Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC qemu 4/4] migration: filter out guest's free pages in ram bulk stage

[Li, Liang Z]

> On Thu,  3 Mar 2016 18:44:28 +0800
> Liang Li <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > Get the free pages information through virtio and filter out the free
> > pages in the ram bulk stage. This can significantly reduce the total
> > live migration time as well as network traffic.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Liang Li <address@hidden>
> > ---
> >  migration/ram.c | 52
> > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------
> >  1 file changed, 46 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
> >
> 
> > @@ -1945,6 +1971,20 @@ static int ram_save_setup(QEMUFile *f, void
> *opaque)
> >                                              DIRTY_MEMORY_MIGRATION);
> >      }
> >      memory_global_dirty_log_start();
> > +
> > +    if (balloon_free_pages_support() &&
> > +        balloon_get_free_pages(migration_bitmap_rcu->free_pages_bmap,
> > +                               &free_pages_count) == 0) {
> > +        qemu_mutex_unlock_iothread();
> > +        while (balloon_get_free_pages(migration_bitmap_rcu-
> >free_pages_bmap,
> > +                                      &free_pages_count) == 0) {
> > +            usleep(1000);
> > +        }
> > +        qemu_mutex_lock_iothread();
> > +
> > +
> > + filter_out_guest_free_pages(migration_bitmap_rcu-
> >free_pages_bmap);
> 
> A general comment: Using the ballooner to get information about pages that
> can be filtered out is too limited (there may be other ways to do this; we
> might be able to use cmma on s390, for example), and I don't like hardcoding
> to a specific method.
> 
> What about the reverse approach: Code may register a handler that
> populates the free_pages_bitmap which is called during this stage?

Good suggestion, thanks!

Liang
> <I like the idea of filtering in general, but I haven't looked at the code 
> yet>
>