[PATCH] migration: Add documentation for backwards compatiblity

[PATCH] migration: Add documentation for backwards compatiblity

[Juan Quintela]

State what are the requeriments to get migration working between qemu
versions.  And once there explain how one is supposed to implement a
new feature/default value and not break migration.

Signed-off-by: Juan Quintela <quintela@redhat.com>

---

Hi

I will really appreciate reviews:

- I don't speak natively .rst format, so let me what I have done
  wrong.

- English is not my native language either (no points if had guessed
  that).

- This is stuff is obvious to me, so let me when I have assumed
  things, things that need to be claried, explained better, etc.

Thanks, Juan.
---
 docs/devel/migration.rst | 212 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 212 insertions(+)

diff --git a/docs/devel/migration.rst b/docs/devel/migration.rst
index 6f65c23b47..daa510da42 100644
--- a/docs/devel/migration.rst
+++ b/docs/devel/migration.rst
@@ -142,6 +142,218 @@ General advice for device developers
   may be different on the destination.  This can result in the
   device state being loaded into the wrong device.
 
+How backwards compatibility work
+--------------------------------
+
+When we do migration, we have to qemus: source and target qemu.  There
+are two cases, they are the same version or they are a different
+version.  The easy case is when they are the same version.  The
+difficult one is when they are different versions.
+
+There are two things that are different, but they have very similar
+names and sometimes get confused:
+- qemu version
+- machine version
+
+Let's start with a practical example, we start with:
+
+- qemu-system-x86_64 (v5.2), from now one qemu-5.2.
+- qemu-system-x86_64 (v5.1), from now one qemu-5.1.
+
+Related to this are the "latest" machine types defined on each of
+them:
+
+- pc-q35-5.2 (newer one in qemu-5.2) from now on pc-5.2
+- pc-q35-5.1 (newer one qemu-5.1) from now on pc-5.1
+
+First of all, migration is only supposed to work if you use the same
+machine type in both source and destination. The qemu configuration
+needs to be the same also on source and destination.  But that is not
+relevant for this section.
+
+I am going to list the number of combinations that we can have.  Let's
+start with the trivial ones, qemu is the same on source and
+destination:
+
+1 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.2  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.2
+
+  This is the latest qemu with the latest machine type.
+  This have to work, and if it don't work it is a bug.
+
+2 - qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1
+
+  Exactly the same case than the previous one, but for 5.1.
+  Nothing to see here either.
+
+This are the easiest ones, we will not talk more about them in this
+section.
+
+Now we start with the more interesting cases.  Let start with the
+same qemu but not the same machine type.
+
+3 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
+
+  It needs to use the definition of pc-5.1 and the devices as they
+  were configured on 5.1, but this should be easy in the sense that
+  both sides are the same qemu and both sides have exactly the same
+  idea of what the pc-5.1 machine is.
+
+4 - qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.2  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.2
+
+  This combination is not possible as the qemu-5.1 don't understand
+  pc-5.2 machine type.  So nothing to worry here.
+
+Now it comes the interesting ones, when both qemus are different.
+Notice also that the machine type needs to be pc-5.1, because we have
+the limitation than qemu-5.1 don't know pc-5.2.  So the possible cases
+are:
+
+5 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1
+
+  This migration is known as newer to older.  We need to make sure
+  when we are developing 5.2 we need to take care about not to break
+  migration to qemu-5.1.  Notice that we can't make updates to
+  qemu-5.1 to understand whatever qemu-5.2 decides to change, so it is
+  in qemu-5.2 side to make the relevant changes.
+
+6 - qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
+
+  This migration is known as older to newer.  We need to make sure
+  than we are able to receive migrations from qemu-5.1. The problem is
+  similar to the previous one.
+
+If qemu-5.1 and qemu-5.2 were the same, there will not be any
+compatibility problems.  But the reason that we create qemu-5.2 is to
+get new features, devices, defaults, etc.
+
+If we get a device that get a new feature, or change a default value,
+we have a problem when we try to migrate between different qemu
+versions.
+
+So we need a way to tell qemu-5.2 than when we are using machine type
