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Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:17:10 -0700
From: Anand Avati <aavati@redhat.com>
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Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] O_DIRECT on glusterfs (was Re: [PATCH v9 4/4]
 block: Support GlusterFS as a QEMU block backend)
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To: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Cc: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>, Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>, Vijay Bellur <vbellur@redhat.com>, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com>, Harsh Bora <harsh@linux.vnet.ibm.com>, Amar Tumballi <amarts@redhat.com>, qemu-devel@nongnu.org, "Richard W.M. Jones" <rjones@redhat.com>, Blue Swirl <blauwirbel@gmail.com>, Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>, bharata@linux.vnet.ibm.com, Daniel Veillard <veillard@redhat.com>

On 10/03/2012 11:17 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Il 03/10/2012 19:58, Anand Avati ha scritto:
>>>
>>> I think these 3 lines should be removed.  We're bypassing the host
>>> buffer cache just by virtue of using a userspace driver, and that's what
>>> cache=none cares about.
>>
>> O_DIRECT also has an effect on the behavior of the "client side" (the
>> part within the qemu) of Gluster stack as well. I presume the intention
>> of O_DIRECT is to minimize use of memory (whether as host' page cache or
>> buffered data in user space). To that end it is a good idea to leave
>> O_DIRECT flag set.
>>
>> The behavior of whether gluster bricks need to get the O_DIRECT
>> propagated or not is a different issue. We are exploring the possibility
>> of not sending O_DIRECT flag over the wire to mimic NFS behavior. That
>> would be independent of the qemu block driver setting the open flag.
>
> What is the effect of O_DIRECT on the client exactly?

To avoid caching in the io-cache module, disable read-ahead etc (if 
those translators are loaded). The behavior in write-behind is tunable. 
You could either disable write-behind entirely (which will happen once 
libgfapi supports 0-copy/RDMA) or perform a sliding-window like 
size-limited write-behind (defaults to 1MB).

Avati