Hi, Razya is out for a few days, so I will try to answer the questions as well as I can:
"Michael S. Tsirkin" <m...@redhat.com> wrote on 26/11/2013 11:11:57 PM:
> From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <m...@redhat.com>
> To: Abel Gordon/Haifa/IBM@IBMIL,
> Cc: Anthony Liguori <anth...@codemonkey.ws>, abel.gor...@gmail.com,
> as...@redhat.com, digitale...@google.com, Eran Raichstein/Haifa/
> IBM@IBMIL, g...@redhat.com, jasow...@redhat.com, Joel Nider/Haifa/
> IBM@IBMIL, kvm@vger.kernel.org, pbonz...@redhat.com, Razya Ladelsky/
> Haifa/IBM@IBMIL
> Date: 27/11/2013 01:08 AM
> Subject: Re: Elvis upstreaming plan
>
> On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 08:53:47PM +0200, Abel Gordon wrote:
> >
> >
> > Anthony Liguori <anth...@codemonkey.ws> wrote on 26/11/2013 08:05:00
PM:
> >
> > >
> > > Razya Ladelsky <ra...@il.ibm.com> writes:
> > >
<edit>
> >
> > That's why we are proposing to implement a mechanism that will enable
> > the management stack to configure 1 thread per I/O device (as it is
today)
> > or 1 thread for many I/O devices (belonging to the same VM).
> >
> > > Once you are scheduling multiple guests in a single vhost device, you
> > > now create a whole new class of DoS attacks in the best case
scenario.
> >
> > Again, we are NOT proposing to schedule multiple guests in a single
> > vhost thread. We are proposing to schedule multiple devices belonging
> > to the same guest in a single (or multiple) vhost thread/s.
> >
>
> I guess a question then becomes why have multiple devices?
If you mean "why serve multiple devices from a single thread" the answer is
that we cannot rely on the Linux scheduler which has no knowledge of I/O
queues to do a decent job of scheduling I/O. The idea is to take over the
I/O scheduling responsibilities from the kernel's thread scheduler with a
more efficient I/O scheduler inside each vhost thread. So by combining all
of the I/O devices from the same guest (disks, network cards, etc) in a
single I/O thread, it allows us to provide better scheduling by giving us
more knowledge of the nature of the work. So now instead of relying on the
linux scheduler to perform context switches between multiple vhost threads,
we have a single thread context in which we can do the I/O scheduling more
efficiently. We can closely monitor the performance needs of each queue of
each device inside the vhost thread which gives us much more information
than relying on the kernel's thread scheduler.
This does not expose any additional opportunities for attacks (DoS or
other) than are already available since all of the I/O traffic belongs to a
single guest.
You can make the argument that with low I/O loads this mechanism may not
make much difference. However when you try to maximize the utilization of
your hardware (such as in a commercial scenario) this technique can gain
you a large benefit.
Regards,
Joel Nider
Virtualization Research
IBM Research and Development
Haifa Research Lab
Phone: 972-4-829-6326 | Mobile: 972-54-3155635 (Embedded image moved
to file:
E-mail: jo...@il.ibm.com
pic31578.gif)IBM
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > I am Razya Ladelsky, I work at IBM Haifa virtualization team, which
> > > > developed Elvis, presented by Abel Gordon at the last KVM forum:
> > > > ELVIS video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EyweibHfEs
> > > > ELVIS slides:
> > https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzyAwvVlQckeQmpnOHM5SnB5UVE
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > According to the discussions that took place at the forum,
upstreaming
> > > > some of the Elvis approaches seems to be a good idea, which we
would
> > like
> > > > to pursue.
> > > >
> > > > Our plan for the first patches is the following:
> > > >
> > > > 1.Shared vhost thread between mutiple devices
> > > > This patch creates a worker thread and worker queue shared across
> > multiple
> > > > virtio devices
> > > > We would like to modify the patch posted in
> > > > https://github.com/abelg/virtual_io_acceleration/commit/
> > > 3dc6a3ce7bcbe87363c2df8a6b6fee0c14615766
> > > > to limit a vhost thread to serve multiple devices only if they
belong
> > to
> > > > the same VM as Paolo suggested to avoid isolation or cgroups
concerns.
