Setting Memory Resource Limits With LXC

Setting Memory Resource Limits With LXC

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Category : How-to

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linux_containers_logo

 

Linux Container (LXC) management is now often dealt with by LXD, the Canonical lead project built on top of LXC.

LXD offers a suite of options for controlling Linux Container resources and setting limits where appropriate. This post will talk about setting constraints on CPU, however other options are available for limiting almost any sort of resource, such as network, disk I/O, memory and so on.

Available Limits

CPU management is done in 1 of 4 ways, depending on your expected workload and host CPU management regime.

  1. Number of CPUs – set the number of CPU cores that LXC can use with this container and automatically distribute CPU time amongst guests when there is competition for CPU time. The value used is an integer, for example 2.
  2. Specific cores – specify specific physical core(s) for the container to use and distribute available CPU time between containers when multiple containers use the same cores.The value used is an integer or range and can be comma separated, for example 2, 0-1 or 0-1,3,5-9.
  3. Capped share – allow a specified percentage of CPU time for the container, or more if it’s available. When the host is not under load then a container can use any available CPU however when there is contention for CPU then the container will be limited to the specified amount. The container will see all host CPU cores (in TOP, for example).
  4. Limited time share – will limit the container CPU time to be whatever is specified out of each 200ms. Even if more CPU is available, only what is specified per 200ms slice is allowed. The container will see all host CPU cores (in TOP, for example).

Setting Limits

Setting limits is done with the lxc command. There are then two options; limits.cpu for the above points 1 and 2, or limit.cpu.allowance for points 3 and 4.

lxc config set [CONTAINER] limits.cpu [VALUE]
  • [CONTAINER] is the name of the container – can be obtained from lxc list if you’re unsure.
  • [VALUE] is a valid value from point 1 or 2 above.

OR

lxc config set [CONTAINER] limits.cpu.allowance [VALUE]
  • [CONTAINER] is the name of the container – can be obtained from lxc list if you’re unsure.
  • [VALUE] is a valid value from point 3 or 4 above.

CPU Limit Examples

Set the container nginx-proxy to use any 2 CPUs on the host.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu 2

Set the container nginx-proxy to use physical CPU 0, 3, 7, 8 and 9 on the host.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu 0,3,7-9

Set the container nginx-proxy to use 20% of the available CPU on the host or more if it’s available.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu.allowance 20%

Set the container nginx-proxy to use no more than 50% of the available CPU on the host, or 100ms for every 200ms of CPU time available.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu.allowance 100ms/200ms

You can view /proc/cpuinfo to see the available cores on your container, however it will not include any additional scheduling limits or priorities.

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
processor: 0
processor: 1

CPU Priority

The last option around CPU limiting is the priority of CPU time. This option only kicks in when the host is overcommitted on CPU resource and containers are fighting for CPU time. This can either be on a single core (if using above points 1 or 2) or system wide (if no CPU limiting is in place or using above points 3 or 4).

Available values are 0 – 10 inclusive and lower numbers mean a lower priority – a higher number will mean the machine gets CPU time before lower numbers.

The below command sets the container nginx-proxy to have a CPU priority of 5.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu.priority 5

The below command sets the container php-backend to have a CPU priority of 2 and therefore would get less CPU time than container nginx-proxy when CPU is under contention.

lxc config set php-backend limits.cpu.priority 5

Setting CPU Resource Limits With LXC

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Category : How-to

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linux_containers_logoLinux Container (LXC) management is now often dealt with by LXD, the Canonical lead project built on top of LXC.

LXD offers a suite of options for controlling Linux Container resources and setting limits where appropriate. This post will talk about setting constraints on CPU, however other options are available for limiting almost any sort of resource, such as network, disk I/O, memory and so on.

Available Limits

CPU management is done in 1 of 4 ways, depending on your expected workload and host CPU management regime.

  1. Number of CPUs – set the number of CPU cores that LXC can use with this container and automatically distribute CPU time amongst guests when there is competition for CPU time. The value used is an integer, for example 2.
  2. Specific cores – specify specific physical core(s) for the container to use and distribute available CPU time between containers when multiple containers use the same cores.The value used is an integer or range and can be comma separated, for example 2, 0-1 or 0-1,3,5-9.
  3. Capped share – allow a specified percentage of CPU time for the container, or more if it’s available. When the host is not under load then a container can use any available CPU however when there is contention for CPU then the container will be limited to the specified amount. The container will see all host CPU cores (in TOP, for example).
  4. Limited time share – will limit the container CPU time to be whatever is specified out of each 200ms. Even if more CPU is available, only what is specified per 200ms slice is allowed. The container will see all host CPU cores (in TOP, for example).

