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From: Dario Faggioli <dario.faggioli@citrix.com>
To: xen-devel@lists.xen.org
Cc: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@eu.citrix.com>,
	Ian Jackson <Ian.Jackson@eu.citrix.com>,
	Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>
Subject: [PATCH 1/5] xl: update the manpage about "cpus=" and NUMA node-affinity
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 20:40:45 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20130916184045.20003.18530.stgit@hit-nxdomain.opendns.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20130916183518.20003.61823.stgit@hit-nxdomain.opendns.com>

Since d06b1bf169a01a9c7b0947d7825e58cb455a0ba5 ('libxl: automatic placement
deals with node-affinity') it is no longer true that, if no "cpus=" option
is specified, xl picks up some pCPUs by default and pin the domain there.

In fact, it is the NUMA node-affinity that is affected by automatic
placement, not vCPU to pCPU pinning.

Update the xl config file documenation accordingly, as it seems to have
been forgotten at that time.

Signed-off-by: Dario Faggioli <dario.faggioli@citrix.com>
Acked-by: Ian Jackson <ian.jackson@eu.citrix.com>
---
 docs/man/xl.cfg.pod.5 |   22 +++++++++++++++-------
 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/docs/man/xl.cfg.pod.5 b/docs/man/xl.cfg.pod.5
index 769767b..fd3979a 100644
--- a/docs/man/xl.cfg.pod.5
+++ b/docs/man/xl.cfg.pod.5
@@ -104,8 +104,8 @@ created online and the remainder will be offline.
 
 =item B<cpus="CPU-LIST">
 
-List of which cpus the guest is allowed to use. By default xl will pick
-some cpus on its own (see below). A C<CPU-LIST> may be specified as follows:
+List of which cpus the guest is allowed to use. Default is no pinning at
+all (more on this below). A C<CPU-LIST> may be specified as follows:
 
 =over 4
 
@@ -125,11 +125,19 @@ run on cpu #3 of the host.
 
 =back
 
-If this option is not specified, libxl automatically tries to place the new
-domain on the host's NUMA nodes (provided the host has more than one NUMA
-node) by pinning it to the cpus of those nodes. A heuristic approach is
-utilized with the goals of maximizing performance for the domain and, at
-the same time, achieving efficient utilization of the host's CPUs and RAM.
+If this option is not specified, no vcpu to cpu pinning is established,
+and the vcpus of the guest can run on all the cpus of the host.
+
+If we are on a NUMA machine (i.e., if the host has more than one NUMA
+node) and this option is not specified, libxl automatically tries to
+place the guest on the least possible number of nodes. That, however,
+will not affect vcpu pinning, so the guest will still be able to run on
+all the cpus, it will just prefer the ones from the node it has been
+placed on. A heuristic approach is used for choosing the best node (or
+set of nodes), with the goals of maximizing performance for the guest
+and, at the same time, achieving efficient utilization of host cpus
+and memory. See F<docs/misc/xl-numa-placement.markdown> for more
+details.
 
 =back

  reply	other threads:[~2013-09-16 18:40 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-09-16 18:40 [PATCH 0/5] xl: allow for node-wise specification of vcpu pinning Dario Faggioli
2013-09-16 18:40 ` Dario Faggioli [this message]
2013-09-16 18:40 ` [PATCH 2/5] libxl: introduce libxl_node_to_cpumap Dario Faggioli
2013-09-16 18:41 ` [PATCH 3/5] xl: allow for node-wise specification of vcpu pinning Dario Faggioli
2013-09-16 18:41 ` [PATCH 4/5] xl: implement and enable dryrun mode for `xl vcpu-pin' Dario Faggioli
2013-09-16 18:41 ` [PATCH 5/5] xl: test script for the cpumap parser (for vCPU pinning) Dario Faggioli
2013-09-16 18:47 ` [PATCH 0/5] xl: allow for node-wise specification of vcpu pinning Dario Faggioli
2013-09-25 11:03   ` Dario Faggioli
2013-11-05 17:24     ` George Dunlap
2013-11-05 22:33       ` Dario Faggioli

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