Re: [RFC/T/D][PATCH 2/2] Linux/Guest cooperative unmapped page cache control

Avi Kivity
2010-06-15T06:59:18Z

On 06/14/2010 08:45 PM, Balbir Singh wrote:
>
>> There are two decisions that need to be made:
>>
>> - how much memory a guest should be given
>> - given some guest memory, what's the best use for it
>>
>> The first question can perhaps be answered by looking at guest I/O
>> rates and giving more memory to more active guests. The second
>> question is hard, but not any different than running non-virtualized
>> - except if we can detect sharing or duplication. In this case,
>> dropping a duplicated page is worthwhile, while dropping a shared
>> page provides no benefit.
>>
> I think there is another way of looking at it, give some free memory
>
> 1. Can the guest run more applications or run faster
>

That's my second question. How to best use this memory. More
applications == drop the page from cache, faster == keep page in cache.

All we need is to select the right page to drop.

> 2. Can the host potentially get this memory via ballooning or some
> other means to start newer guest instances
>

Well, we already have ballooning. The question is can we improve the
eviction algorithm.

> I think the answer to 1 and 2 is yes.
>
>
>> How the patch helps answer either question, I'm not sure. I don't
>> think preferential dropping of unmapped page cache is the answer.
>>
>>
> Preferential dropping as selected by the host, that knows about the
> setup and if there is duplication involved. While we use the term
> preferential dropping, remember it is still via LRU and we don't
> always succeed. It is a best effort (if you can and the unmapped pages
> are not highly referenced) scenario.
>

How can the host tell if there is duplication? It may know it has some
pagecache, but it has no idea whether or to what extent guest pagecache
duplicates host pagecache.

>>> Those tell you how to balance going after the different classes of
>>> things that we can reclaim.
>>>
>>> Again, this is useless when ballooning is being used. But, I'm thinking
>>> of a more general mechanism to force the system to both have MemFree
>>> _and_ be acting as if it is under memory pressure.
>>>
>> If there is no memory pressure on the host, there is no reason for
>> the guest to pretend it is under pressure. If there is memory
>> pressure on the host, it should share the pain among its guests by
>> applying the balloon. So I don't think voluntarily dropping cache
>> is a good direction.
>>
>>
> There are two situations
>
> 1. Voluntarily drop cache, if it was setup to do so (the host knows
> that it caches that information anyway)
>

It doesn't, really. The host only has aggregate information about
itself, and no information about the guest.

Dropping duplicate pages would be good if we could identify them. Even
then, it's better to drop the page from the host, not the guest, unless
we know the same page is cached by multiple guests.

But why would the guest voluntarily drop the cache? If there is no
memory pressure, dropping caches increases cpu overhead and latency even
if the data is still cached on the host.

> 2. Drop the cache on either a special balloon option, again the host
> knows it caches that very same information, so it prefers to free that
> up first.
>

Dropping in response to pressure is good. I'm just not convinced the
patch helps in selecting the correct page to drop.

--
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