Re: [PATCH v7 00/14] KVM: mm: fd-based approach for supporting KVM guest private memory

[Andy Lutomirski]

On Wed, Jul 13, 2022, at 3:35 AM, Gupta, Pankaj wrote:
>>>> This is the v7 of this series which tries to implement the fd-based KVM
>>>> guest private memory. The patches are based on latest kvm/queue branch
>>>> commit:
>>>>
>>>>     b9b71f43683a (kvm/queue) KVM: x86/mmu: Buffer nested MMU
>>>> split_desc_cache only by default capacity
>>>>
>>>> Introduction
>>>> ------------
>>>> In general this patch series introduce fd-based memslot which provides
>>>> guest memory through memory file descriptor fd[offset,size] instead of
>>>> hva/size. The fd can be created from a supported memory filesystem
>>>> like tmpfs/hugetlbfs etc. which we refer as memory backing store. KVM
>>>
>>> Thinking a bit, As host side fd on tmpfs or shmem will store memory on host
>>> page cache instead of mapping pages into userspace address space. Can we hit
>>> double (un-coordinated) page cache problem with this when guest page cache
>>> is also used?
>> 
>> This is my understanding: in host it will be indeed in page cache (in
>> current shmem implementation) but that's just the way it allocates and
>> provides the physical memory for the guest. In guest, guest OS will not
>> see this fd (absolutely), it only sees guest memory, on top of which it
>> can build its own page cache system for its own file-mapped content but
>> that is unrelated to host page cache.
>
> yes. If guest fills its page cache with file backed memory, this at host 
> side(on shmem fd backend) will also fill the host page cache fast. This 
> can have an impact on performance of guest VM's if host goes to memory 
> pressure situation sooner. Or else we end up utilizing way less System 
> RAM.

Is this in any meaningful way different from a regular VM?

--Andy