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Re: [PATCH 2/4] vhost-user: Interface for migration state transfer


From: Hanna Czenczek
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/4] vhost-user: Interface for migration state transfer
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2023 19:55:00 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.7.1

On 13.04.23 13:38, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
On Thu, 13 Apr 2023 at 05:24, Hanna Czenczek <hreitz@redhat.com> wrote:
On 12.04.23 23:06, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 05:05:13PM +0200, Hanna Czenczek wrote:
So-called "internal" virtio-fs migration refers to transporting the
back-end's (virtiofsd's) state through qemu's migration stream.  To do
this, we need to be able to transfer virtiofsd's internal state to and
from virtiofsd.

Because virtiofsd's internal state will not be too large, we believe it
is best to transfer it as a single binary blob after the streaming
phase.  Because this method should be useful to other vhost-user
implementations, too, it is introduced as a general-purpose addition to
the protocol, not limited to vhost-user-fs.

These are the additions to the protocol:
- New vhost-user protocol feature VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_MIGRATORY_STATE:
    This feature signals support for transferring state, and is added so
    that migration can fail early when the back-end has no support.

- SET_DEVICE_STATE_FD function: Front-end and back-end negotiate a pipe
    over which to transfer the state.  The front-end sends an FD to the
    back-end into/from which it can write/read its state, and the back-end
    can decide to either use it, or reply with a different FD for the
    front-end to override the front-end's choice.
    The front-end creates a simple pipe to transfer the state, but maybe
    the back-end already has an FD into/from which it has to write/read
    its state, in which case it will want to override the simple pipe.
    Conversely, maybe in the future we find a way to have the front-end
    get an immediate FD for the migration stream (in some cases), in which
    case we will want to send this to the back-end instead of creating a
    pipe.
    Hence the negotiation: If one side has a better idea than a plain
    pipe, we will want to use that.

- CHECK_DEVICE_STATE: After the state has been transferred through the
    pipe (the end indicated by EOF), the front-end invokes this function
    to verify success.  There is no in-band way (through the pipe) to
    indicate failure, so we need to check explicitly.

Once the transfer pipe has been established via SET_DEVICE_STATE_FD
(which includes establishing the direction of transfer and migration
phase), the sending side writes its data into the pipe, and the reading
side reads it until it sees an EOF.  Then, the front-end will check for
success via CHECK_DEVICE_STATE, which on the destination side includes
checking for integrity (i.e. errors during deserialization).

Suggested-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Hanna Czenczek <hreitz@redhat.com>
---
   include/hw/virtio/vhost-backend.h |  24 +++++
   include/hw/virtio/vhost.h         |  79 ++++++++++++++++
   hw/virtio/vhost-user.c            | 147 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
   hw/virtio/vhost.c                 |  37 ++++++++
   4 files changed, 287 insertions(+)

diff --git a/include/hw/virtio/vhost-backend.h 
b/include/hw/virtio/vhost-backend.h
index ec3fbae58d..5935b32fe3 100644
--- a/include/hw/virtio/vhost-backend.h
+++ b/include/hw/virtio/vhost-backend.h
@@ -26,6 +26,18 @@ typedef enum VhostSetConfigType {
       VHOST_SET_CONFIG_TYPE_MIGRATION = 1,
   } VhostSetConfigType;

+typedef enum VhostDeviceStateDirection {
+    /* Transfer state from back-end (device) to front-end */
+    VHOST_TRANSFER_STATE_DIRECTION_SAVE = 0,
+    /* Transfer state from front-end to back-end (device) */
+    VHOST_TRANSFER_STATE_DIRECTION_LOAD = 1,
+} VhostDeviceStateDirection;
+
+typedef enum VhostDeviceStatePhase {
+    /* The device (and all its vrings) is stopped */
+    VHOST_TRANSFER_STATE_PHASE_STOPPED = 0,
+} VhostDeviceStatePhase;
vDPA has:

    /* Suspend a device so it does not process virtqueue requests anymore
     *
     * After the return of ioctl the device must preserve all the necessary 
state
     * (the virtqueue vring base plus the possible device specific states) that 
is
     * required for restoring in the future. The device must not change its
     * configuration after that point.
     */
    #define VHOST_VDPA_SUSPEND      _IO(VHOST_VIRTIO, 0x7D)

    /* Resume a device so it can resume processing virtqueue requests
     *
     * After the return of this ioctl the device will have restored all the
     * necessary states and it is fully operational to continue processing the
     * virtqueue descriptors.
     */
    #define VHOST_VDPA_RESUME       _IO(VHOST_VIRTIO, 0x7E)

I wonder if it makes sense to import these into vhost-user so that the
difference between kernel vhost and vhost-user is minimized. It's okay
if one of them is ahead of the other, but it would be nice to avoid
overlapping/duplicated functionality.

(And I hope vDPA will import the device state vhost-user messages
introduced in this series.)
I don’t understand your suggestion.  (Like, I very simply don’t
understand :))

These are vhost messages, right?  What purpose do you have in mind for
them in vhost-user for internal migration?  They’re different from the
state transfer messages, because they don’t transfer state to/from the
front-end.  Also, the state transfer stuff is supposed to be distinct
from starting/stopping the device; right now, it just requires the
device to be stopped beforehand (or started only afterwards).  And in
the future, new VhostDeviceStatePhase values may allow the messages to
be used on devices that aren’t stopped.

So they seem to serve very different purposes.  I can imagine using the
VDPA_{SUSPEND,RESUME} messages for external migration (what Anton is
working on), but they don’t really help with internal migration
implemented here.  If I were to add them, they’d just be sent in
addition to the new messages added in this patch here, i.e. SUSPEND on
the source before SET_DEVICE_STATE_FD, and RESUME on the destination
after CHECK_DEVICE_STATE (we could use RESUME in place of
CHECK_DEVICE_STATE on the destination, but we can’t do that on the
source, so we still need CHECK_DEVICE_STATE).
Yes, they are complementary to the device state fd message. I want to
make sure pre-conditions about the device's state (running vs stopped)
already take into account the vDPA SUSPEND/RESUME model.

vDPA will need device state save/load in the future. For virtiofs
devices, for example. This is why I think we should plan for vDPA and
vhost-user to share the same interface.

While the paragraph below is more important, I don’t feel like this
would be important right now.  It’s clear that SUSPEND must come before
transferring any state, and that RESUME must come after transferring
state.  I don’t think we need to clarify this now, it’d be obvious when
implementing SUSPEND/RESUME.

Also, I think the code path you're relying on (vhost_dev_stop()) on
doesn't work for backends that implement VHOST_USER_PROTOCOL_F_STATUS
because stopping the backend resets the device and throws away its
state. SUSPEND/RESUME solve this. This looks like a more general
problem since vhost_dev_stop() is called any time the VM is paused.
Maybe it needs to use SUSPEND/RESUME whenever possible.

That’s a problem.  Quite a problem, to be honest, because this sounds
rather complicated with honestly absolutely no practical benefit right
now.

Would you require SUSPEND/RESUME for state transfer even if the back-end
does not implement GET/SET_STATUS?  Because then this would also lead to
more complexity in virtiofsd.

Basically, what I’m hearing is that I need to implement a different
feature that has no practical impact right now, and also fix bugs around
it along the way...

(Not that I have any better suggestion.)

Hanna




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