Re: [PATCH v7 19/20] nfs: add Documentation/filesystems/nfs/localio.rst

Jeff Layton
2024-06-25T11:59:34Z

On Mon, 2024-06-24 at 12:27 -0400, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> This document gives an overview of the LOCALIO auxiliary RPC protocol
> added to the Linux NFS client and server (both v3 and v4) to allow a
> client and server to reliably handshake to determine if they are on the
> same host.  The LOCALIO auxiliary protocol's implementation, which uses
> the same connection as NFS traffic, follows the pattern established by
> the NFS ACL protocol extension.
>
> The robust handshake between local client and server is just the
> beginning, the ultimate usecase this locality makes possible is the
> client is able to issue reads, writes and commits directly to the server
> without having to go over the network.  This is particularly useful for
> container usecases (e.g. kubernetes) where it is possible to run an IO
> job local to the server.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@kernel.org>
> ---
>  Documentation/filesystems/nfs/localio.rst | 134 ++++++++++++++++++++++
>  include/linux/nfslocalio.h                |   2 +
>  2 files changed, 136 insertions(+)
>  create mode 100644 Documentation/filesystems/nfs/localio.rst
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/localio.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/localio.rst
> new file mode 100644
> index 000000000000..e856b6273e78
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/localio.rst
> @@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
> +===========
> +NFS localio
> +===========
> +
> +This document gives an overview of the LOCALIO auxiliary RPC protocol
> +added to the Linux NFS client and server (both v3 and v4) to allow a
> +client and server to reliably handshake to determine if they are on the
> +same host.  The LOCALIO auxiliary protocol's implementation, which uses
> +the same connection as NFS traffic, follows the pattern established by
> +the NFS ACL protocol extension.
> +
> +The LOCALIO auxiliary protocol is needed to allow robust discovery of
> +clients local to their servers.  Prior to this LOCALIO protocol a
> +fragile sockaddr network address based match against all local network
> +interfaces was attempted.  But unlike the LOCALIO protocol, the
> +sockaddr-based matching didn't handle use of iptables or containers.
> +

The above paragraph sounds like there was an earlier implementation in
mainline kernels that used address matching. It might be good to point
out that that was a private implementation.

> +The robust handshake between local client and server is just the
> +beginning, the ultimate usecase this locality makes possible is the
> +client is able to issue reads, writes and commits directly to the server
> +without having to go over the network.  This is particularly useful for
> +container usecases (e.g. kubernetes) where it is possible to run an IO
> +job local to the server.
> +
> +The performance advantage realized from localio's ability to bypass
> +using XDR and RPC for reads, writes and commits can be extreme, e.g.:
> +fio for 20 secs with 24 libaio threads, 64k directio reads, qd of 8,
> +-  With localio:
> +  read: IOPS=691k, BW=42.2GiB/s (45.3GB/s)(843GiB/20002msec)
> +-  Without localio:
> +  read: IOPS=15.7k, BW=984MiB/s (1032MB/s)(19.2GiB/20013msec)
> +
> +RPC
> +---
> +
> +The LOCALIO auxiliary RPC protocol consists of a single "GETUUID" RPC
> +method that allows the Linux NFS client to retrieve a Linux NFS server's
> +uuid.  This protocol isn't part of an IETF standard, nor does it need to
> +be considering it is Linux-to-Linux auxiliary RPC protocol that amounts
> +to an implementation detail.
> +
> +The GETUUID method encodes the server's uuid_t in terms of the fixed
> +UUID_SIZE (16 bytes).  The fixed size opaque encode and decode XDR
> +methods are used instead of the less efficient variable sized methods.
> +
> +The RPC program number for the NFS_LOCALIO_PROGRAM is 400122 (as assigned
> +by IANA, see https://www.iana.org/assignments/rpc-program-numbers/ ):
> +Linux Kernel Organization       400122  nfslocalio
> +

Nice! Glad this got officially registered fast.

