Re: Xen 4.3 development update, and stock-taking

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>]

> Konrad Wilk: Persistent net grants, multi-page network, multi-page blk

a) persistent-page grants are in the Linux kernel.

b) Multi-page network and persistent net grants.
Annie is doing a hollistic look at the network stack
and is going to setup a collaboration meeting between interested parties
(for right now I think it is Intel, Citrix, Amazon, SuSE, and Oracle)
to collaborate on that. There are multiple items in this and it would
be good that we don't step on each other toes.


c) Mutli-page block. That kind of morphed in me taking a hard look at the
block protocol itself and how we can fix this and other. 

http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2012-12/msg01346.html

Need more people to disuss and make sure we are actually on the
same page on the issues I enumerated.

> 
> Jim Fehlig: libvirt migration support
> 
> Matthew Fioravante: vTPM

He posted some patches for the Linux kernel, but they need some tweaking.
..
> == Not yet complete ==
> 
> * PVH mode (w/ Linux)
>   owner: mukesh@oracle
>   status (Linux): 3rd draft patches posted.
>   status (Xen): RFC submitted
>   prognosis: Good

The Linux side is good. The Xen hypervisor side needs reviews and
foremost the new hypercall needs to be set in stone (otherwsie
the Linux patches need to be redone).


.. snip..
> * Persistent grants for net
>   owner: annie.li@citrix
>   status: Initial implementation posted
>   prognosis: ?

Shelved. The perf reports with Xen 4.2 did not show much improvement.
They should have but there is something amiss.

goto b;

> 
> * Multi-page blk rings (external)
>  - blkback in kernel (konrad@oracle, ?@intel)
>  - qemu blkback
>   status: Not started.
>   prognosis: UNKNOWN

goto c;
> 
> * Multi-page net protocol (external)
>   owner: ijc@citrix or annie.li@oracle
>   status: Initial patches posted (by Wei Liu)
>   expand the network ring protocol to allow multiple pages for
>   increased throughput

goto b;


We might also put on this list:

 - hardware performance counters.
  Investigate what is important.