Date:   Tue, 10 Dec 2019 07:24:29 +0100
From:   Jürgen Groß <jgross@...e.com>
To:     SeongJae Park <sjpark@...zon.com>
Cc:     axboe@...nel.dk, konrad.wilk@...cle.com,
        linux-block@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        pdurrant@...zon.com, roger.pau@...rix.com, sj38.park@...il.com,
        xen-devel@...ts.xenproject.org, SeongJae Park <sjpark@...zon.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 2/2] xen/blkback: Squeeze page pools if a memory
 pressure is detected

On 09.12.19 20:43, SeongJae Park wrote:
> From: SeongJae Park <sjpark@...zon.de>
> 
> Each `blkif` has a free pages pool for the grant mapping.  The size of
> the pool starts from zero and be increased on demand while processing
> the I/O requests.  If current I/O requests handling is finished or 100
> milliseconds has passed since last I/O requests handling, it checks and
> shrinks the pool to not exceed the size limit, `max_buffer_pages`.
> 
> Therefore, `blkfront` running guests can cause a memory pressure in the
> `blkback` running guest by attaching a large number of block devices and
> inducing I/O.  System administrators can avoid such problematic
> situations by limiting the maximum number of devices each guest can
> attach.  However, finding the optimal limit is not so easy.  Improper
> set of the limit can results in the memory pressure or a resource
> underutilization.  This commit avoids such problematic situations by
> squeezing the pools (returns every free page in the pool to the system)
> for a while (users can set this duration via a module parameter) if a
> memory pressure is detected.
> 
> Discussions
> ===========
> 
> The `blkback`'s original shrinking mechanism returns only pages in the
> pool, which are not currently be used by `blkback`, to the system.  In
> other words, the pages are not mapped with foreign pages.  Because this
> commit is changing only the shrink limit but uses the mechanism as is,
> this commit does not introduce improper mappings related security
> issues.
> 
> Once a memory pressure is detected, this commit keeps the squeezing
> limit for a user-specified time duration.  The duration should be
> neither too long nor too short.  If it is too long, the squeezing
> incurring overhead can reduce the I/O performance.  If it is too short,
> `blkback` will not free enough pages to reduce the memory pressure.
> This commit sets the value as `10 milliseconds` by default because it is
> a short time in terms of I/O while it is a long time in terms of memory
> operations.  Also, as the original shrinking mechanism works for at
> least every 100 milliseconds, this could be a somewhat reasonable
> choice.  I also tested other durations (refer to the below section for
> more details) and confirmed that 10 milliseconds is the one that works
> best with the test.  That said, the proper duration depends on actual
> configurations and workloads.  That's why this commit is allowing users
> to set it as their optimal value via the module parameter.
> 
> Memory Pressure Test
> ====================
> 
> To show how this commit fixes the memory pressure situation well, I
> configured a test environment on a xen-running virtualization system.
> On the `blkfront` running guest instances, I attach a large number of
> network-backed volume devices and induce I/O to those.  Meanwhile, I
> measure the number of pages that swapped in and out on the `blkback`
> running guest.  The test ran twice, once for the `blkback` before this
> commit and once for that after this commit.  As shown below, this commit
> has dramatically reduced the memory pressure:
> 
>                  pswpin  pswpout
>      before      76,672  185,799
>      after          212    3,325
> 
> Optimal Aggressive Shrinking Duration
> -------------------------------------
> 
> To find a best squeezing duration, I repeated the test with three
> different durations (1ms, 10ms, and 100ms).  The results are as below:
> 
>      duration    pswpin  pswpout
>      1           852     6,424
>      10          212     3,325
>      100         203     3,340
> 
> As expected, the memory pressure has decreased as the duration is
> increased, but the reduction stopped from the `10ms`.  Based on this
> results, I chose the default duration as 10ms.
> 
> Performance Overhead Test
> =========================
> 
> This commit could incur I/O performance degradation under severe memory
> pressure because the squeezing will require more page allocations per
> I/O.  To show the overhead, I artificially made a worst-case squeezing
> situation and measured the I/O performance of a `blkfront` running
> guest.
> 
> For the artificial squeezing, I set the `blkback.max_buffer_pages` using
> the `/sys/module/xen_blkback/parameters/max_buffer_pages` file.  We set
> the value to `1024` and `0`.  The `1024` is the default value.  Setting
> the value as `0` is same to a situation doing the squeezing always
> (worst-case).
> 
> For the I/O performance measurement, I use a simple `dd` command.
> 
> Default Performance
> -------------------
> 
>      [dom0]# echo 1024 > /sys/module/xen_blkback/parameters/max_buffer_pages
>      [instance]$ for i in {1..5}; do dd if=/dev/zero of=file bs=4k count=$((256*512)); sync; done
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 11.7257 s, 45.8 MB/s
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 13.8827 s, 38.7 MB/s
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 13.8781 s, 38.7 MB/s
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 13.8737 s, 38.7 MB/s
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 13.8702 s, 38.7 MB/s
> 
> Worst-case Performance
> ----------------------
> 
>      [dom0]# echo 0 > /sys/module/xen_blkback/parameters/max_buffer_pages
>      [instance]$ for i in {1..5}; do dd if=/dev/zero of=file bs=4k count=$((256*512)); sync; done
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 11.7257 s, 45.8 MB/s
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 13.878 s, 38.7 MB/s
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 13.8746 s, 38.7 MB/s
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 13.8786 s, 38.7 MB/s
>      131072+0 records in
>      131072+0 records out
>      536870912 bytes (537 MB) copied, 13.8749 s, 38.7 MB/s
> 
> In short, even worst case squeezing makes no visible performance
> degradation.  I think this is due to the slow speed of the I/O.  In
> other words, the additional page allocation overhead is hidden under the
> much slower I/O latency.
> 
> Nevertheless, pleaset note that this is just a very simple and minimal
> test.
> 
> Signed-off-by: SeongJae Park <sjpark@...zon.de>

Reviewed-by: Juergen Gross <jgross@...e.com>

When dropping the domid parameter you can keep the Reviewed-by, of
course.


Juergen

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