> +The LOCALIO protocol spec in rpcgen syntax is:
> +
> +/* raw RFC 9562 UUID */
> +#define UUID_SIZE 16
> +typedef u8 uuid_t<UUID_SIZE>;
> +
> +program NFS_LOCALIO_PROGRAM {
> +    version LOCALIO_V1 {
> +        void
> +            NULL(void) = 0;
> +
> +        uuid_t
> +            GETUUID(void) = 1;
> +    } = 1;
> +} = 400122;
> +
> +LOCALIO uses the same transport connection as NFS traffic.  As such,
> +LOCALIO is not registered with rpcbind.
> +
> +Once an NFS client and server handshake as "local", the client will
> +bypass the network RPC protocol for read, write and commit operations.
> +Due to this XDR and RPC bypass, these operations will operate faster.
> +
> +NFS Common and Server
> +---------------------
> +
> +First use is in nfsd, to add access to a global nfsd_uuids list in
> +nfs_common that is used to register and then identify local nfsd
> +instances.
> +

First use of what? This sentence doesn't parse well.

> +nfsd_uuids is protected by the nfsd_mutex or RCU read lock and is
> +composed of nfsd_uuid_t instances that are managed as nfsd creates them
> +(per network namespace).
> +
> +nfsd_uuid_is_local() and nfsd_uuid_lookup() are used to search all local
> +nfsd for the client specified nfsd uuid.
> +
> +The nfsd_uuids list is the basis for localio enablement, as such it has
> +members that point to nfsd memory for direct use by the client
> +(e.g. 'net' is the server's network namespace, through it the client can
> +access nn->nfsd_serv with proper rcu read access).  It is this client
> +and server synchronization that enables advanced usage and lifetime of
> +objects to span from the host kernel's nfsd to per-container knfsd
> +instances that are connected to nfs client's running on the same local
> +host.
> +
> +NFS Client
> +----------
> +
> +fs/nfs/localio.c:nfs_local_probe() will retrieve a server's uuid via
> +LOCALIO protocol and check if the server with that uuid is known to be
> +local.  This ensures client and server 1: support localio 2: are local
> +to each other.
> +
> +See fs/nfs/localio.c:nfs_local_open_fh() and
> +fs/nfsd/localio.c:nfsd_open_local_fh() for the interface that makes
> +focused use of nfsd_uuid_t struct to allow a client local to a server to
> +open a file pointer without needing to go over the network.
> +
> +The client's fs/nfs/localio.c:nfs_local_open_fh() will call into the
> +server's fs/nfsd/localio.c:nfsd_open_local_fh() and carefully access
> +both the nfsd network namespace and the associated nn->nfsd_serv in
> +terms of RCU.  If nfsd_open_local_fh() finds that client no longer sees
> +valid nfsd objects (be it struct net or nn->nfsd_serv) it returns ENXIO
> +to nfs_local_open_fh() and the client will try to reestablish the
> +LOCALIO resources needed by calling nfs_local_probe() again.  This
> +recovery is needed if/when an nfsd instance running in a container were
> +to reboot while a localio client is connected to it.
> +
> +Testing
> +-------
> +
> +The LOCALIO auxiliary protocol and associated NFS localio read, write
> +and commit access have proven stable against various test scenarios but
> +these have not yet been formalized in any testsuite:
> +
> +-  Client and server both on localhost (for both v3 and v4.2).
> +
> +-  Various permutations of client and server support enablement for
> +   both local and remote client and server.  Testing against NFS storage
> +   products that don't support the LOCALIO protocol was also performed.
> +
> +-  Client on host, server within a container (for both v3 and v4.2)
> +   The container testing was in terms of podman managed containers and
> +   includes container stop/restart scenario.
> diff --git a/include/linux/nfslocalio.h b/include/linux/nfslocalio.h
> index c9592ad0afe2..a9722e18b527 100644
> --- a/include/linux/nfslocalio.h
> +++ b/include/linux/nfslocalio.h
> @@ -20,6 +20,8 @@ extern struct list_head nfsd_uuids;
>   * Each nfsd instance has an nfsd_uuid_t that is accessible through the
>   * global nfsd_uuids list. Useful to allow a client to negotiate if localio
>   * possible with its server.
> + *
> + * See Documentation/filesystems/nfs/localio.rst for more detail.
>   */
>  typedef struct {
>   uuid_t uuid;

--
Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>