Re: [PATCH] virtio: fix IO request length in virtio SCSI/block #PSBM-78839

[Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>]

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On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 02:55:47PM +0300, Denis Plotnikov wrote:
> From: "Denis V. Lunev" <den@openvz.org>
> 
> Linux guests submit IO requests no longer than PAGE_SIZE * max_seg
> field reported by SCSI controler. Thus typical sequential read with
> 1 MB size results in the following pattern of the IO from the guest:
>   8,16   1    15754     2.766095122  2071  D   R 2095104 + 1008 [dd]
>   8,16   1    15755     2.766108785  2071  D   R 2096112 + 1008 [dd]
>   8,16   1    15756     2.766113486  2071  D   R 2097120 + 32 [dd]
>   8,16   1    15757     2.767668961     0  C   R 2095104 + 1008 [0]
>   8,16   1    15758     2.768534315     0  C   R 2096112 + 1008 [0]
>   8,16   1    15759     2.768539782     0  C   R 2097120 + 32 [0]
> The IO was generated by
>   dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=1024 iflag=direct
> 
> This effectively means that on rotational disks we will observe 3 IOPS
> for each 2 MBs processed. This definitely negatively affects both
> guest and host IO performance.
> 
> The cure is relatively simple - we should report lengthy scatter-gather
> ability of the SCSI controller. Fortunately the situation here is very
> good. VirtIO transport layer can accomodate 1024 items in one request
> while we are using only 128. This situation is present since almost
> very beginning. 2 items are dedicated for request metadata thus we
> should publish VIRTQUEUE_MAX_SIZE - 2 as max_seg.
> 
> The following pattern is observed after the patch:
>   8,16   1     9921     2.662721340  2063  D   R 2095104 + 1024 [dd]
>   8,16   1     9922     2.662737585  2063  D   R 2096128 + 1024 [dd]
>   8,16   1     9923     2.665188167     0  C   R 2095104 + 1024 [0]
>   8,16   1     9924     2.665198777     0  C   R 2096128 + 1024 [0]
> which is much better.
> 
> The dark side of this patch is that we are tweaking guest visible
> parameter, though this should be relatively safe as above transport
> layer support is present in QEMU/host Linux for a very long time.
> The patch adds configurable property for VirtIO SCSI with a new default
> and hardcode option for VirtBlock which does not provide good
> configurable framework.
> 
> Unfortunately the commit can not be applied as is. For the real cure we
> need guest to be fixed to accomodate that queue length, which is done
> only in the latest 4.14 kernel. Thus we are going to expose the property
> and tweak it on machine type level.
> 
> The problem with the old kernels is that they have
> max_segments <= virtqueue_size restriction which cause the guest
> crashing in the case of violation.
> To fix the case described above in the old kernels we can increase
> virtqueue_size to 256 and max_segments to 254. The pitfall here is
> that seabios allows the virtqueue_size-s < 128, however, the seabios
> patch extending that value to 256 is pending.

If I understand correctly you are relying on Indirect Descriptor support
in the guest driver in order to exceed the Virtqueue Descriptor Table
size.

Unfortunately the "max_segments <= virtqueue_size restriction" is
required by the VIRTIO 1.1 specification:

  2.6.5.3.1 Driver Requirements: Indirect Descriptors

  A driver MUST NOT create a descriptor chain longer than the Queue
  Size of the device.

So this idea seems to be in violation of the specification?

There is a bug in hw/block/virtio-blk.c:virtio_blk_update_config() and
hw/scsi/virtio-scsi.c:virtio_scsi_get_config():

  virtio_stl_p(vdev, &blkcfg.seg_max, 128 - 2);

This number should be the minimum of blk_get_max_iov() and
virtio_queue_get_num(), minus 2 for the header and footer.

I looked at the Linux SCSI driver code and it seems each HBA has a
single max_segments number - it does not vary on a per-device basis.
This could be a problem if two host block device with different
max_segments are exposed to the guest through the same virtio-scsi
controller.  Another bug? :(

Anyway, if you want ~1024 descriptors you should set Queue Size to 1024.
I don't see a spec-compliant way of doing it otherwise.  Hopefully I
have overlooked something and there is a nice way to solve this.

Stefan

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