[Qemu-devel] [Bug 1701449] [NEW] high memory usage when using rbd with client caching

[Nick]

Public bug reported:

Hi,
we are experiencing a quite high memory usage of a single qemu (used with KVM) 
process when using RBD with client caching as a disk backend. We are testing 
with 3GB memory qemu virtual machines and 128MB RBD client cache. When running 
'fio' in the virtual machine you can see that after some time the machine uses 
a lot more memory (RSS) on the hypervisor than she should. We have seen values 
(in real production machines, no artificially fio tests) of 250% memory 
overhead. I reproduced this with qemu version 2.9 as well.

Here the contents of our ceph.conf on the hypervisor:
"""
[client]
rbd cache writethrough until flush = False
rbd cache max dirty = 100663296
rbd cache size = 134217728
rbd cache target dirty = 50331648
"""

How to reproduce:
* create a virtual machine with a RBD backed disk (100GB or so)
* install a linux distribution on it (we are using Ubuntu)
* install fio (apt-get install fio)
* run fio multiple times with (e.g.) the following test file:
"""
# This job file tries to mimic the Intel IOMeter File Server Access Pattern
[global]
description=Emulation of Intel IOmeter File Server Access Pattern
randrepeat=0
filename=/root/test.dat
# IOMeter defines the server loads as the following:
# iodepth=1     Linear
# iodepth=4     Very Light
# iodepth=8     Light
# iodepth=64    Moderate
# iodepth=256   Heavy
iodepth=8
size=80g
direct=0
ioengine=libaio

[iometer]
stonewall
bs=4M
rw=randrw

[iometer_just_write]
stonewall
bs=4M
rw=write

[iometer_just_read]
stonewall
bs=4M
rw=read
"""

You can measure the virtual machine RSS usage on the hypervisor with:
  virsh dommemstat <machine name> | grep rss
or if you are not using libvirt:
  grep RSS /proc/<PID of qemu process>/status

When switching off the RBD client cache, all is ok again, as the process
does not use so much memory anymore.

There is already a ticket on the ceph bug tracker for this ([1]).
However I can reproduce that memory behaviour only when using qemu
(maybe it is using librbd in a special way?). Running directly 'fio'
with the rbd engine does not result in that high memory usage.

[1] http://tracker.ceph.com/issues/20054

** Affects: qemu
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1701449

Title:
  high memory usage when using rbd with client caching

Status in QEMU:
  New

Bug description:
  Hi,
  we are experiencing a quite high memory usage of a single qemu (used with 
KVM) process when using RBD with client caching as a disk backend. We are 
testing with 3GB memory qemu virtual machines and 128MB RBD client cache. When 
running 'fio' in the virtual machine you can see that after some time the 
machine uses a lot more memory (RSS) on the hypervisor than she should. We have 
seen values (in real production machines, no artificially fio tests) of 250% 
memory overhead. I reproduced this with qemu version 2.9 as well.

  Here the contents of our ceph.conf on the hypervisor:
  """
  [client]
  rbd cache writethrough until flush = False
  rbd cache max dirty = 100663296
  rbd cache size = 134217728
  rbd cache target dirty = 50331648
  """

  How to reproduce:
  * create a virtual machine with a RBD backed disk (100GB or so)
  * install a linux distribution on it (we are using Ubuntu)
  * install fio (apt-get install fio)
  * run fio multiple times with (e.g.) the following test file:
  """
  # This job file tries to mimic the Intel IOMeter File Server Access Pattern
  [global]
  description=Emulation of Intel IOmeter File Server Access Pattern
  randrepeat=0
  filename=/root/test.dat
  # IOMeter defines the server loads as the following:
  # iodepth=1     Linear
  # iodepth=4     Very Light
  # iodepth=8     Light
  # iodepth=64    Moderate
  # iodepth=256   Heavy
  iodepth=8
  size=80g
  direct=0
  ioengine=libaio

  [iometer]
  stonewall
  bs=4M
  rw=randrw

  [iometer_just_write]
  stonewall
  bs=4M
  rw=write

  [iometer_just_read]
  stonewall
  bs=4M
  rw=read
  """

  You can measure the virtual machine RSS usage on the hypervisor with:
    virsh dommemstat <machine name> | grep rss
  or if you are not using libvirt:
    grep RSS /proc/<PID of qemu process>/status

  When switching off the RBD client cache, all is ok again, as the
  process does not use so much memory anymore.

  There is already a ticket on the ceph bug tracker for this ([1]).
  However I can reproduce that memory behaviour only when using qemu
  (maybe it is using librbd in a special way?). Running directly 'fio'
  with the rbd engine does not result in that high memory usage.

  [1] http://tracker.ceph.com/issues/20054

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