+pc-5.1, it needs to **not** use the feature, to be able to migrate to
+read qemu-5.1.
+
+And the equivalent part when migrating from qemu-5.1 to qemu-5.2.
+qemu-5.2 have to expect that it is not going to get data for the new
+feature, because qemu-5.1 don't know about it.
+
+How do we tell qemu about this device feature changes?  In
+hw/core/machine.c:hw_compat_X_Y arrays.
+
+If we change a default value, we need to put back the old value on
+that array.  And the device, during initialization needs to look at
+that array to see what value it needs to get for that feature.  And
+what are we going to put on that array, the value of a property.
+
+To create a property for a device, we need to use one of the
+DEFINE_PROP_*() macros. See include/hw/qdev-properties.h to find the
+macros that exist.  With it, we set the default value for that
+property, and that is what it is going to get in the latest released
+version.  But if we want a different value for a previous version, we
+can change that in the hw_compat_X_Y arrays.
+
+hw_compat_X_Y is an array of registers that have the format:
+
+- name_device
+- name_property
+- value
+
+Let's see a practical example.
+
+In qemu-5.2 virtio-blk-device got multi queue support.  This is a
+change that is not backward compatible.  In qemu-5.1 it has one
+queue. In qemu-5.2 it has the same number of queues than the number of
+cpus in the system.
+
+When we are doing migration, if we migrate from a device that has 4
+queues to a device that have only one queue, we don't know where to
+put the extra information for the other 3 queues, and we fail
+migration.
+
+Similar problem when we migrate from qemu-5.1 that has only one queue
+to qemu-5.2, we only sent information for one queue, but destination
+has 4, and we have 3 queues that are not properly initialized and
+anything can happen.
+
+So, how can we address this problem.  Easy, just convince qemu-5.2
+that when it is running pc-5.1, it needs to set the number of queues
+for virtio-blk-devices to 1.
+
+That way we fix the cases 5 and 6.
+
+5 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1
+
+    qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1 sets number of queues to be 1.
+    qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1 expects number of queues to be 1.
+
+    correct.  migration works.
+
+6 - qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
+
+    qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1 sets number of queues to be 1.
+    qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1 expects number of queues to be 1.
+
+    correct.  migration works.
+
+And now the other interesting case, case 3.  In this case we have:
+
+3 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
+
+    Here we have the same qemu in both sides.  So it don't matter a
+    lot if we have setup the number of queues to 1 or not, because
+    they are the same.
+
+    WRONG!
+
+    Think what happens if we do one of this double migrations:
+
+    A -> migrates -> B -> migrates -> C
+
+    where:
+
+    A: qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1
+    B: qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
+    C: qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
+
+    migration A -> B is case 6, so number of queues needs to be 1.
+
+    migration B -> C is case 3, so we don't care.  But actually we
+    care because we haven't started the guest in qemu-5.2, it came
+    migrated from qemu-5.1.  So to be in the safe place, we need to
+    always use number of queues 1 when we are using pc-5.1.
+
+Now, how was this done in reality?  The following commit shows how it
+was done.
+
+commit 9445e1e15e66c19e42bea942ba810db28052cd05
+Author: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
+Date:   Tue Aug 18 15:33:47 2020 +0100
+
+    virtio-blk-pci: default num_queues to -smp N
+
+The relevant parts for migration are:
+
+@@ -1281,7 +1284,8 @@ static Property virtio_blk_properties[] = {
+ #endif
+     DEFINE_PROP_BIT("request-merging", VirtIOBlock, conf.request_merging, 0,
+                     true),
+-    DEFINE_PROP_UINT16("num-queues", VirtIOBlock, conf.num_queues, 1),
++    DEFINE_PROP_UINT16("num-queues", VirtIOBlock, conf.num_queues,
++                       VIRTIO_BLK_AUTO_NUM_QUEUES),
+     DEFINE_PROP_UINT16("queue-size", VirtIOBlock, conf.queue_size, 256),
+
+It changes the default value of num_queues.  But it fishes it for old
+machine types to have the right value:
+
+@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@
+ GlobalProperty hw_compat_5_1[] = {
+     ...
++    { "virtio-blk-device", "num-queues", "1"},
+     ...
+ };
+
+
 VMState
 -------
 
-- 
2.40.1

Re: [PATCH] migration: Add documentation for backwards compatiblity

[Daniel P. Berrangé]