> > > >
> > > > Another modification is related to the creation and removal of
vhost
> > > > threads, which will be discussed next.
> > >
> > > I think this is an exceptionally bad idea.
> > >
> > > We shouldn't throw away isolation without exhausting every other
> > > possibility.
> >
> > Seems you have missed the important details here.
> > Anthony, we are aware you are concerned about isolation
> > and you believe we should not share a single vhost thread across
> > multiple VMs. That's why Razya proposed to change the patch
> > so we will serve multiple virtio devices using a single vhost thread
> > "only if the devices belong to the same VM". This series of patches
> > will not allow two different VMs to share the same vhost thread.
> > So, I don't see why this will be throwing away isolation and why
> > this could be a "exceptionally bad idea".
> >
> > By the way, I remember that during the KVM forum a similar
> > approach of having a single data plane thread for many devices
> > was discussed....
> > > We've seen very positive results from adding threads. We should also
> > > look at scheduling.
> >
> > ...and we have also seen exceptionally negative results from
> > adding threads, both for vhost and data-plane. If you have lot of idle
> > time/cores
> > then it makes sense to run multiple threads. But IMHO in many scenarios
you
> > don't have lot of idle time/cores.. and if you have them you would
probably
> > prefer to run more VMs/VCPUs....hosting a single SMP VM when you have
> > enough physical cores to run all the VCPU threads and the I/O threads
is
> > not a
> > realistic scenario.
>
> > >
> > > > 2. Sysfs mechanism to add and remove vhost threads
> > > > This patch allows us to add and remove vhost threads dynamically.
> > > >
> > > > A simpler way to control the creation of vhost threads is
statically
> > > > determining the maximum number of virtio devices per worker via a
> > kernel
> > > > module parameter (which is the way the previously mentioned patch
is
> > > > currently implemented)
> > > >
> > > > I'd like to ask for advice here about the more preferable way to
go:
> > > > Although having the sysfs mechanism provides more flexibility, it
may
> > be a
> > > > good idea to start with a simple static parameter, and have the
first
> > > > patches as simple as possible. What do you think?
> > > >
> > > > 3.Add virtqueue polling mode to vhost
> > > > Have the vhost thread poll the virtqueues with high I/O rate for
new
> > > > buffers , and avoid asking the guest to kick us.
> > > > https://github.com/abelg/virtual_io_acceleration/commit/
> > > 26616133fafb7855cc80fac070b0572fd1aaf5d0
> > >
> > > Ack on this.
> >
> > :)
> >
> > Regards,
> > Abel.
> >
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > Anthony Liguori
> > >
> > > > 4. vhost statistics
> > > > This patch introduces a set of statistics to monitor different
> > performance
> > > > metrics of vhost and our polling and I/O scheduling mechanisms. The
> > > > statistics are exposed using debugfs and can be easily displayed
with a
> >
> > > > Python script (vhost_stat, based on the old kvm_stats)
> > > > https://github.com/abelg/virtual_io_acceleration/commit/
> > > ac14206ea56939ecc3608dc5f978b86fa322e7b0
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > 5. Add heuristics to improve I/O scheduling
> > > > This patch enhances the round-robin mechanism with a set of
heuristics
> > to
> > > > decide when to leave a virtqueue and proceed to the next.
> > > > https://github.com/abelg/virtual_io_acceleration/commit/
> > > f6a4f1a5d6b82dc754e8af8af327b8d0f043dc4d
> > > >
> > > > This patch improves the handling of the requests by the vhost
thread,
> > but
> > > > could perhaps be delayed to a
> > > > later time , and not submitted as one of the first Elvis patches.
> > > > I'd love to hear some comments about whether this patch needs to be
> > part
> > > > of the first submission.
> > > >
> > > > Any other feedback on this plan will be appreciated,
> > > > Thank you,
> > > > Razya
> > >
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