Re: [PATCH v3 12/16] migration/multifd: Add direct-io support

[Peter Xu]

On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 03:57:27PM -0300, Fabiano Rosas wrote:
> When multifd is used along with mapped-ram, we can take benefit of a
> filesystem that supports the O_DIRECT flag and perform direct I/O in
> the multifd threads. This brings a significant performance improvement
> because direct-io writes bypass the page cache which would otherwise
> be thrashed by the multifd data which is unlikely to be needed again
> in a short period of time.
> 
> To be able to use a multifd channel opened with O_DIRECT, we must
> ensure that a certain aligment is used. Filesystems usually require a
> block-size alignment for direct I/O. The way to achieve this is by
> enabling the mapped-ram feature, which already aligns its I/O properly
> (see MAPPED_RAM_FILE_OFFSET_ALIGNMENT at ram.c).
> 
> By setting O_DIRECT on the multifd channels, all writes to the same
> file descriptor need to be aligned as well, even the ones that come
> from outside multifd, such as the QEMUFile I/O from the main migration
> code. This makes it impossible to use the same file descriptor for the
> QEMUFile and for the multifd channels. The various flags and metadata
> written by the main migration code will always be unaligned by virtue
> of their small size. To workaround this issue, we'll require a second
> file descriptor to be used exclusively for direct I/O.
> 
> The second file descriptor can be obtained by QEMU by re-opening the
> migration file (already possible), or by being provided by the user or
> management application (support to be added in future patches).
> 
> Signed-off-by: Fabiano Rosas <farosas@suse.de>

Reviewed-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>

-- 
Peter Xu