RE: [Ksummit-2005-discuss] Summary of 2005 Kernel Summit Proposed Topics

["Alex Aizman" <itn780@yahoo.com>]

> Let's say, all N commands transmitted in a burst, and just 
> one of these N gets ack-ed by the Target (via StatSN). 

Let's say, all can_queue commands transmitted in a burst, and just 
one of these can_queue commands gets ack-ed by the Target (via StatSN).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Aizman [mailto:itn780@yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2005 1:15 PM
> To: open-iscsi@googlegroups.com
> Cc: mpm@selenic.com; andrea@suse.de; michaelc@cs.wisc.edu; 
> James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com; netdev@oss.sgi.com; 
> 'David S. Miller'; ksummit-2005-discuss@thunk.org
> Subject: RE: [Ksummit-2005-discuss] Summary of 2005 Kernel 
> Summit Proposed Topics
> 
> 
> David S. Miller writes:
> > 
> > On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 22:33:01 -0800
> > Dmitry Yusupov <dmitry_yus@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > i.e. TCP stack should call NIC driver's callback after 
> all SKB data 
> > > been successfully copied to the user space. At that point
> > NIC driver
> > > will safely replenish HW ring. This way we could avoid most
> > of memory
> > > allocations on receive.
> > 
> > How does this solve your problem?  This is just simple SKB 
> recycling, 
> > and it's a pretty old idea.
> > 
> > TCP packets can be held on receive for arbitrary amounts of time.
> > 
> > This is especially true if data is received out of order or when 
> > packets are dropped.  We can't even wake up the user until 
> the holes 
> > in the sequence space are filled.
> > 
> > Even if data is received properly and in order, there are no hard 
> > guarentees about when the user will get back onto the CPU 
> to get the 
> > data copied to it.
> > 
> > During these gaps in time, you will need to keep your HW 
> receive ring 
> > populated with packets.
> 
> 
> Here's the way I see it. 
> 
> 1) There are iSCSI connections that should be "protected", 
> resources-wise.
> Examples: remote swap device, bank accounts database on RAID 
> accessed via iSCSI, etc.
> 
> 2) There are two ways to protect the "protected" connections. 
> One "Big Brother" like way is a centralized Resource Manager 
> that performs a fully deterministic resource accounting 
> throughout the system, all the way from NIC descriptors and 
> on-chip memory up to iSCSI buffers for Data-Out headers.
> 
> 
> 3) The 2nd way is *awareness* of the "protected" connections 
> propagated throughout the system, along with incremental 
> implementation of more sophisticated recovery schemes.
> 
> 4) The Resource Manager could be used in the following way. 
> At session open time iSCSI control plane calculates iSCSI and 
> TCP resources that should be available at all times. The 
> calculation is done based on: the number of SCSI commands to 
> be processed in parallel (the 'can_queue'), the maximum size 
> of the SCSI payload in the SG, the negotiated maximum number 
> of outstanding R2Ts, sizes of Immediate and FirstBurst data. 
> 
> 5) If Resource manager says there is not enough resources, 
> iSCSI fails session open. This is better than to get in 
> trouble well into runtime.
> 
> 6) For example: to transmit 'can_queue' commands, iSCSI needs 
> N skbufs.
Let's say, all N commands transmitted in a burst, and just 
> one of these N gets ack-ed by the Target (via StatSN). In the 
> fully deterministic system this does not necessarily mean 
> that the scsi-ml can now send one command - because the full 
> condition involves also recycling of skbuf(s) used for 
> transmitting this one completed command. And although it is 
> hard to imagine that the command gets fully done by the 
> remote target without Tx buffers getting recycled, the 
> theoretical chance exists (e.g., the NIC is slow or the 
> driver has a bad Tx recycling implementation), and the fully 
> deterministic scheme should take it into account.
> 
> 7) Therefore, prior to calling scsi_done() iSCSI asks 
> Resource Manager whether all the TCP etc. resources used for 
> this command are already recycled. If not, the scsi_done() 
> gets postponed. In addition, iSCSI "complains" to Resource 
> Manager that it enters slow path because of this, which could 
> prompt the latter to take an action. (End of the example).
> 
> 8) If we agree to declare some connections 
> "resource-proteced", it would immediately mean that there are 
> possibly other connections that are not (resource-protected). 
> Which in turn gives the Resource Manager a flexibility to 
> OOM-kill those unprotected connections and cannibalize the 
> corresponding resources for the protected ones.
> 
> 9) Without some awareness of the resource-protected 
> connections, and without some kind of resource counting at 
> runtime (let it be partial and incomplete for starters) - the 
> only remaining way for customers that require HA (High
> Availability) is to over-engineer: use 64GB RAM, TBs of disk 
> space, etc.
> Which is probably not the end of the world as long as the 
> prices go down..
> 
> Alex
>