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 09:53:41PM +0200, Juan Quintela wrote:
> State what are the requeriments to get migration working between qemu
> versions.  And once there explain how one is supposed to implement a
> new feature/default value and not break migration.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Juan Quintela <quintela@redhat.com>
> 
> ---
> 
> Hi
> 
> I will really appreciate reviews:
> 
> - I don't speak natively .rst format, so let me what I have done
>   wrong.
> 
> - English is not my native language either (no points if had guessed
>   that).
> 
> - This is stuff is obvious to me, so let me when I have assumed
>   things, things that need to be claried, explained better, etc.
> 
> Thanks, Juan.
> ---
>  docs/devel/migration.rst | 212 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 212 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/docs/devel/migration.rst b/docs/devel/migration.rst
> index 6f65c23b47..daa510da42 100644
> --- a/docs/devel/migration.rst
> +++ b/docs/devel/migration.rst
> @@ -142,6 +142,218 @@ General advice for device developers
>    may be different on the destination.  This can result in the
>    device state being loaded into the wrong device.
>  
> +How backwards compatibility work

s/work/works/

> +--------------------------------
> +
> +When we do migration, we have to qemus: source and target qemu.  There

'have two qemu process, the source and the target'

> +are two cases, they are the same version or they are a different
> +version.  The easy case is when they are the same version.  The
> +difficult one is when they are different versions.
> +
> +There are two things that are different, but they have very similar
> +names and sometimes get confused:
> +- qemu version
> +- machine version
> +
> +Let's start with a practical example, we start with:
> +
> +- qemu-system-x86_64 (v5.2), from now one qemu-5.2.
> +- qemu-system-x86_64 (v5.1), from now one qemu-5.1.

s/one/on/

> +Related to this are the "latest" machine types defined on each of
> +them:
> +
> +- pc-q35-5.2 (newer one in qemu-5.2) from now on pc-5.2
> +- pc-q35-5.1 (newer one qemu-5.1) from now on pc-5.1
> +
> +First of all, migration is only supposed to work if you use the same
> +machine type in both source and destination. The qemu configuration

s/configuration/hardware configuration/ - most aspects of the backend
configuration can be changed at will, except for a few cases where
the backend features influence frontend device feature exposure.

> +needs to be the same also on source and destination.  But that is not
> +relevant for this section.
> +
> +I am going to list the number of combinations that we can have.  Let's
> +start with the trivial ones, qemu is the same on source and
> +destination:
> +
> +1 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.2  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.2
> +
> +  This is the latest qemu with the latest machine type.
> +  This have to work, and if it don't work it is a bug.
> +
> +2 - qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1
> +
> +  Exactly the same case than the previous one, but for 5.1.
> +  Nothing to see here either.
> +
> +This are the easiest ones, we will not talk more about them in this
> +section.
> +
> +Now we start with the more interesting cases.  Let start with the
> +same qemu but not the same machine type.
> +
> +3 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
> +
> +  It needs to use the definition of pc-5.1 and the devices as they
> +  were configured on 5.1, but this should be easy in the sense that
> +  both sides are the same qemu and both sides have exactly the same
> +  idea of what the pc-5.1 machine is.
> +
> +4 - qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.2  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.2
> +
> +  This combination is not possible as the qemu-5.1 don't understand
> +  pc-5.2 machine type.  So nothing to worry here.
> +
> +Now it comes the interesting ones, when both qemus are different.
> +Notice also that the machine type needs to be pc-5.1, because we have
> +the limitation than qemu-5.1 don't know pc-5.2.  So the possible cases
> +are:
> +
> +5 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1
> +
> +  This migration is known as newer to older.  We need to make sure
> +  when we are developing 5.2 we need to take care about not to break
> +  migration to qemu-5.1.  Notice that we can't make updates to
> +  qemu-5.1 to understand whatever qemu-5.2 decides to change, so it is
> +  in qemu-5.2 side to make the relevant changes.
> +
> +6 - qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
> +
> +  This migration is known as older to newer.  We need to make sure
> +  than we are able to receive migrations from qemu-5.1. The problem is
> +  similar to the previous one.
> +
> +If qemu-5.1 and qemu-5.2 were the same, there will not be any
> +compatibility problems.  But the reason that we create qemu-5.2 is to
> +get new features, devices, defaults, etc.
> +
> +If we get a device that get a new feature, or change a default value,

s/get a new/has a new/

> +we have a problem when we try to migrate between different qemu
> +versions.
> +
> +So we need a way to tell qemu-5.2 than when we are using machine type

s/than when/that when/

> +pc-5.1, it needs to **not** use the feature, to be able to migrate to
> +read qemu-5.1.

