From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=3.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,SPF_PASS autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18E1AC282CB for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2019 18:43:23 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [209.132.180.67]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E3404217D6 for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2019 18:43:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1730523AbfBESnV (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Feb 2019 13:43:21 -0500 Received: from mga05.intel.com ([192.55.52.43]:33586 "EHLO mga05.intel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1726196AbfBESnV (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Feb 2019 13:43:21 -0500 X-Amp-Result: SKIPPED(no attachment in message) X-Amp-File-Uploaded: False Received: from orsmga001.jf.intel.com ([10.7.209.18]) by fmsmga105.fm.intel.com with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384; 05 Feb 2019 10:43:20 -0800 X-ExtLoop1: 1 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.58,336,1544515200"; d="scan'208";a="136125414" Received: from ahduyck-desk1.jf.intel.com ([10.7.198.76]) by orsmga001.jf.intel.com with ESMTP; 05 Feb 2019 10:43:20 -0800 Message-ID: <274c9e23cb0bf947d8dd033bd8a7c14252ba9b85.camel@linux.intel.com> Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/4] kvm: Report unused guest pages to host From: Alexander Duyck To: Nitesh Narayan Lal , Alexander Duyck , linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kvm@vger.kernel.org Cc: rkrcmar@redhat.com, x86@kernel.org, mingo@redhat.com, bp@alien8.de, hpa@zytor.com, pbonzini@redhat.com, tglx@linutronix.de, akpm@linux-foundation.org, Luiz Capitulino , David Hildenbrand , Pankaj Gupta Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2019 10:43:20 -0800 In-Reply-To: <697d3769-9320-a632-749e-56de9474bdf0@redhat.com> References: <20190204181118.12095.38300.stgit@localhost.localdomain> <697d3769-9320-a632-749e-56de9474bdf0@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.28.5 (3.28.5-2.fc28) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 2019-02-05 at 12:25 -0500, Nitesh Narayan Lal wrote: > On 2/4/19 1:15 PM, Alexander Duyck wrote: > > This patch set provides a mechanism by which guests can notify the host of > > pages that are not currently in use. Using this data a KVM host can more > > easily balance memory workloads between guests and improve overall system > > performance by avoiding unnecessary writing of unused pages to swap. > > > > In order to support this I have added a new hypercall to provided unused > > page hints and made use of mechanisms currently used by PowerPC and s390 > > architectures to provide those hints. To reduce the overhead of this call > > I am only using it per huge page instead of of doing a notification per 4K > > page. By doing this we can avoid the expense of fragmenting higher order > > pages, and reduce overall cost for the hypercall as it will only be > > performed once per huge page. > > > > Because we are limiting this to huge pages it was necessary to add a > > secondary location where we make the call as the buddy allocator can merge > > smaller pages into a higher order huge page. > > > > This approach is not usable in all cases. Specifically, when KVM direct > > device assignment is used, the memory for a guest is permanently assigned > > to physical pages in order to support DMA from the assigned device. In > > this case we cannot give the pages back, so the hypercall is disabled by > > the host. > > > > Another situation that can lead to issues is if the page were accessed > > immediately after free. For example, if page poisoning is enabled the > > guest will populate the page *after* freeing it. In this case it does not > > make sense to provide a hint about the page being freed so we do not > > perform the hypercalls from the guest if this functionality is enabled. > > > > My testing up till now has consisted of setting up 4 8GB VMs on a system > > with 32GB of memory and 4GB of swap. To stress the memory on the system I > > would run "memhog 8G" sequentially on each of the guests and observe how > > long it took to complete the run. The observed behavior is that on the > > systems with these patches applied in both the guest and on the host I was > > able to complete the test with a time of 5 to 7 seconds per guest. On a > > system without these patches the time ranged from 7 to 49 seconds per > > guest. I am assuming the variability is due to time being spent writing > > pages out to disk in order to free up space for the guest. > > Hi Alexander, > > Can you share the host memory usage before and after your run. (In both > the cases with your patch-set and without your patch-set) Here are some snippets from the /proc/meminfo for the system both before and after the test. W/O patch -- Before -- MemTotal: 32881396 kB MemFree: 21363724 kB MemAvailable: 25891228 kB Buffers: 2276 kB Cached: 4760280 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 7166952 kB Inactive: 1474980 kB Active(anon): 3893308 kB Inactive(anon): 8776 kB Active(file): 3273644 kB Inactive(file): 1466204 kB Unevictable: 16756 kB Mlocked: 16756 kB SwapTotal: 4194300 kB SwapFree: 4194300 kB Dirty: 29812 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 3896540 kB Mapped: 75568 kB Shmem: 10044 kB -- After -- MemTotal: 32881396 kB MemFree: 194668 kB MemAvailable: 51356 kB Buffers: 24 kB Cached: 129036 kB SwapCached: 224396 kB Active: 27223304 kB Inactive: 2589736 kB Active(anon): 27220360 kB Inactive(anon): 2481592 kB Active(file): 2944 kB Inactive(file): 108144 kB Unevictable: 16756 kB Mlocked: 16756 kB SwapTotal: 4194300 kB SwapFree: 35616 kB Dirty: 0 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 29476628 kB Mapped: 22820 kB Shmem: 5516 kB W/ patch -- Before -- MemTotal: 32881396 kB MemFree: 26618880 kB MemAvailable: 27056004 kB Buffers: 2276 kB Cached: 781496 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 3309056 kB Inactive: 393796 kB Active(anon): 2932728 kB Inactive(anon): 8776 kB Active(file): 376328 kB Inactive(file): 385020 kB Unevictable: 16756 kB Mlocked: 16756 kB SwapTotal: 4194300 kB SwapFree: 4194300 kB Dirty: 96 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 2935964 kB Mapped: 75428 kB Shmem: 10048 kB -- After -- MemTotal: 32881396 kB MemFree: 22677904 kB MemAvailable: 26543092 kB Buffers: 2276 kB Cached: 4205908 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 3863016 kB Inactive: 3768596 kB Active(anon): 3437368 kB Inactive(anon): 8772 kB Active(file): 425648 kB Inactive(file): 3759824 kB Unevictable: 16756 kB Mlocked: 16756 kB SwapTotal: 4194300 kB SwapFree: 4194300 kB Dirty: 1336180 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 3440528 kB Mapped: 74992 kB Shmem: 10044 kB