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* [PATCH v3 00/11] migration: fast snapshot load
@ 2026-07-14 14:15 Aadeshveer Singh
  2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 01/11] migration: Propagate error in postcopy setup functions Aadeshveer Singh
                   ` (11 more replies)
  0 siblings, 12 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Aadeshveer Singh @ 2026-07-14 14:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: qemu-devel
  Cc: peterx, farosas, pbonzini, philmd, lvivier, ayoub,
	pierrick.bouvier, Aadeshveer Singh

This series implements a "fast snapshot load" mechanism to
significantly reduce the perceived resume time of a VM from a snapshot
file.

Currently, resuming a VM from a snapshot file requires loading all RAM
pages into the QEMU instance before execution begins. This extension
allows the user to run the VM nearly instantly by loading only the
required device states up front and loading RAM pages lazily, by
trapping access to pages that have not yet been loaded.

Using the Linux userfaultfd syscall, a fault thread catches all page
faults caused by the guest and loads in the pages required to keep
the VM running. Concurrently, an eager background thread iteratively
loads all remaining pages into RAM so the guest does not have to
depend on the fault thread indefinitely.

Much of code is reused from postcopy for fault handling and precopy
for reading mapped ram file. Implementation revolves around two
threads named the fault thread and eager load thread. Fault thread as
name suggests catches page faults by the guest and serves them using
userfaultfd. Postcopy fault thread is reused but instead of requesting
source for a page it loads the page directly by reading from file. In
order to remove the dependency of guest on fault thread indefinitely
the eager load thread loads in the entire RAM sequentially, and after
iterating through the entire RAM signals fault thread to exit and
calls cleanup.

In order to prevent the case of a page being loaded twice(in the
case when eager load thread is loading it and fault thread also
tries to serve fault on same page) a bitmap called pending_bmap is
used to track pages which are pending and not being loaded by any
thread. Atomic operations on this bitmap allows coordination between
threads to prevent any unwanted behaviours

Future direction:
- Add support for multifd
- Add support for vhost-user

---
v1 -> v2

- Structure Change: Expanded from 7 to 11 patches
- Move test removal patch from first to post implementation as
  suggested by Peter
- Patch 1 to 5 are meant to be non functional changes meant to
  modernize parts of code and prepare for feature Implementation
- Patch 10 performs a smoke test for implemented feature
- Patch 11 adds a documentation page for fast snapshot load
- Added explicit fails for features not supported/incompatible with
  fast snapshot load in compatibility check in options.c as suggested
  by Peter
- Passed errp object to qemu_get_buffer_at() to improve on error
  reporting as suggested by Peter
- Size of pending_bmap is updated to have a bit for every guest page
  according to guest page size and not host page size as pointed
  by Peter
- New function(ramblock_file_bitmap_page_is_nonzero()) has been
  introduced to test for zero pages while loading essentially enableing
  support for hugepages
- Updated the documentation comment over postcopy_mapped_ram_load_page()
  to add errp as pointed by Peter
- Added a new function try_mark_postcopy_blocktime_begin() to call
  mark_postcopy_blocktime_begin() taking care of assumptions like
  skipping if page is already received to improve on the readability
  as pointed by Peter
- Fixed bug, that sent non page alined addresses to
  mark_postcopy_blocktime_begin() as pointed by Peter
- Separate the postcopy_listen_thread_bh() rename patch as suggested
  by Peter
- Add comment explaining changes in process_incoming_migration_co()
  as suggested by Peter
- Make qemu_loadvm_run_fast_snapshot_load() and
  postcopy_ram_eager_load_setup() return void as these functions
  never fail as pointed by Peter

Aadeshveer Singh (11):
  migration: Propagate error in postcopy setup functions
  migration: Extract blocktime marking helper
  migration: Rename postcopy_listen_thread_bh
  migration: Use file_bmap for RAMBlock during incoming file load
  migration: Make qemu_get_buffer_at() thread-safe
  migration: add RAMBlock field and helper for fast snapshot load
  migration: add support for fault thread to load pages from disk
  migration: add eager load thread and setup for fast snapshot load
  migration/tests: remove capability conflict test
    postcopy-ram+mapped-ram
  migration/tests: Add test for fast snapshot load
  docs/migration: Add documentation for fast snapshot load feature

 docs/devel/migration/fast-snapshot-load.rst |  81 ++++++
 docs/devel/migration/features.rst           |   1 +
 include/system/ramblock.h                   |   6 +
 migration/migration.c                       |  60 +++--
 migration/migration.h                       |   5 +
 migration/options.c                         |  14 +-
 migration/postcopy-ram.c                    | 266 ++++++++++++++++----
 migration/postcopy-ram.h                    |   7 +-
 migration/qemu-file.c                       |   9 +-
 migration/qemu-file.h                       |   4 +-
 migration/ram.c                             | 103 +++++++-
 migration/ram.h                             |   2 +
 migration/savevm.c                          |  16 ++
 migration/savevm.h                          |   2 +
 migration/trace-events                      |   2 +
 tests/qtest/migration/file-tests.c          |  24 ++
 tests/qtest/migration/misc-tests.c          |  52 ----
 17 files changed, 511 insertions(+), 143 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 docs/devel/migration/fast-snapshot-load.rst

-- 
2.55.0



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2026-07-20 19:43 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 25+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2026-07-14 14:15 [PATCH v3 00/11] migration: fast snapshot load Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 01/11] migration: Propagate error in postcopy setup functions Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 15:43   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 02/11] migration: Extract blocktime marking helper Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 15:43   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 03/11] migration: Rename postcopy_listen_thread_bh Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 16:01   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 04/11] migration: Use file_bmap for RAMBlock during incoming file load Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 16:02   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 05/11] migration: Make qemu_get_buffer_at() thread-safe Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 16:03   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 06/11] migration: add RAMBlock field and helper for fast snapshot load Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 16:23   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-20 18:39   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 07/11] migration: add support for fault thread to load pages from disk Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 19:04   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 08/11] migration: add eager load thread and setup for fast snapshot load Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 19:21   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 09/11] migration/tests: remove capability conflict test postcopy-ram+mapped-ram Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 19:29   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 10/11] migration/tests: Add test for fast snapshot load Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 19:30   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-14 14:15 ` [PATCH v3 11/11] docs/migration: Add documentation for fast snapshot load feature Aadeshveer Singh
2026-07-20 19:42   ` Peter Xu
2026-07-20 19:24 ` [PATCH v3 00/11] migration: fast snapshot load Peter Xu

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