* Li, Liang Z (liang.z.li@xxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> Hi Dave,
>
> I am now working on how to benefit post-copy by skipping the free pages,
> and I remember you have said we should let the destination know the info
> of free pages so as to avoid request the free pages from the source.
>
> We have two solutions:
>
> a. send the migration dirty page bitmap to destination before post
> copy start, so the destination can decide whether to request the pages or
> place zero pages by checking the migration dirty page bitmap. The advantage
> is that we can avoid sending the free pages. the disadvantage is that we have
> to send extra data to destination.
>
> b. Check the page request on the source side, if it's not a dirty page, send a zero
> page header to the destination.
>
> What's your opinion about them?
(b) is certainly simpler - and requires no changes on the destination side
or the protocol.
If you then decided to add stuff to send the dirty page bit map later
you could do.
However, there are some other problems to figure out:
1) The source side quits when it thinks it's sent all pages; when is your
source going to quit? If it quits while the destination still has
unfulfilled pages then the destination will fail.
2) I sent a 'discard' bitmap of pages for the destination to unmap
just at the change into postcopy; so I'm already sending one bitmap;
this is for pages that have been changed since they were first sent
but not yet resent.
Be careful about how any changes you make interact with the generation
of that bitmap.
3) It's potentially very slow if the destination has to keep requesting
blank pages.
Essentially what you're suggesting for (a) is a way to send a compressed
set of 'page is zero' messages based on a bitmap, and you're worried about
the time to send it - which I think is where we started the conversation
about time to deal with zeros :-). Two ways to think of that are:
4) I already send one bitmap - so you're only doubling it in theory;
I originally used a sparse bitmap but the suggestion was it was
more complex than needed and it turned into more of a run-length encoding.
5) You're worried it would increase the downtime as you send the bitmap; however
if you implement (b) as well as (a) then you can send the data for
(a) after the destination is running and not increase the downtime.
Dave
--
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / dgilbert@xxxxxxxxxx / Manchester, UK
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