Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH 0/2] implement the failover feature for assigned network devices

["Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <dgilbert@redhat.com>]

* Jens Freimann (jfreimann@redhat.com) wrote:
> ping
> 
> FYI: I'm also working on a few related tools to detect driver behaviour when
> assigning a MAC to the vf device. Code is at https://github.com/jensfr/netfailover_driver_detect

Hi Jens,
  I've not been following this too uch, but:

> regards,
> Jens
> 
> On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 02:44:45PM +0100, Jens Freimann wrote:
> > This is another attempt at implementing the host side of the
> > net_failover concept
> > (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/net_failover.html)
> > 
> > The general idea is that we have a pair of devices, a vfio-pci and a
> > emulated device. Before migration the vfio device is unplugged and data
> > flows to the emulated device, on the target side another vfio-pci device
> > is plugged in to take over the data-path. In the guest the net_failover
> > module will pair net devices with the same MAC address.
> > 
> > * In the first patch the infrastructure for hiding the device is added
> >  for the qbus and qdev APIs. A "hidden" boolean is added to the device
> >  state and it is set based on a callback to the standby device which
> >  registers itself for handling the assessment: "should the primary device
> >  be hidden?" by cross validating the ids of the devices.
> > 
> > * In the second patch the virtio-net uses the API to hide the vfio
> >  device and unhides it when the feature is acked.
> > 
> > Previous discussion: https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/cover/989098/
> > 
> > To summarize concerns/feedback from previous discussion:
> > 1.- guest OS can reject or worse _delay_ unplug by any amount of time.
> >  Migration might get stuck for unpredictable time with unclear reason.
> >  This approach combines two tricky things, hot/unplug and migration.
> >  -> We can surprise-remove the PCI device and in QEMU we can do all
> >     necessary rollbacks transparent to management software. Will it be
> >     easy, probably not.

This sounds 'fun' - bonus cases are things like what happens if the
guest gets rebooted somewhere during the process or if it's currently
sitting in the bios/grub/etc

> > 2. PCI devices are a precious ressource. The primary device should never
> >  be added to QEMU if it won't be used by guest instead of hiding it in
> >  QEMU.
> >  -> We only hotplug the device when the standby feature bit was
> >     negotiated. We save the device cmdline options until we need it for
> >     qdev_device_add()
> >     Hiding a device can be a useful concept to model. For example a
> >     pci device in a powered-off slot could be marked as hidden until the slot is
> >     powered on (mst).

Are they really that precious? Personally it's not something I'd worry
about.

> > 3. Management layer software should handle this. Open Stack already has
> >  components/code to handle unplug/replug VFIO devices and metadata to
> >  provide to the guest for detecting which devices should be paired.
> >  -> An approach that includes all software from firmware to
> >     higher-level management software wasn't tried in the last years. This is
> >     an attempt to keep it simple and contained in QEMU as much as possible.
> > 4. Hotplugging a device and then making it part of a failover setup is
> >   not possible
> >  -> addressed by extending qdev hotplug functions to check for hidden
> >     attribute, so e.g. device_add can be used to plug a device.
> > 
> > There are still some open issues:
> > 
> > Migration: I'm looking for something like a pre-migration hook that I
> > could use to unplug the vfio-pci device. I tried with a migration
> > notifier but it is called to late, i.e. after migration is aborted due
> > to vfio-pci marked unmigrateable. I worked around this by setting it
> > to migrateable and used a migration notifier on the virtio-net device.

Why not just let this happen at the libvirt level; then you do the
hotunplug etc before you actually tell qemu anything about starting a
migration?

> > Commandline: There is a dependency between vfio-pci and virtio-net
> > devices. One points to the other via new parameters
> > primar=<primary qdev id> and standby='<standby qdev id>'. This means
> > that the primary device needs to be specified after standby device on
> > the qemu command line. Not sure how to solve this.
> > 
> > Error handling: Patches don't cover all possible error scenarios yet.
> > 
> > I have tested this with a mlx5 NIC and was able to migrate the VM with
> > above mentioned workarounds for open problems.
> > 
> > Command line example:
> > 
> > qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 3072 -smp 3 \
> >        -machine q35,kernel-irqchip=split -cpu host   \
> >        -k fr   \
> >        -serial stdio   \
> >        -net none \
> >        -qmp unix:/tmp/qmp.socket,server,nowait \
> >        -monitor telnet:127.0.0.1:5555,server,nowait \
> >        -device pcie-root-port,id=root0,multifunction=on,chassis=0,addr=0xa \
> >        -device pcie-root-port,id=root1,bus=pcie.0,chassis=1 \
> >        -device pcie-root-port,id=root2,bus=pcie.0,chassis=2 \
> >        -netdev tap,script=/root/bin/bridge.sh,downscript=no,id=hostnet1,vhost=on \
> >        -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=hostnet1,id=net1,mac=52:54:00:6f:55:cc,bus=root2,primary=hostdev0 \
> >        -device vfio-pci,host=5e:00.2,id=hostdev0,bus=root1,standby=net1 \

Yes, that's a bit grim; it's circular dependency on the 'hostdev0' and
'net1' id's.  cc'ing in Markus.

Dave

> >        /root/rhel-guest-image-8.0-1781.x86_64.qcow2
> > 
> > I'm grateful for any remarks or ideas!
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > regards,
> > Jens
> > 
> > Sameeh Jubran (2):
> >  qdev/qbus: Add hidden device support
> >  net/virtio: add failover support
> > 
> > hw/core/qdev.c                 | 27 ++++++++++
> > hw/net/virtio-net.c            | 95 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > hw/pci/pci.c                   |  1 +
> > include/hw/pci/pci.h           |  2 +
> > include/hw/qdev-core.h         |  8 +++
> > include/hw/virtio/virtio-net.h |  7 +++
> > qdev-monitor.c                 | 48 +++++++++++++++--
> > vl.c                           |  7 ++-
> > 8 files changed, 189 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
> > 
> > -- 
> > 2.20.1
> > 
> > 
--
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / dgilbert@redhat.com / Manchester, UK