Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC qemu 0/4] A PV solution for live migration optimization

[Li, Liang Z]

> Cc: Roman Kagan; Dr. David Alan Gilbert; address@hidden;
> address@hidden; address@hidden; address@hidden;
> address@hidden; address@hidden; address@hidden;
> address@hidden; address@hidden;
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> Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC qemu 0/4] A PV solution for live migration
> optimization
> 
> On Mon, Mar 07, 2016 at 06:49:19AM +0000, Li, Liang Z wrote:
> > > > No. And it's exactly what I mean. The ballooned memory is still
> > > > processed during live migration without skipping. The live
> > > > migration code is
> > > in migration/ram.c.
> > >
> > > So if guest acknowledged VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_MUST_TELL_HOST, we
> can
> > > teach qemu to skip these pages.
> > > Want to write a patch to do this?
> > >
> >
> > Yes, we really can teach qemu to skip these pages and it's not hard.
> > The problem is the poor performance, this PV solution
> 
> Balloon is always PV. And do not call patches solutions please.
> 

OK.
  
> > is aimed to make it more
> > efficient and reduce the performance impact on guest.
> 
> We need to get a bit beyond this.  You are making multiple changes, it seems
> to make sense to split it all up, and analyse each change separately.  If you
> don't this patchset will be stuck: as you have seen people aren't convinced it
> actually helps with real workloads.
> 
Really, changing the virtio spec must have good reasons.

> > > > >
> > > > > > > > The only advantage of ' inflating the balloon before live
> > > > > > > > migration' is simple,
> > > > > > > nothing more.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > That's a big advantage.  Another one is that it does
> > > > > > > something useful in real- world scenarios.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I don't think the heave performance impaction is something
> > > > > > useful in real
> > > > > world scenarios.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Liang
> > > > > > > Roman.
> > > > >
> > > > > So fix the performance then. You will have to try harder if you
> > > > > want to convince people that the performance is due to bad
> > > > > host/guest interface, and so we have to change *that*.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Actually, the PV solution is irrelevant with the balloon
> > > > mechanism, I just use it to transfer information between host and
> guest.
> > > > I am not sure if I should implement a new virtio device, and I
> > > > want to get the answer from the community.
> > > > In this RFC patch, to make things simple, I choose to extend the
> > > > virtio-balloon and use the extended interface to transfer the
> > > > request and
> > > free_page_bimap content.
> > > >
> > > > I am not intend to change the current virtio-balloon implementation.
> > > >
> > > > Liang
> > >
> > > And the answer would depend on the answer to my question above.
> > > Does balloon need an interface passing page bitmaps around?
> >
> > Yes, I need a new interface.
> 
> Possibly, but you will need to justify this at some level if you care about
> upstreaming your patches.
> 
> > > Does this speed up any operations?
> >
> > No, a new interface will not speed up anything, but it is the easiest way to
> solve the compatibility issue.
> 
> A bunch of new code is often easier to write than to figure out the old one,
> but if we keep piling it up we'll end up with an unmaintainable mess. So we
> are rather careful about adding new interfaces, and we try to make them
> generic sometimes even at cost of slight inefficiencies.
> 
> > > OTOH what if you use the regular balloon interface with your patches?
> > >
> >
> > The regular balloon interfaces have their specific function and I can't use
> them in my patches.
> > If using these regular interface, I have to do a lot of changes to keep the
> compatibility.
> 
> Why can't you?
> 
> What exactly do we need to change?
> 
> If we put things in terms of the balloon, that supports adding and removing
> pages.
> 
> Using these terms, let's enumerate:
> - a new method (e.g. new virtqueue) that adds and immediately removes
> page in a balloon
>       clearly, you can add then remove using the existing interfaces
>       is a single command significantly faster than using existing two vqs?
> - a new kind of request that says "add (and immediately remove?) as many
> pages as you can"
>       sounds rather benign
> - a new kind of message that adds multiple pages using a bitmap
>       (instead of an address list)
>       again, is this significantly faster?

More of less faster because of less data traffic. I didn't measure this,  I 
will do it and take a deep look
at the way you suggest if we choose to make use of the virtio-balloon interface.

> 
> Does not look like compatibility is an issue, to me.
> 
> 
> At some level, your patches look like page hints.
> If we have more patches in mind that use page hints, then a new hint device
> might make sense.
> 

Yes, I have ever considered to implement a new device, use the virtio-balloon to
transfer the free pages information which is irrelevant  with the balloon 
mechanism
is some more or less confusing.

> However, people experimented with page hints in the past, so far this always
> went nowhere.  E.g. I CC Rick who saw some problems when page hints
> interact with huge pages. Rick, could you elaborate please?
> 

Thanks a lot. Can't wait to know the problems.

Liang
> 
> --
> MST