On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 07:46:27PM +0800, Eli wrote:

    @Eli: Can you help with the testing?

It seems the interface is only implement the isolated case, I remember
that you have proposed that for some overlap case?

Hi, yes.  It got a bit more complicated so I want to do this
incrementally.  First enable the easiest cases, then add APIs to manage
the system's default group, make type='both' allocation work on
CDP-enabled hosts, add APIs for modifying cachetunes for live and
stopped domains, add support for memory bandwidth allocation, and so
on.  This is too much stuff to add in one go.

I guess I forgot to add this info to the cover letter (I think I did at
least for the previous version).

I also wasted some time on the tests, some of them are not even in the
patchset, have a look at previous version if you want to see them.

I have not see the whole patch set yet, but I have some quick testing on
you patch, will try to find more time to review patches (Currently I am
maintain another daemon software which is dedicated for RDT feature
called RMD)

Only the issue 1 is the true issue, for the others, I think they should
be discussed, or be treat as the 'known issue'.

My env:

L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              56320K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-21,44-65
NUMA node1 CPU(s):     22-43,66-87


virsh capabilities:

171 <cache>
172       <bank id='0' level='3' type='both' size='55' unit='MiB'
cpus='0-21,44-65'>
173         <control granularity='2816' unit='KiB' type='both'
maxAllocs='16'/>
174 </bank>
175       <bank id='1' level='3' type='both' size='55' unit='MiB'
cpus='22-43,66-87'>
176         <control granularity='2816' unit='KiB' type='both'
maxAllocs='16'/>
177 </bank>
178     </cache>

*Issue:

*1. Doesn't support asynchronous cache allocation. e.g, I need provide
all cache allocation require ways, but I am only care about the
allocation on one of the cache id, cause the VM won't be schedule to
another cache (socket).

Oh, really?  This is not written in the kernel documentation.  Can't the
unspecified caches just inherit the setting from the default group?
That would make sense.  It would also automatically adjust if the
default system one is changed.

Do you have any contact to anyone working on the RDT in the kernel?  I
think this would save time and effort to anyone who will be using the
feature.

So I got this error if I define the domain like this:

  <vcpu placement='static'>6</vcpu>
  <cputune>
    <emulatorpin cpuset='0,37-38,44,81-82'/>
    <cachetune vcpus='0-4'>
*      <cache id='0' level='3' type='both' size='2816' unit='KiB'/>
       ^^^ not provide cache id='1'
*    </cachetune>


root@s2600wt:~# virsh start kvm-cat
error: Failed to start domain kvm-cat
error: Cannot write into schemata file
'/sys/fs/resctrl/qemu-qemu-13-kvm-cat-0-4/schemata': Invalid argument

Oh, I have to figure out why is there 'qemu-qemu' :D

This behavior is not correct.

I expect the CBM will be look like:

root@s2600wt:/sys/fs/resctrl# cat qemu-qemu-14-kvm-cat-0-4/*
000000,00000000,00000000
L3:0=80;1=fffff *(no matter what it is, cause my VM won't be schedule on
it, ether I have deinfe the vcpu->cpu pining or, I assume that kernel
won't schedule it to cache 1)

Well, it matters.  It would have to have all zeros there so that that
part of the cache is not occupied.

*Or at least, restrict xml when I define this domain, tell me I need to
provide all cache ids (even if I have 4 cache but I only run my VM on
'cache 0')
*

We could do that.  It would allow us to make this better (or lift the
restriction) in case this is "fixed" in the kernel.

Or at least in the future we could do this to meet the users half-way:

- Any vcpus that have cachetune enabled for them must also be pinned

- Users need to specify allocations for all cache ids that the vcpu
 might run on (according to the pinning acquired from before), for all
 others we'd just simply set it to all zeros or the same bitmask as the
 system's default group.

But for now we could just copy the system's setting to unspecified
caches or request the user to specify everything.

*2. cache way fragment (no good answers)

I see that for now we allocate cache ways start from the low bits, newly
created VM will allocate cache from the next way, if some of the VM
(allocated ways in the middle, eg it's schemata is 00100) destroyed, and
that slot (1 cache way) may not fit others and it will be wasted, But,
how can we handle this, seems no good way, rearrangement? That will lead
cache missing in a time window I think.

Avoiding fragmentation is not a simple thing.  It's impossible to do
without any moving, which might be unwanted.  This will be solved by
providing an API that will tell you move the allocation if you so
desire.  For now I at least try allocating the smallest region into
which the requested allocation fits, so that the unallocated parts are
as big as possible.

3. The admin/user should manually operate the default resource group,
that's is to say, after resctrl is mounted, the admin/user should
manually change the schemata of default group. Will libvirt provide
interface/API to handle it?

Yes, this is planned.

4. Will provide some APIs like `FreeCacheWay` to end user to see how
many cache ways could be allocated on the host?

Yes, this should be provided by an API as well.

    For other users/orchestrator (nova), they may need to know if a VM
can schedule on the host, but the cache ways is not liner, it may have
fragment.

5, What if other application want to have some shared cache ways with
some of the VM?
    Libvirt for now try to read all of the resource group (instead of
maintain the consumed cache ways itself), so if another resource group
was created under /sys/fs/resctl, and the schemata of it is "FFFFF",
then libvirt will report not enough room for new VM. But the user
actually want to have another Appliation(e.g. ovs, dpdk pmds) share
cache ways with the VM created by libvirt.

Adding support for shared allocations is planned as I said before,
however this is something that will be needed to be taken care of
differently anyway.  I don't know how specific the use case would be,
but let's say you want to have 8 cache ways allocated for the VM, but
share only 4 of them with some DPDK PMD.  You can't use "shared" because
that would just take some 8 bits even when some of them might be shared
with the system's default group.  Moreover it means that the allocation
can be shared with machines ran in the future.  So in this case you need
to have the 8 bits exclusively allocated and then (only after the
machine is started) pin the PMD process to those 4 cache ways.

For the missing issue from the other email:

If the host enabled CDP, which is to see the host will report l3 cache type
code and data. when user don't want code/data cache ways allocated
separated, for current implement, it will report not support `both` type
l3 cache.

But we can improve this as make code and data schemata the same
e.g, if host enabled CDP, but user request 2 `both` type l3 cache.

We can write the schemata looks like:

L3DATA:0=3
L3CODE:0=3

Yes, that's what we want to achieve, but again, in a future patchset.

Hope that answers your questions.  Thanks for trying it out, it is
really complicated to develop something like this without the actual
hardware to test it on.

Have a nice day,
Martin