Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 00/41] postcopy live migration

[Dor Laor]

On 06/04/2012 04:38 PM, Isaku Yamahata wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 04, 2012 at 08:37:04PM +0800, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> > On 06/04/2012 05:57 PM, Isaku Yamahata wrote:
> > > After the long time, we have v2. This is qemu part.
> > > The linux kernel part is sent separatedly.
> > >
> > > Changes v1 ->   v2:
> > > - split up patches for review
> > > - buffered file refactored
> > > - many bug fixes
> > >     Espcially PV drivers can work with postcopy
> > > - optimization/heuristic
> > >
> > > Patches
> > > 1 - 30: refactoring exsiting code and preparation
> > > 31 - 37: implement postcopy itself (essential part)
> > > 38 - 41: some optimization/heuristic for postcopy
> > >
> > > Intro
> > > =====
> > > This patch series implements postcopy live migration.[1]
> > > As discussed at KVM forum 2011, dedicated character device is used for
> > > distributed shared memory between migration source and destination.
> > > Now we can discuss/benchmark/compare with precopy. I believe there are
> > > much rooms for improvement.
> > >
> > > [1] http://wiki.qemu.org/Features/PostCopyLiveMigration
> > >
> > >
> > > Usage
> > > =====
> > > You need load umem character device on the host before starting migration.
> > > Postcopy can be used for tcg and kvm accelarator. The implementation depend
> > > on only linux umem character device. But the driver dependent code is split
> > > into a file.
> > > I tested only host page size == guest page size case, but the implementation
> > > allows host page size != guest page size case.
> > >
> > > The following options are added with this patch series.
> > > - incoming part
> > >     command line options
> > >     -postcopy [-postcopy-flags<flags>]
> > >     where flags is for changing behavior for benchmark/debugging
> > >     Currently the following flags are available
> > >     0: default
> > >     1: enable touching page request
> > >
> > >     example:
> > >     qemu -postcopy -incoming tcp:0:4444 -monitor stdio -machine accel=kvm
> > >
> > > - outging part
> > >     options for migrate command
> > >     migrate [-p [-n] [-m]] URI [<prefault forward>   [<prefault backword>]]
> > >     -p: indicate postcopy migration
> > >     -n: disable background transferring pages: This is for benchmark/debugging
> > >     -m: move background transfer of postcopy mode
> > >     <prefault forward>: The number of forward pages which is sent with on-demand
> > >     <prefault backward>: The number of backward pages which is sent with
> > >                          on-demand
> > >
> > >     example:
> > >     migrate -p -n tcp:<dest ip address>:4444
> > >     migrate -p -n -m tcp:<dest ip address>:4444 32 0
> > >
> > >
> > > TODO
> > > ====
> > > - benchmark/evaluation. Especially how async page fault affects the result.
> >
> > I don't mean to beat on a dead horse, but I really don't understand the
> > point of postcopy migration other than the fact that it's possible.  It's
> > a lot of code and a new ABI in an area where we already have too much
> > difficulty maintaining our ABI.
> >
> > Without a compelling real world case with supporting benchmarks for why
> > we need postcopy and cannot improve precopy, I'm against merging this.
>
> Some new results are available at
> https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_yamahata_postcopy.pdf


It does shows dramatic improvement over pre copy. As stated in the docs, 
async page faults may help lots of various loads and turn post copy into 
a viable solution over today's code.

In addition, the sort of 'demand pages' approach on the destination can 
help us for other usages - For example, we can use this implementation 
to live snapshot VMs w/ RAM (post live migration into a file that leave 
the source active) and live resume VMs from file w/o reading the entire 
RAM from disk.

I didn't go over the api for the live migration part but IIUC, the only 
change needed for the live migration 'protocol' is w.r.t guest pages and 
we need to do it regardless when we'll merge the page ordering optimization.

Cheers,
Dor

> precopy assumes that the network bandwidth are wide enough and
> the number of dirty pages converges. But it doesn't always hold true.
>
> - planned migration
>    predictability of total migration time is important
>
> - dynamic consolidation
>    In cloud use cases, the resources of physical machine are usually
>    over committed.
>    When physical machine becomes over loaded, some VMs are moved to another
>    physical host to balance the load.
>    precopy can't move VMs promptly. compression makes things worse.
>
> - inter data center migration
>    With L2 over L3 technology, it has becoming common to create a virtual
>    data center which actually spans over multi physical data centers.
>    It is useful to migrate VMs over physical data centers as disaster recovery.
>    The network bandwidth between DCs is narrower than LAN case. So precopy
>    assumption wouldn't hold.
>
> - In case that network bandwidth might be limited by QoS,
>    precopy assumption doesn't hold.
>
>
> thanks,