
Ubuntu on AWS Gets Serious Performance Boost with AWS-Tuned Kernel - nikolay
https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/ubuntu-on-aws-gets-serious-performance-boost-with-aws-tuned-kernel/
======
nathan_f77
> If, for now, you prefer stability over speed, you can get still get going
> with Livepatch by reverting to the old kernel,

Ha, that's not the most inspirational ending.

I would have hoped that stability doesn't even need to be mentioned,
considering that this is now one of the default images on AWS. I don't think
anyone would choose this kernel if they thought there might be a higher chance
of it crashing and taking down their server.

~~~
sciurus
I think in this context by "stability" they mean "not rebooting"

[https://www.ubuntu.com/server/livepatch](https://www.ubuntu.com/server/livepatch)
is a commercial service that can apply security patches to a running kernel.

~~~
nathan_f77
Oh, you're right. Whoops, should have paid more attention!

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xemdetia
I wish they did a better job describing where their gains were. I tried to
pull something interesting out of the changelog but it wasn't obvious.

------
zx2c4

        * Disabled CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL to eliminate deadlocks
          on some instance types
    

That... sounds like a bad bug?

------
aidos
Cool — now to finally get around to moving to 16.04 :-)

Each time I look at what the last stable Ubuntu release is, I feel like the
years are rushing by too fast. I slowly drift further and further behind
schedule, though it still doesn't seem a minute since 10.04 came out!

~~~
xmichael99
Had a similar conversation about that just yesterday. Our company is using
12.04 and I was nearly floored to see it is soon entering end of life... A
quick test of 16.04 says, wow it is not going to be fun for us to upgrade...

~~~
softwarelimits
One of the most valuable aspects of Debian was (and hopefully is and will
always be) the fact that a release upgrade was always possible and (at least
for me) never caused any problems (rtm of course).

The idea of "LTS" is a stupid reversion of something better we already had -
the idea that upgrades are always reliable.

Saying "LTS" for me sounds like "we have lost control over the upgrade
process."

Of course I must add that updating from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04 went ok on all
machines I have seen (servers and also desktop workstations) - this should not
be surprising, but the expected default, then we do not need no "LTS" theater.

~~~
mattbillenstein
LTS is a guideline about extended support, extended beta cycles, and less
potentially breaking changes vs the non-LTS releases. I don't see it as saying
much of anything about the upgrade path, but rather that if you do an apt-get
update on an existing LTS box, you can expect to not get major version bumps
of tools and libraries and thus less breakage. Of course, you don't get the
latest and greatest software, but for most server deployments, that's a
desired compromise.

And at least I never do an upgrade anyway -- I always do a fresh install from
one LTS to the next one on bare metal -- and simply recycle VMs in the cloud.

------
bashtoni
If you prefer RedHat, I've been releasing CentOS images with similar tunning
for some time:
[https://www.bashton.com/blog/2017/centos-7.3-ami/](https://www.bashton.com/blog/2017/centos-7.3-ami/)

~~~
m23khan
Hi Bashtoni, will this CentOS AMI be your fork (as an individual contributor)
or will this be the official CentOS AMI on AWS Marketplace?

------
yeasayer
> Resolved CPU throttling with AWS t2.micro instances

What does it mean? I know that all t2.micro instances are CPU throttled
(credits system)

~~~
fred256
Not sure. Perhaps it might be a reference to
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1518457](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1518457)
which caused 100% CPU usage (and thus throttling) on t2 instances in some
cases.

~~~
mattbillenstein
Disabling hotadd also fixes I/O errors on nvme disks on the new i3 instances
which is mentioned here as well.

------
adenot
How does it compare with Amazon Linux? Does it already have the improvements
added now to Ubuntu?

------
TheGuyWhoCodes
The built in support for ENA is nice but what about the other instances such
as C3, C4, D2, I2, R3, and M4 (excluding m4.16xlarge) where you have EN using
Intel 82599 Virtual Function interface? Why not support it out of the box?

~~~
phonon
I assume ENA support relies on this new driver. [1]

Ubuntu 16.04 already supports the ixgbevf driver, I believe. [2]

[1] [https://github.com/amzn/amzn-
drivers/tree/master/kernel/linu...](https://github.com/amzn/amzn-
drivers/tree/master/kernel/linux/ena)

[2]
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/intel/+bug/1536473](https://bugs.launchpad.net/intel/+bug/1536473)

~~~
KAdot
The latest Amazon Ubuntu 16.04 AMI comes with ixgbevf version 2.12.1-k, while
the Enhanced Networking documentation [1] suggests installing version 2.16.4.

[1] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/sriov-
net...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/sriov-
networking.html#enhanced-networking-ubuntu)

------
buzzdenver
I'm not seeing any speed increase when using an ENA vs non-ENA ami as seen by
iperf. ami-80861296 vs ami-2757f631; tested transfer between pairs of m4.large
and m4.xl VM-s.

------
jamesblonde
Nothing about enhanched networking and configuration for 10Gb nets? I had to
setup all this (jumbo frames, etc) - felt like a waste of time.

~~~
gleenn
Looks like it's enabled by default on a lot of their images now

------
m23khan
this is great news!! Along with CentOS, I find it a joy working with Ubuntu
servers when it comes to administration.

I wish SUSE (SLES) also had a smoother / stable performance on AWS (e.g.
recurring issues with their susecloud on aws repo).

------
exabrial
Will this be an automatic update through normal apt-get?

~~~
ty_a
Not an automatic update but it is in the standard repo as linux-image-aws. But
new AMIs come with the AWS kernel by default.

~~~
mercora
But only in xenial repositories for whatever reasons.

