Re: [PATCH 5/5] nvme: support for zoned namespaces

From: "Javier González" <javier@javigon.com>
To: Damien Le Moal <Damien.LeMoal@wdc.com>
Cc: "Matias Bjørling" <mb@lightnvm.io>,
	"Jens Axboe" <axboe@kernel.dk>,
	"Niklas Cassel" <Niklas.Cassel@wdc.com>,
	"Ajay Joshi" <Ajay.Joshi@wdc.com>,
	"Sagi Grimberg" <sagi@grimberg.me>,
	"Keith Busch" <Keith.Busch@wdc.com>,
	"Dmitry Fomichev" <Dmitry.Fomichev@wdc.com>,
	"Aravind Ramesh" <Aravind.Ramesh@wdc.com>,
	"linux-nvme@lists.infradead.org" <linux-nvme@lists.infradead.org>,
	"linux-block@vger.kernel.org" <linux-block@vger.kernel.org>,
	"Hans Holmberg" <Hans.Holmberg@wdc.com>,
	"Christoph Hellwig" <hch@lst.de>,
	"Matias Bjorling" <Matias.Bjorling@wdc.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 5/5] nvme: support for zoned namespaces
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 08:09:53 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200617060953.ypviiz75cua4bt25@mpHalley.localdomain> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CY4PR04MB37513B2D2B7AAE343ABF14C1E79A0@CY4PR04MB3751.namprd04.prod.outlook.com>

On 17.06.2020 00:14, Damien Le Moal wrote:
>On 2020/06/17 0:02, Javier González wrote:
>> On 16.06.2020 14:42, Damien Le Moal wrote:
>>> On 2020/06/16 23:16, Javier González wrote:
>>>> On 16.06.2020 12:35, Damien Le Moal wrote:
>>>>> On 2020/06/16 21:24, Javier González wrote:
>>>>>> On 16.06.2020 14:06, Matias Bjørling wrote:
>>>>>>> On 16/06/2020 14.00, Javier González wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 16.06.2020 13:18, Matias Bjørling wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 16/06/2020 12.41, Javier González wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On 16.06.2020 08:34, Keith Busch wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> Add support for NVM Express Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) Command Set defined
>>>>>>>>>>> in NVM Express TP4053. Zoned namespaces are discovered based on their
>>>>>>>>>>> Command Set Identifier reported in the namespaces Namespace
>>>>>>>>>>> Identification Descriptor list. A successfully discovered Zoned
>>>>>>>>>>> Namespace will be registered with the block layer as a host managed
>>>>>>>>>>> zoned block device with Zone Append command support. A namespace that
>>>>>>>>>>> does not support append is not supported by the driver.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Why are we enforcing the append command? Append is optional on the
>>>>>>>>>> current ZNS specification, so we should not make this mandatory in the
>>>>>>>>>> implementation. See specifics below.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> There is already general support in the kernel for the zone append
>>>>>>>>> command. Feel free to submit patches to emulate the support. It is
>>>>>>>>> outside the scope of this patchset.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It is fine that the kernel supports append, but the ZNS specification
>>>>>>>> does not impose the implementation for append, so the driver should not
>>>>>>>> do that either.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> ZNS SSDs that choose to leave append as a non-implemented optional
>>>>>>>> command should not rely on emulated SW support, specially when
>>>>>>>> traditional writes work very fine for a large part of current ZNS use
>>>>>>>> cases.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Please, remove this virtual constraint.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The Zone Append command is mandatory for zoned block devices. Please
>>>>>>> see https://lwn.net/Articles/818709/ for the background.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I do not see anywhere in the block layer that append is mandatory for
>>>>>> zoned devices. Append is emulated on ZBC, but beyond that there is no
>>>>>> mandatory bits. Please explain.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is to allow a single write IO path for all types of zoned block device for
>>>>> higher layers, e.g file systems. The on-going re-work of btrfs zone support for
>>>>> instance now relies 100% on zone append being supported. That significantly
>>>>> simplifies the file system support and more importantly remove the need for
>>>>> locking around block allocation and BIO issuing, allowing to preserve a fully
>>>>> asynchronous write path that can include workqueues for efficient CPU usage of
>>>>> things like encryption and compression. Without zone append, file system would
>>>>> either (1) have to reject these drives that do not support zone append, or (2)
>>>>> implement 2 different write IO path (slower regular write and zone append). None
>>>>> of these options are ideal, to say the least.
>>>>>
>>>>> So the approach is: mandate zone append support for ZNS devices. To allow other
>>>>> ZNS drives, an emulation similar to SCSI can be implemented, with that emulation
>>>>> ideally combined to work for both types of drives if possible.
>>>>
>>>> Enforcing QD=1 becomes a problem on devices with large zones. In
>>>> a ZNS device that has smaller zones this should not be a problem.
>>>
>>> Let's be precise: this is not running the drive at QD=1, it is "at most one
>>> write *request* per zone". If the FS is simultaneously using multiple block
>>> groups mapped to different zones, you will get a total write QD > 1, and as many
>>> reads as you want.
>>>
>>>> Would you agree that it is possible to have a write path that relies on
>>>> QD=1, where the FS / application has the responsibility for enforcing
>>>> this? Down the road this QD can be increased if the device is able to
>>>> buffer the writes.
>>>
>>> Doing QD=1 per zone for writes at the FS layer, that is, at the BIO layer does
>>> not work. This is because BIOs can be as large as the FS wants them to be. Such
>>> large BIO will be split into multiple requests in the block layer, resulting in
>>> more than one write per zone. That is why the zone write locking is at the
>>> scheduler level, between BIO split and request dispatch. That avoids the
>>> multiple requests fragments of a large BIO to be reordered and fail. That is
>>> mandatory as the block layer itself can occasionally reorder requests and lower
>>> levels such as AHCI HW is also notoriously good at reversing sequential
>>> requests. For NVMe with multi-queue, the IO issuing process getting rescheduled
>>> on a different CPU can result in sequential IOs being in different queues, with
>>> the likely result of an out-of-order execution. All cases are avoided with zone
>>> write locking and at most one write request dispatch per zone as recommended by
>>> the ZNS specifications (ZBC and ZAC standards for SMR HDDs are silent on this).
>>>
>>
>> I understand. I agree that the current FSs supporting ZNS follow this
>> approach and it makes sense that there is a common interface that
>> simplifies the FS implementation. See the comment below on the part I
>> believe we see things differently.
>>
>>
>>>> I would be OK with some FS implementations to rely on append and impose
>>>> the constraint that append has to be supported (and it would be our job
>>>> to change that), but I would like to avoid the driver rejecting
>>>> initializing the device because current FS implementations have
>>>> implemented this logic.
>>>
>>> What is the difference between the driver rejecting drives and the FS rejecting
>>> the same drives ? That has the same end result to me: an entire class of devices
>>> cannot be used as desired by the user. Implementing zone append emulation avoids
>>> the rejection entirely while still allowing the FS to have a single write IO
>>> path, thus simplifying the code.
>>
>> The difference is that users that use a raw ZNS device submitting I/O
>> through the kernel would still be able to use these devices. The result
>> would be that the ZNS SSD is recognized and initialized, but the FS
>> format fails.
>
>I understand your point of view. Raw ZNS block device access by an application
>is of course a fine use case. SMR also has plenty of these.
>
>My point is that enabling this regular write/raw device use case should not
>prevent using btrfs or other kernel components that require zone append.
>Implementing zone append emulation in the NVMe/ZNS driver for devices without
>native support for the command enables *all* use cases without impacting the use
>case you are interested in.
>
>This approach is, in my opinion, far better. No one is left out and the user
>gains a flexible system with different setup capabilities. The user wins here.

