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Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v4] XBZRLE delta for live migration of large mem


From: Avi Kivity
Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v4] XBZRLE delta for live migration of large memory apps
Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:39:32 +0300
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:5.0) Gecko/20110707 Thunderbird/5.0

On 08/08/2011 05:33 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
If we have a shared object helper, the thread should be maintained by
qemu proper, not the plugin.

I wouldn't call it "migration transport", but instead a
compression/decompression plugin.

I don't think it merits a plugin at all though. There's limited scope
for compression and it best sits in qemu proper. If anything, it needs
to be more integrated (for example turning itself off if it doesn't
match enough).


That adds a tremendous amount of complexity to QEMU.

Tremendous? You exaggerate. It's a lot simpler than the block or char layers, for example.

If we're going to change our compression algorithm, we would need to use a single algorithm that worked well for a wide variety of workloads.

That algorithm will have to include XBZRLE as a subset, since it matches what workloads actually do (touch memory sparsely).


We struggle enough with migration as it is, it only would get worse if we have 10 different algorithms that we were dynamically enabling/disabling.

The other option is to allow 1-off compression algorithms in the form of plugins. I think in this case, plugins are a pretty good compromise in terms of isolating complexity while allowing something that at least works very well for one particular type of workload.

I think you underestimate the generality of XBZRLE (or maybe I'm overestimating it?). It's not reasonable to ask users to match a compression algorithm to their workload; most times they won't be interacting with the host at all. We need compression to be enabled at all time, turning itself off if it finds it isn't effective so it can consume less cpu.

--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function




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