddr fed32 (to get IP address)
• ssh root@<fed32 IP>
• Go to <Experiments to run inside the (S)VMs> section and run all the experiments there

Enabling/disabling PEF:

• ENABLE PEF: nvram -p ibm,skiboot --update-config smf_mem_amt=0x1000000000 (configure secure memory to 64GB -- half of memory on system)
• DISABLE PEF: nvram -p ibm,skiboot --update-config smf_mem_amt=0x0 (configure secure memory to 0GB)
• ssh root@<hostname> (log into the BMC)
• POWER-CYCLE the machine: obmcutil chassisoff && sleep 10 && systemctl restart mboxd.service && sleep 10 && obmcutil chassison && sleep 10 && obmcutil poweron

Experiments to run inside the (S)VMs

Git clone this repo onto the host machine.

Boot time measurement:

On the host, execute the provided boot-time.sh script, passing in the target VM name and IP.

CPU performance experiments:

NOTE: SPEC CPU2017 is not open source. A licensed version is provided for committee evaluators on the designated machines.

Installing SPEC CPU2017 (Skip if using provided VM images)

• Run req-install.sh to prepare VM for SPEC CPU2017 installation
• Install SPEC CPU2017 ver 1.1.0

NOTE: Installation of tools need to use default location (src root folder -- just hit enter), changing the default location cause failure

• Copy speccpu2017.cfg into config folder (Skip if using provided VM images)

Running the benchmark:

• cd into the root CPU SPEC folder
• source shrc
• runcpu --config=<config file name> --reportable intrate
• runcpu --config=<config file name> --reportable intspeed

NOTE: Need sufficient memory in the VM (e.g., 22GB) for the intspeed benchmark, (631.deepsjeng_s application) will fail to run correctly. Fails to allocate enough space for its hashtable.

NOTE: The result to look for is the values in Est. Base Run Time

Block performance experiments:

• (Skip if using provided VM image) yum install fio
• In target VM:
  • cd into fio directory pulled from this repo
  • ./run_all.sh

NOTE: Running all block experiments can take a couple of hours to complete. The result value to look for is in Run status group, e.g., READ: bw=548KiB/s (561kB/s)...and WRITE: bw=364KiB/s (373kB/s)...

Network performance experiments:

• Download, build, install netperf for POWER from the provided SRPM
  • rpm -ivh netperf/netperf-2.7.0-benchmark.11.10.src.rpm (this will install source package into ~/rpmbuild)
  • cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS
  • edit netperf.spec (comment out lines 34 and 35)
  • rpmbuild -bi
  • binary will be installed in ~/rpmbuild/BUILDROOT/netperf-2.7.0-benchmark.11.10.ppc64le/usr/
• Copy ~/rpmbuild/BUILDROOT/netperf-2.7.0-benchmark.11.10.ppc64le/ to the target VM
• Disable firewall and enable port forwarding:
  • On VM: sudo systemctl stop firewalld
  • On VM's host, enable port forwarding (ports 20000 and 20001), use provided script: ./net_forwarding.sh <HOSTIP> <PORTS> <PORTS> <VMIP> <VMSUBNET>
    e.g., ./net_forwarding.sh 120.5.253.43 20000 20001 192.168.122.53 192.168.122.0/24
  • On separate host: sudo systemctl stop firewalld
• In target VM: <folder of netperf>/bin/netserver -p 20000 -D -f
• On separate host, copy the provided netperf/run.sh into ~/rpmbuild/BUILDROOT/netperf-2.7.0-benchmark.11.10.ppc64le/usr/
  • run the provided script ./run.sh <host name of VM's host>

NOTE: the result collected is in the THROUGHPUT column

Apache Benchmark

• On VM:
  • install httpd: yum install httpd
  • service httpd start
  • run provided script to generate data: ./ab/gen_data.sh
  • Disable firewalld: service firewalld stop
• On VM's host:
  • Enable port forwarding to the target VM for port 80: ./net_forwarding.sh <HOSTIP> <PORTS> <PORTS> <VMIP> <VMSUBNET>
    e.g., ./net_forwarding.sh 120.5.253.43 80 80 192.168.122.53 192.168.122.0/24
• On separate host
  • install ab: sudo yum install httpd
  • ./ab/run.sh <host of target VM>