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Konrad writes: It has the 'feature-max-indirect-segments' implemented in both backend and frontend. The current problem with the backend and frontend is that the segment size is limited to 11 pages. It means we can at most squeeze in 44kB per request. The ring can hold 32 (next power of two below 36) requests, meaning we can do 1.4M of outstanding requests. Nowadays that is not enough. The problem in the past was addressed in two ways - but neither one went upstream. The first solution to this proposed by Justin from Spectralogic was to negotiate the segment size. This means that the ‘struct blkif_sring_entry’ is now a variable size. It can expand from 112 bytes (cover 11 pages of data - 44kB) to 1580 bytes (256 pages of data - so 1MB). It is a simple extension by just making the array in the request expand from 11 to a variable size negotiated. But it had limits: this extension still limits the number of segments per request to 255 (as the total number must be specified in the request, which only has an 8-bit field for that purpose). The other solution (from Intel - Ronghui) was to create one extra ring that only has the ‘struct blkif_request_segment’ in them. The ‘struct blkif_request’ would be changed to have an index in said ‘segment ring’. There is only one segment ring. This means that the size of the initial ring is still the same. The requests would point to the segment and enumerate out how many of the indexes it wants to use. The limit is of course the size of the segment. If one assumes a one-page segment this means we can in one request cover ~4MB. Those patches were posted as RFC and the author never followed up on the ideas on changing it to be a bit more flexible. There is yet another mechanism that could be employed (which these patches implement) - and it borrows from VirtIO protocol. And that is the ‘indirect descriptors’. This very similar to what Intel suggests, but with a twist. The twist is to negotiate how many of these 'segment' pages (aka indirect descriptor pages) we want to support (in reality we negotiate how many entries in the segment we want to cover, and we module the number if it is bigger than the segment size). This means that with the existing 36 slots in the ring (single page) we can cover: 32 slots * each blkif_request_indirect covers: 512 * 4096 ~= 64M. Since we ample space in the blkif_request_indirect to span more than one indirect page, that number (64M) can be also multiplied by eight = 512MB. Roger Pau Monne took the idea and implemented them in these patches. They work great and the corner cases (migration between backends with and without this extension) work nicely. The backend has a limit right now off how many indirect entries it can handle: one indirect page, and at maximum 256 entries (out of 512 - so 50% of the page is used). That comes out to 32 slots * 256 entries in a indirect page * 1 indirect page per request * 4096 = 32MB. This is a conservative number that can change in the future. Right now it strikes a good balance between giving excellent performance, memory usage in the backend, and balancing the needs of many guests. In the patchset there is also the split of the blkback structure to be per-VBD. This means that the spinlock contention we had with many guests trying to do I/O and all the blkback threads hitting the same lock has been eliminated. Also there are bug-fixes to deal with oddly sized sectors, insane amounts on th ring, and also a security fix (posted earlier). |
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This directory attempts to document the ABI between the Linux kernel and userspace, and the relative stability of these interfaces. Due to the everchanging nature of Linux, and the differing maturity levels, these interfaces should be used by userspace programs in different ways. We have four different levels of ABI stability, as shown by the four different subdirectories in this location. Interfaces may change levels of stability according to the rules described below. The different levels of stability are: stable/ This directory documents the interfaces that the developer has defined to be stable. Userspace programs are free to use these interfaces with no restrictions, and backward compatibility for them will be guaranteed for at least 2 years. Most interfaces (like syscalls) are expected to never change and always be available. testing/ This directory documents interfaces that are felt to be stable, as the main development of this interface has been completed. The interface can be changed to add new features, but the current interface will not break by doing this, unless grave errors or security problems are found in them. Userspace programs can start to rely on these interfaces, but they must be aware of changes that can occur before these interfaces move to be marked stable. Programs that use these interfaces are strongly encouraged to add their name to the description of these interfaces, so that the kernel developers can easily notify them if any changes occur (see the description of the layout of the files below for details on how to do this.) obsolete/ This directory documents interfaces that are still remaining in the kernel, but are marked to be removed at some later point in time. The description of the interface will document the reason why it is obsolete and when it can be expected to be removed. removed/ This directory contains a list of the old interfaces that have been removed from the kernel. Every file in these directories will contain the following information: What: Short description of the interface Date: Date created KernelVersion: Kernel version this feature first showed up in. Contact: Primary contact for this interface (may be a mailing list) Description: Long description of the interface and how to use it. Users: All users of this interface who wish to be notified when it changes. This is very important for interfaces in the "testing" stage, so that kernel developers can work with userspace developers to ensure that things do not break in ways that are unacceptable. It is also important to get feedback for these interfaces to make sure they are working in a proper way and do not need to be changed further. How things move between levels: Interfaces in stable may move to obsolete, as long as the proper notification is given. Interfaces may be removed from obsolete and the kernel as long as the documented amount of time has gone by. Interfaces in the testing state can move to the stable state when the developers feel they are finished. They cannot be removed from the kernel tree without going through the obsolete state first. It's up to the developer to place their interfaces in the category they wish for it to start out in.