s/read/real/

> +
> +And the equivalent part when migrating from qemu-5.1 to qemu-5.2.
> +qemu-5.2 have to expect that it is not going to get data for the new

s/have/has/

> +feature, because qemu-5.1 don't know about it.
> +
> +How do we tell qemu about this device feature changes?  In

s/this/these/

> +hw/core/machine.c:hw_compat_X_Y arrays.
> +
> +If we change a default value, we need to put back the old value on

s/on that array/in that array/

> +that array.  And the device, during initialization needs to look at
> +that array to see what value it needs to get for that feature.  And
> +what are we going to put on that array, the value of a property.
> +
> +To create a property for a device, we need to use one of the
> +DEFINE_PROP_*() macros. See include/hw/qdev-properties.h to find the
> +macros that exist.  With it, we set the default value for that
> +property, and that is what it is going to get in the latest released
> +version.  But if we want a different value for a previous version, we
> +can change that in the hw_compat_X_Y arrays.
> +
> +hw_compat_X_Y is an array of registers that have the format:
> +
> +- name_device
> +- name_property
> +- value
> +
> +Let's see a practical example.
> +
> +In qemu-5.2 virtio-blk-device got multi queue support.  This is a
> +change that is not backward compatible.  In qemu-5.1 it has one
> +queue. In qemu-5.2 it has the same number of queues than the number of

s/than the number/as the number/

> +cpus in the system.
> +
> +When we are doing migration, if we migrate from a device that has 4
> +queues to a device that have only one queue, we don't know where to
> +put the extra information for the other 3 queues, and we fail
> +migration.
> +
> +Similar problem when we migrate from qemu-5.1 that has only one queue
> +to qemu-5.2, we only sent information for one queue, but destination
> +has 4, and we have 3 queues that are not properly initialized and
> +anything can happen.
> +
> +So, how can we address this problem.  Easy, just convince qemu-5.2
> +that when it is running pc-5.1, it needs to set the number of queues
> +for virtio-blk-devices to 1.
> +
> +That way we fix the cases 5 and 6.
> +
> +5 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1
> +
> +    qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1 sets number of queues to be 1.
> +    qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1 expects number of queues to be 1.
> +
> +    correct.  migration works.
> +
> +6 - qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
> +
> +    qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1 sets number of queues to be 1.
> +    qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1 expects number of queues to be 1.
> +
> +    correct.  migration works.
> +
> +And now the other interesting case, case 3.  In this case we have:
> +
> +3 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
> +
> +    Here we have the same qemu in both sides.  So it don't matter a

s/don't/doesn't/

> +    lot if we have setup the number of queues to 1 or not, because

s/setup/set/

> +    they are the same.
> +
> +    WRONG!
> +
> +    Think what happens if we do one of this double migrations:
> +
> +    A -> migrates -> B -> migrates -> C
> +
> +    where:
> +
> +    A: qemu-5.1 -M pc-5.1
> +    B: qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
> +    C: qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
> +
> +    migration A -> B is case 6, so number of queues needs to be 1.
> +
> +    migration B -> C is case 3, so we don't care.  But actually we
> +    care because we haven't started the guest in qemu-5.2, it came
> +    migrated from qemu-5.1.  So to be in the safe place, we need to
> +    always use number of queues 1 when we are using pc-5.1.
> +
> +Now, how was this done in reality?  The following commit shows how it
> +was done.
> +
> +commit 9445e1e15e66c19e42bea942ba810db28052cd05
> +Author: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
> +Date:   Tue Aug 18 15:33:47 2020 +0100
> +
> +    virtio-blk-pci: default num_queues to -smp N
> +
> +The relevant parts for migration are:
> +
> +@@ -1281,7 +1284,8 @@ static Property virtio_blk_properties[] = {
> + #endif
> +     DEFINE_PROP_BIT("request-merging", VirtIOBlock, conf.request_merging, 0,
> +                     true),
> +-    DEFINE_PROP_UINT16("num-queues", VirtIOBlock, conf.num_queues, 1),
> ++    DEFINE_PROP_UINT16("num-queues", VirtIOBlock, conf.num_queues,
> ++                       VIRTIO_BLK_AUTO_NUM_QUEUES),
> +     DEFINE_PROP_UINT16("queue-size", VirtIOBlock, conf.queue_size, 256),
> +
> +It changes the default value of num_queues.  But it fishes it for old
> +machine types to have the right value:
> +
> +@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@
> + GlobalProperty hw_compat_5_1[] = {
> +     ...
> ++    { "virtio-blk-device", "num-queues", "1"},
> +     ...
> + };
> +
> +
>  VMState
>  -------
>  
> -- 
> 2.40.1
> 

With regards,
Daniel
-- 
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|: https://libvirt.org         -o-            https://fstop138.berrange.com :|
|: https://entangle-photo.org    -o-    https://www.instagram.com/dberrange :|

Re: [PATCH] migration: Add documentation for backwards compatiblity

[Juan Quintela]

Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 09:53:41PM +0200, Juan Quintela wrote:
>> State what are the requeriments to get migration working between qemu
>> versions.  And once there explain how one is supposed to implement a
>> new feature/default value and not break migration.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Juan Quintela <quintela@redhat.com>
>> 
>> ---
>> 
>> Hi
>> 
>> I will really appreciate reviews:
>> 
>> - I don't speak natively .rst format, so let me what I have done
>>   wrong.
>> 
>> - English is not my native language either (no points if had guessed
>>   that).
>> 
>> - This is stuff is obvious to me, so let me when I have assumed
>>   things, things that need to be claried, explained better, etc.
>> 
>> Thanks, Juan.
>> ---
>>  docs/devel/migration.rst | 212 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>  1 file changed, 212 insertions(+)
>> 
>> diff --git a/docs/devel/migration.rst b/docs/devel/migration.rst
>> index 6f65c23b47..daa510da42 100644
>> --- a/docs/devel/migration.rst
>> +++ b/docs/devel/migration.rst
>> @@ -142,6 +142,218 @@ General advice for device developers
>>    may be different on the destination.  This can result in the
>>    device state being loaded into the wrong device.
>>  
>> +How backwards compatibility work
>
> s/work/works/

Don.

>
>> +--------------------------------
>> +
>> +When we do migration, we have to qemus: source and target qemu.  There
>
> 'have two qemu process, the source and the target'

Done.

>> +are two cases, they are the same version or they are a different
>> +version.  The easy case is when they are the same version.  The
>> +difficult one is when they are different versions.
>> +
>> +There are two things that are different, but they have very similar
>> +names and sometimes get confused:
>> +- qemu version
>> +- machine version
>> +
>> +Let's start with a practical example, we start with:
>> +
>> +- qemu-system-x86_64 (v5.2), from now one qemu-5.2.
>> +- qemu-system-x86_64 (v5.1), from now one qemu-5.1.
>
> s/one/on/

I did this one right on next paragraph. Sniff.
Done.

>> +Related to this are the "latest" machine types defined on each of
>> +them:
>> +
>> +- pc-q35-5.2 (newer one in qemu-5.2) from now on pc-5.2
>> +- pc-q35-5.1 (newer one qemu-5.1) from now on pc-5.1
>> +
>> +First of all, migration is only supposed to work if you use the same
>> +machine type in both source and destination. The qemu configuration
>
> s/configuration/hardware configuration/ - most aspects of the backend
> configuration can be changed at will, except for a few cases where
> the backend features influence frontend device feature exposure.

First of all, migration is only supposed to work if you use the same
machine type in both source and destination. The qemu hardware
configuration needs to be the same also on source and destination.
Most aspects of the backend configuration can be changed at will,
except for a few cases where the backend features influence frontend
device feature exposure.  But that is not relevant for this section.



>> +
>> +If we get a device that get a new feature, or change a default value,
>
> s/get a new/has a new/

Done.

>> +we have a problem when we try to migrate between different qemu
>> +versions.
>> +
>> +So we need a way to tell qemu-5.2 than when we are using machine type
>
> s/than when/that when/

Done.

>> +pc-5.1, it needs to **not** use the feature, to be able to migrate to
>> +read qemu-5.1.
>
> s/read/real/

Done

>> +
>> +And the equivalent part when migrating from qemu-5.1 to qemu-5.2.
>> +qemu-5.2 have to expect that it is not going to get data for the new
>
> s/have/has/

Done.

>> +feature, because qemu-5.1 don't know about it.
>> +
>> +How do we tell qemu about this device feature changes?  In
>
> s/this/these/
>
>> +hw/core/machine.c:hw_compat_X_Y arrays.
>> +
>> +If we change a default value, we need to put back the old value on
>
> s/on that array/in that array/

Done.

>> +Let's see a practical example.
>> +
>> +In qemu-5.2 virtio-blk-device got multi queue support.  This is a
>> +change that is not backward compatible.  In qemu-5.1 it has one
>> +queue. In qemu-5.2 it has the same number of queues than the number of
>
> s/than the number/as the number/

Done.

>> +3 - qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1  -> migrates to -> qemu-5.2 -M pc-5.1
>> +
>> +    Here we have the same qemu in both sides.  So it don't matter a
>
> s/don't/doesn't/

Done.

>> +    lot if we have setup the number of queues to 1 or not, because
>
> s/setup/set/

Done.

> With regards,
> Daniel

Thanks very much.

Appreciated, Juan.