[PATCH 0/11] KVM: nVMX: shadow VMCS support, v4

["Abel Gordon" <abelg@il.ibm.com>]

This series of patches implements shadow-vmcs capability for nested VMX.

Shadow-vmcs - background and overview:

 In Intel VMX, vmread and vmwrite privileged instructions are used by the
 hypervisor to read and modify the guest and host specifications (VMCS). In a
 nested virtualization environment, L1 executes multiple vmread and vmwrite
 instruction to handle a single L2 exit. Each vmread and vmwrite executed by L1
 traps (cause an exit) to the L0 hypervisor (KVM). L0 emulates the instruction
 behaviour and resumes L1 execution.

 Removing the need to trap and emulate these special instructions reduces the
 number of exits and improves nested virtualization performance. As it was first
 evaluated in [1], exit-less vmread and vmwrite can reduce nested virtualization
 overhead up-to 40%.
 
 Intel introduced a new feature to their processors called shadow-vmcs.  Using
 shadow-vmcs, L0 can configure the processor to let L1 running in guest-mode
 access VMCS12 fields using vmread and vmwrite instructions but without causing
 an exit to L0. The VMCS12 fields' data is stored in a shadow-vmcs controlled
 by L0.

Shadow-vmcs - design considerations: 

 A shadow-vmcs is processor-dependent and must be accessed by L0 or L1 using
 vmread and vmwrite instructions. With nested virtualization we aim to abstract
 the hardware from the L1 hypervisor. Thus, to avoid hardware dependencies we
 prefered to keep the software defined VMCS12 format as part of L1 address space
 and hold the processor-specific shadow-vmcs format only in L0 address space.
 In other words, the shadow-vmcs is used by L0 as an accelerator but the format
 and content is never exposed to L1 directly. L0 syncs the content of the
 processor-specific shadow vmcs with the content of the software-controlled
 VMCS12 format.

 We could have been kept the processor-specific shadow-vmcs format in L1 address
 space to avoid using the software defined VMCS12 format, however, this type of
 design/implementation would have been created hardware dependencies and
 would complicate other capabilities (e.g. Live Migration of L1).

Changes since v1:
 1) Added sync_shadow_vmcs flag used to indicate when the content of VMCS12
    must be copied to the shadow vmcs. The flag value is checked during 
    vmx_vcpu_run.
 2) Code quality improvements

Changes since v2:
 1) Allocate shadow vmcs only once per VCPU on handle_vmxon and re-use the 
    same instance for multiple VMCS12s
 2) More code quality improvements

Changes since v3:
 1) Fixed VMXON emulation (new patch). 
    Previous nVMX code didn't verify if L1 is already in root mode (VMXON
    was previously called). Now we call nested_vmx_failValid if VMX is 
    already ON. This is requird to avoid host leaks (due to shadow vmcs 
    allocation) if L1 repetedly executes VMXON.
 2) Improved comment: clarified we do not shadow fields that are modified
    when L1 executes vmx instructions like the VM_INSTRUCTION_ERROR field.
 
Acknowledgments:

 Many thanks to
 "Natapov, Gleb" <gleb@redhat.com> 
 "Xu, Dongxiao" <dongxiao.xu@intel.com>
 "Nakajima, Jun" <jun.nakajima@intel.com>
 "Har'El, Nadav" <nadav@harel.org.il> 
  
 for the insightful discussions, comments and reviews.


 These patches were easily created and maintained using
     Patchouli -- patch creator
     http://patchouli.sourceforge.net/


[1] "The Turtles Project: Design and Implementation of Nested Virtualization",
    http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi10/tech/full_papers/Ben-Yehuda.pdf