Setting Limits

Setting limits is done with the lxc command. There are then two options; limits.cpu for the above points 1 and 2, or limit.cpu.allowance for points 3 and 4.

lxc config set [CONTAINER] limits.cpu [VALUE]
  • [CONTAINER] is the name of the container – can be obtained from lxc list if you’re unsure.
  • [VALUE] is a valid value from point 1 or 2 above.

OR

lxc config set [CONTAINER] limits.cpu.allowance [VALUE]
  • [CONTAINER] is the name of the container – can be obtained from lxc list if you’re unsure.
  • [VALUE] is a valid value from point 3 or 4 above.

CPU Limit Examples

Set the container nginx-proxy to use any 2 CPUs on the host.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu 2

Set the container nginx-proxy to use physical CPU 0, 3, 7, 8 and 9 on the host.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu 0,3,7-9

Set the container nginx-proxy to use 20% of the available CPU on the host or more if it’s available.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu.allowance 20%

Set the container nginx-proxy to use no more than 50% of the available CPU on the host, or 100ms for every 200ms of CPU time available.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu.allowance 100ms/200ms

You can view /proc/cpuinfo to see the available cores on your container, however it will not include any additional scheduling limits or priorities.

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
processor: 0
processor: 1

CPU Priority

The last option around CPU limiting is the priority of CPU time. This option only kicks in when the host is overcommitted on CPU resource and containers are fighting for CPU time. This can either be on a single core (if using above points 1 or 2) or system wide (if no CPU limiting is in place or using above points 3 or 4).

Available values are 0 – 10 inclusive and lower numbers mean a lower priority – a higher number will mean the machine gets CPU time before lower numbers.

The below command sets the container nginx-proxy to have a CPU priority of 5.

lxc config set nginx-proxy limits.cpu.priority 5

The below command sets the container php-backend to have a CPU priority of 2 and therefore would get less CPU time than container nginx-proxy when CPU is under contention.

lxc config set php-backend limits.cpu.priority 5

Use DD to Quickly Benchmark Your CPU

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Category : How-to

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Let me start by saying… this is a quick and dirty method and shouldn’t be used for precise comparisons of CPU performance. That said, it’s perfectly adequate for approximating CPU performance, especially on Cloud hosted VPSs to ensure you’re getting the horsepower that you’re being promised.

The idea here is to force your machine to perform tasks that will be computationally expensive to force your CPU to work at 100 percent and become the bottleneck for the task (rather than disk I/ O, etc.). This task will then be timed. The shorter times will generally represent faster CPU’s and longer results would indicate a slower CPU.

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CPU benchmark

The md5sum command is a tool that creates an MD5 hash of some data. We can generate some data on the fly with dd and pipe it into the md5sum tool to create a computationally expensive task. We’ll limit the data to hash and time the length of time it takes to create the hash.

Run the below to start the test. If your result completes in under 2 seconds then increase the count=1k value to a higher value, for example count=10k.

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1k | md5sum

You’ll get an output similar to the below output.

1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 2.38909 s, 449 MB/s
cd573cfaace07e7949bc0c46028904ff  -

There are a couple of items that you’re interested in here, and the rest can be ignored.

  • 2.38909 s is the time it took in seconds for the operation to complete. This is the number to use for comparison with other machines – lower is better.
  • 449 MB/s is the speed that the data was fabricated and push into the md5sum tool to be hashed – higher is better.

 

CPU details with cpuinfo

Linux has various nuggets of information about your system available in the proc directory on a linux root partition. You can cat various files, such as /proc/cpuinfo, to see system specifications and metrics.

/proc/cpuinfo

The output will look similar to the below output that shows a Xeon CPU running at a clock speed of 2.50GHz.

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 62
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU @ 2.50GHz
stepping        : 4
microcode       : 0x1
cpu MHz         : 2500.000
cache size      : 30720 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 1
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 1
apicid          : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht sysca
ll nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc nopl xtopology eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq ssse3 cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt aes xsave avx
 f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm xsaveopt fsgsbase smep
bogomips        : 5000.00
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

 

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