Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC]QEMU disk I/O limits

[Zhi Yong Wu <wuzhy@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2011 at 10:15:02AM +0300, Sasha Levin wrote:
>Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2011 10:15:02 +0300
>From: Sasha Levin <levinsasha928@gmail.com>
>To: Zhi Yong Wu <wuzhy@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
>Cc: kwolf@redhat.com, aliguori@us.ibm.com, herbert@gondor.apana.org.au,
>	kvm@vger.kernel.org, guijianfeng@cn.fujitsu.com,
>	qemu-devel@nongnu.org, wuzhy@cn.ibm.com, luowenj@cn.ibm.com,
>	zhanx@cn.ibm.com, zhaoyang@cn.ibm.com, llim@redhat.com,
>	raharper@us.ibm.com, vgoyal@redhat.com, stefanha@linux.vnet.ibm.com
>Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC]QEMU disk I/O limits
>X-Mailer: Evolution 2.32.2 
>
>On Thu, 2011-06-02 at 14:29 +0800, Zhi Yong Wu wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 02, 2011 at 09:17:06AM +0300, Sasha Levin wrote:
>> >Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:17:06 +0300
>> >From: Sasha Levin <levinsasha928@gmail.com>
>> >To: Zhi Yong Wu <wuzhy@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
>> >Cc: qemu-devel@nongnu.org, kvm@vger.kernel.org, kwolf@redhat.com,
>> >	aliguori@us.ibm.com, herbert@gondor.apana.org.au,
>> >	guijianfeng@cn.fujitsu.com, wuzhy@cn.ibm.com, luowenj@cn.ibm.com,
>> >	zhanx@cn.ibm.com, zhaoyang@cn.ibm.com, llim@redhat.com,
>> >	raharper@us.ibm.com, vgoyal@redhat.com, stefanha@linux.vnet.ibm.com
>> >Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC]QEMU disk I/O limits
>> >X-Mailer: Evolution 2.32.2 
>> >
>> >Hi,
>> >
>> >On Mon, 2011-05-30 at 13:09 +0800, Zhi Yong Wu wrote:
>> >> Hello, all,
>> >> 
>> >>     I have prepared to work on a feature called "Disk I/O limits" for qemu-kvm projeect.
>> >>     This feature will enable the user to cap disk I/O amount performed by a VM.It is important for some storage resources to be shared among multi-VMs. As you've known, if some of VMs are doing excessive disk I/O, they will hurt the performance of other VMs.
>> >> 
>> >>     More detail is available here:
>> >>     http://wiki.qemu.org/Features/DiskIOLimits
>> >> 
>> >>     1.) Why we need per-drive disk I/O limits 
>> >>     As you've known, for linux, cgroup blkio-controller has supported I/O throttling on block devices. More importantly, there is no single mechanism for disk I/O throttling across all underlying storage types (image file, LVM, NFS, Ceph) and for some types there is no way to throttle at all. 
>> >> 
>> >>     Disk I/O limits feature introduces QEMU block layer I/O limits together with command-line and QMP interfaces for configuring limits. This allows I/O limits to be imposed across all underlying storage types using a single interface.
>> >> 
>> >>     2.) How disk I/O limits will be implemented
>> >>     QEMU block layer will introduce a per-drive disk I/O request queue for those disks whose "disk I/O limits" feature is enabled. It can control disk I/O limits individually for each disk when multiple disks are attached to a VM, and enable use cases like unlimited local disk access but shared storage access with limits. 
>> >>     In mutliple I/O threads scenario, when an application in a VM issues a block I/O request, this request will be intercepted by QEMU block layer, then it will calculate disk runtime I/O rate and determine if it has go beyond its limits. If yes, this I/O request will enqueue to that introduced queue; otherwise it will be serviced.
>> >> 
>> >>     3.) How the users enable and play with it
>> >>     QEMU -drive option will be extended so that disk I/O limits can be specified on its command line, such as -drive [iops=xxx,][throughput=xxx] or -drive [iops_rd=xxx,][iops_wr=xxx,][throughput=xxx] etc. When this argument is specified, it means that "disk I/O limits" feature is enabled for this drive disk.
>> >>     The feature will also provide users with the ability to change per-drive disk I/O limits at runtime using QMP commands.
>> >
>> >I'm wondering if you've considered adding a 'burst' parameter -
>> >something which will not limit (or limit less) the io ops or the
>> >throughput for the first 'x' ms in a given time window.
>> Currently no, Do you let us know what scenario it will make sense to?
>
>My assumption is that most guests are not doing constant disk I/O
>access. Instead, the operations are usually short and happen on small
>scale (relatively small amount of bytes accessed).
>
>For example: Multiple table DB lookup, serving a website, file servers.
>
>Basically, if I need to do a DB lookup which needs 50MB of data from a
>disk which is limited to 10MB/s, I'd rather let it burst for 1 second
>and complete the lookup faster instead of having it read data for 5
>seconds.
>
>If the guest now starts running multiple lookups one after the other,
>thats when I would like to limit.
HI, Sasha,

If iops or bps parameters are not specified to -drive, it will not limit this disk I/O rate. Of course, QMP commands will be extended to support changing or disabling disk I/O limits at runtime. If you'd like not limit a disk I/O rate, you can use it to disabled this feature.

I don't make sure that this is the right answer for your question.


Regards,

Zhiyong Wu 

>
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Zhiyong Wu
>> >
>> >> Regards,
>> >> 
>> >> Zhiyong Wu
>> >> 
>> >
>> >-- 
>> >
>> >Sasha.
>> >
>
>-- 
>
>Sasha.
>
>