On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 1:19 PM Roman Mohr <rmohr@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 1:09 PM Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 12:53:49PM +0200, Roman Mohr wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a question regarding enabling l3 cache emulation on Domains. Can
> this also be enabled without cpu-pinning, or does it need cpu pinning to
> emulate the l3 caches according to the cpus where the guest is pinned to?
I presume you're referring to
<cpu>
<cache level='3' mode='emulate|passthrough|none'/>
</cpu>
There is no hard restriction placed on usage of these modes by QEMU.
Conceptually though, you only want to use "passthrough" mode if you
have configured the sockets/cores/threads topology to match the host
CPUs. In turn you only ever want to set sockets/cores/threads to
match the host if you have done CPU pinning such that the topology
actually matches the host CPUs that have been pinned to.
As a rule of thumb
- If letting CPUs float
-> Always uses sockets=1, cores=num-vCPUs, threads=1
-> cache==emulate
-> Always use 1 guest NUMA node (ie the default)
Is `emulate` also the default in libvirt? If not, would you see any reason, e.g. thinking about migrations, to not set it always if no cpu pinning is done?
To answer my own question: I guess something like [1] is a good reason to not enable l3-cache by default, since it seems to have an impact on VM density on nodes.
- If strictly pinning CPUs 1:1
-> Use sockets=N, cores=M, threads=0 to match the topology
of the CPUs that have been pinned to
-> cache==passthrough
-> Configure virtual NUMA nodes if the CPU pinning or guest
RAM needs cross host NUMA nodes.
Regards,
Daniel
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