So, do you see a path where we enable the following:

    1. We add the emulation layer to the NVMe driver for enabling FSs
       that currently support zoned devices
    2. We add a path from user-space (e.g., uring) to enable passthru
       commands to the NVMe driver to enable a raw ZNS path from the
       application. This path does not require the device to support
       append. An initial limitation is that I/Os must be of < 127 bio
       segments (same as append) to avod bio splits
    3. As per above, the NVMe driver allows ZNS drives without append
       support to be initialized and the check moves to the FS
       formatting.

2 and 3. is something we have on our end. We need to rebase on top of
the patches you guys submitted. 1. is something we can help with after
that.

Does the above make sense to you?

>
>>
>>>
>>>> We can agree that a number of initial customers will use these devices
>>>> raw, using the in-kernel I/O path, but without a FS on top.
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts?
>>>>
>>>>> and note that
>>>>> this emulation would require the drive to be operated with mq-deadline to enable
>>>>> zone write locking for preserving write command order. While on a HDD the
>>>>> performance penalty is minimal, it will likely be significant on a SSD.
>>>>
>>>> Exactly my concern. I do not want ZNS SSDs to be impacted by this type
>>>> of design decision at the driver level.
>>>
>>> But your proposed FS level approach would end up doing the exact same thing with
>>> the same limitation and so the same potential performance impact. The block
>>> layer generic approach has the advantage that we do not bother the higher levels
>>> with the implementation of in-order request dispatch guarantees. File systems
>>> are complex enough. The less complexity is required for zone support, the better.
>>
>> This depends very much on how the FS / application is managing
>> stripping. At the moment our main use case is enabling user-space
>> applications submitting I/Os to raw ZNS devices through the kernel.
>>
>> Can we enable this use case to start with?
>
>Yes, see above. Again, we should not have to choose one *or* the other. The user
>should be able to use both raw accesses *and* file systems that require zone
>append. The initial patch set enables the latter. For the former, additional
>patches are needed. And the work done in SCSI already simplifies that task. The
>block layer is already wired to handle zone append emulation.

Agree.

Javier