Re: [Qemu-devel] Question with migrate_set_speed

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Peter Xu (address@hidden) wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am playing with live migration and got one question about live
> migration set_speed.
> 
> Now we can use migrate_set_speed to configure the threshold during
> migration (it should be only used for precopy, so let's assume the
> migration is a precopy case). However I feel like this single
> parameter cannot describe the process very clearly.
> 
> The problem is, we use this "speed" value as both:
> 
> 1. transfer threshold, to make sure migration stream is relatively
>    constant and under control
> 
> 2. value to estimate "when we should stop the vm and start counting
>    downtime"
> 
> For (1), we want a customized value that best suites our network
> environment. E.g., if we have other critical network payloads, we can
> set this to a very small number, so the migration stream will be very
> small.
> 
> For (2), it should be nothing else but possibly the network bandwidth
> that the system can provide on the migration link.

Actually, that's what QEMU does; the migrate_set_speed is really only used
for (1) directly.
(2) actually comes from a measured bandwidth multiplied by the 
'migrate_set_downtime'
figure. (See around line 1800ish i migration/migration.c inside
the if (current_time >= initial+time + BUFFER_DELAY) if ).


> We can set_speed to a very small value to avoid disturbing other
> network services, that's good. However using the same value to
> estimate "when to stop" seems odd, since this value can be far away
> from the real network speed (when we are transfering the last bits in
> precopy, we should be using the max network speed all the time, which
> actually is not affected by the threshold value).
> 
> IMHO, it'll be clearer if these are two different tunables, e.g., not
> sure whether it'll be cool to add another tunable "set_speed_max", to
> configure the speed for the (2) case (when vm is stopped on source).
> If so, it'll be clearer, and also bring another benefit: users can
> have full control of the last migration phase as well, in case they
> don't want to suffer from a network fluctuation for each ends of
> migration.
> 
> Still haven't thought further. Just throw this question out.

I don't think people are very good at setting the two tunables we already
have!

Dave

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- peterx
--
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / address@hidden / Manchester, UK