Re: [Qemu-devel] qemu-img convert cache mode for source

[Peter Lieven]

On 03.03.2014 13:03, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 03:35:05PM +0100, Peter Lieven wrote:
> > On 27.02.2014 09:57, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> > > On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 05:01:52PM +0100, Peter Lieven wrote:
> > > > On 26.02.2014 16:41, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 11:14:04AM +0100, Peter Lieven wrote:
> > > > > > I was wondering if it would be a good idea to set the O_DIRECT mode for the 
> > > > > > source
> > > > > > files of a qemu-img convert process if the source is a host_device?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Currently the backup of a host device is polluting the page cache.
> > > > > Points to consider:
> > > > >
> > > > > 1. O_DIRECT does not work on Linux tmpfs, you get EINVAL when opening
> > > > >     the file.  A fallback is necessary.
> > > > >
> > > > > 2. O_DIRECT has no readahead so performance could actually decrease.
> > > > >     The question is, how important is reahead versus polluting page
> > > > >     cache?
> > > > >
> > > > > 3. For raw files it would make sense to tell the kernel that access is
> > > > >     sequential and data will be used only once.  Then we can get the best
> > > > >     of both worlds (avoid polluting page cache but still get readahead).
> > > > >     This is done using posix_fadvise(2).
> > > > >
> > > > >     The problem is what to do for image formats.  An image file can be
> > > > >     very fragmented so the readahead might not be a win.  Does this mean
> > > > >     that for image formats we should tell the kernel access will be
> > > > >     random?
> > > > >
> > > > >     Furthermore, maybe it's best to do readahead inside QEMU so that even
> > > > >     network protocols (nbd, iscsi, etc) can get good performance.  They
> > > > >     act like O_DIRECT is always on.
> > > > your comments are regarding qemu-img convert, right?
> > > > How would you implement this? A new open flag because
> > > > the fadvise had to goto inside the protocol driver.
> > > >
> > > > I would start with host_devices first and see how it performs there.
> > > >
> > > > For qemu-img convert I would issue a FADV_DONTNEED after
> > > > a write for the bytes that have been written
> > > > (i have tested this with Linux and it seems to work quite well).
> > > >
> > > > Question is, what is the right paramter for reads? Also FADV_DONTNEED?
> > > I think so but this should be justified with benchmark results.
> > I ran some benchmarks at found that a FADV_DONTNEED issues after
> > a read does not hurt regarding to performance. But it avoids buffers
> > increasing while I read from a host_device of raw file.
> It was mentioned in this thread that a sequential shouldn't promote the
> pages anyway - they should be dropped by the kernel if there is memory
> pressure.
Yes, but this costs cpu time in spikes and the page cache is polluted
with data that is definetely not needed.
> So what is the actual performance problem you are trying to solve and
> what benchmark output are you getting when you compare with
> FADV_DONTNEED against without FADV_DONTNEED?
I found the performance to be identical. For the problem see below please.
> I think there's a danger that the discussion will go around in circles.
> Please post the performance results that kicked off this whole effort
> and let's focus on the data.  That way it's much easier to evaluate what
> changes to QEMU are a win and which are not necessary.
I found that under memory pressure situations the increasing buffers
leads to vserver memory being swapped out. This caused trouble
especially in overcommit scenarios (where all memory is backed by
swap).
> > As for writing it does only work if I issue a fdatasync after each write, but
> > this should be equivalent to O_DIRECT. So I would keep the patch
> > to support qemu-img convert sources if they are host_device or file.
> fdatasync(2) is much more heavy-weight than writing out a pages because
> it sends a disk write cache flush command and waits for it to complete.
as mentioned before for the write path the

FADV_DONTNEED stuff doesn't work.

Peter