RE: [RFC qemu 0/4] A PV solution for live migration optimization

[Li, Liang Z]

> > > > > >   I'm just catching back up on this thread; so without
> > > > > > reference to any particular previous mail in the thread.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >   1) How many of the free pages do we tell the host about?
> > > > > >      Your main change is telling the host about all the
> > > > > >      free pages.
> > > > >
> > > > > Yes, all the guest's free pages.
> > > > >
> > > > > >      If we tell the host about all the free pages, then we might
> > > > > >      end up needing to allocate more pages and update the host
> > > > > >      with pages we now want to use; that would have to wait for the
> > > > > >      host to acknowledge that use of these pages, since if we don't
> > > > > >      wait for it then it might have skipped migrating a page we
> > > > > >      just started using (I don't understand how your series solves that).
> > > > > >      So the guest probably needs to keep some free pages - how
> many?
> > > > >
> > > > > Actually, there is no need to care about whether the free pages
> > > > > will be
> > > used by the host.
> > > > > We only care about some of the free pages we get reused by the
> > > > > guest,
> > > right?
> > > > >
> > > > > The dirty page logging can be used to solve this, starting the
> > > > > dirty page logging before getting the free pages informant from guest.
> > > > > Even some of the free pages are modified by the guest during the
> > > > > process of getting the free pages information, these modified
> > > > > pages will
> > > be traced by the dirty page logging mechanism. So in the following
> > > migration_bitmap_sync() function.
> > > > > The pages in the free pages bitmap, but latter was modified,
> > > > > will be reset to dirty. We won't omit any dirtied pages.
> > > > >
> > > > > So, guest doesn't need to keep any free pages.
> > > >
> > > > OK, yes, that works; so we do:
> > > >   * enable dirty logging
> > > >   * ask guest for free pages
> > > >   * initialise the migration bitmap as everything-free
> > > >   * then later we do the normal sync-dirty bitmap stuff and it all just
> works.
> > > >
> > > > That's nice and simple.
> > >
> > > This works once, sure. But there's an issue is that you have to
> > > defer migration until you get the free page list, and this only
> > > works once. So you end up with heuristics about how long to wait.
> > >
> > > Instead I propose:
> > >
> > > - mark all pages dirty as we do now.
> > >
> > > - at start of migration, start tracking dirty
> > >   pages in kvm, and tell guest to start tracking free pages
> > >
> > > we can now introduce any kind of delay, for example wait for ack
> > > from guest, or do whatever else, or even just start migrating pages
> > >
> > > - repeatedly:
> > > 	- get list of free pages from guest
> > > 	- clear them in migration bitmap
> > > 	- get dirty list from kvm
> > >
> > > - at end of migration, stop tracking writes in kvm,
> > >   and tell guest to stop tracking free pages
> >
> > I had thought of filtering out the free pages in each migration bitmap
> synchronization.
> > The advantage is we can skip process as many free pages as possible. Not
> just once.
> > The disadvantage is that we should change the current memory
> > management code to track the free pages, instead of traversing the free
> page list to construct the free pages bitmap, to reduce the overhead to get
> the free pages bitmap.
> > I am not sure the if the Kernel people would like it.
> >
> > If keeping the traversing mechanism, because of the overhead, maybe it's
> not worth to filter out the free pages repeatedly.
> 
> Well, Michael's idea of not waiting for the dirty bitmap to be filled does make
> that idea of constnatly using the free-bitmap better.
> 

No wait is a good idea.
Actually, we could shorten the waiting time by pre allocating the free pages bit map
and update it when guest allocating/freeing pages. it requires to modify the mm 
related code. I don't know whether the kernel people like this.

> In that case, is it easier if something (guest/host?) allocates some memory in
> the guests physical RAM space and just points the host to it, rather than
> having an explicit 'send'.
> 

Good idea too.

Liang
> Dave