Re: [Qemu-devel] KVM "fake DAX" flushing interface - discussion

[Pankaj Gupta]

> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > We shared a proposal for 'KVM fake DAX flushing interface'.
> > 
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-05/msg02478.html
> >
> 
> In above link,
>   "Overall goal of project
>    is to increase the number of virtual machines that can be
>    run on a physical machine, in order to *increase the density*
>    of customer virtual machines"
> 
> Is the fake persistent memory used as normal RAM in guest? If no, how
> is it expected to be used in guest?

Yes, guest will have a nvdimm DAX device and not use page cache for most 
of the operations. Host will manage memory requirement of all the guests.
  
> 
> > We did initial POC in which we used 'virtio-blk' device to perform
> > a device flush on pmem fsync on ext4 filesystem. They are few hacks
> > to make things work. We need suggestions on below points before we
> > start actual implementation.
> >
> > A] Problems to solve:
> > ------------------
> > 
> > 1] We are considering two approaches for 'fake DAX flushing interface'.
> >     
> >  1.1] fake dax with NVDIMM flush hints & KVM async page fault
> > 
> >      - Existing interface.
> > 
> >      - The approach to use flush hint address is already nacked upstream.
> > 
> >      - Flush hint not queued interface for flushing. Applications might
> >        avoid to use it.
> > 
> >      - Flush hint address traps from guest to host and do an entire fsync
> >        on backing file which itself is costly.
> > 
> >      - Can be used to flush specific pages on host backing disk. We can
> >        send data(pages information) equal to cache-line size(limitation)
> >        and tell host to sync corresponding pages instead of entire disk
> >        sync.
> > 
> >      - This will be an asynchronous operation and vCPU control is returned
> >        quickly.
> > 
> > 
> >  1.2] Using additional para virt device in addition to pmem device(fake dax
> >  with device flush)
> > 
> >      - New interface
> > 
> >      - Guest maintains information of DAX dirty pages as exceptional
> >      entries in
> >        radix tree.
> > 
> >      - If we want to flush specific pages from guest to host, we need to
> >      send
> >        list of the dirty pages corresponding to file on which we are doing
> >        fsync.
> > 
> >      - This will require implementation of new interface, a new paravirt
> >      device
> >        for sending flush requests.
> > 
> >      - Host side will perform fsync/fdatasync on list of dirty pages or
> >      entire
> >        block device backed file.
> > 
> > 2] Questions:
> > -----------
> > 
> >  2.1] Not sure why WPQ flush is not a queued interface? We can force
> >  applications
> >       to call this? device DAX neither calls fsync/msync?
> > 
> >  2.2] Depending upon interface we decide, we need optimal solution to sync
> >       range of pages?
> > 
> >      - Send range of pages from guest to host to sync asynchronously
> >      instead
> >        of syncing entire block device?
> 
> e.g. a new virtio device to deliver sync requests to host?
> 
> > 
> >      - Other option is to sync entire disk backing file to make sure all
> >      the
> >        writes are persistent. In our case, backing file is a regular file
> >        on
> >        non NVDIMM device so host page cache has list of dirty pages which
> >        can be used either with fsync or similar interface.
> 
> As the amount of dirty pages can be variant, the latency of each host
> fsync is likely to vary in a large range.
> 
> > 
> >  2.3] If we do host fsync on entire disk we will be flushing all the dirty
> >  data
> >       to backend file. Just thinking what would be better approach,
> >       flushing
> >       pages on corresponding guest file fsync or entire block device?
> > 
> >  2.4] If we decide to choose one of the above approaches, we need to
> >  consider
> >       all DAX supporting filesystems(ext4/xfs). Would hooking code to
> >       corresponding
> >       fsync code of fs seems reasonable? Just thinking for flush hint
> >       address use-case?
> >       Or how flush hint addresses would be invoked with fsync or similar
> >       api?
> > 
> >  2.5] Also with filesystem journalling and other mount options like
> >  barriers,
> >       ordered etc, how we decide to use page flush hint or regular fsync on
> >       file?
> >  
> >  2.6] If at guest side we have PFN of all the dirty pages in radixtree? and
> >  we send
> >       these to to host? At host side would we able to find corresponding
> >       page and flush
> >       them all?
> 
> That may require the host file system provides API to flush specified
> blocks/extents and their meta data in the file system. I'm not
> familiar with this part and don't know whether such API exists.
> 
> Haozhong
>