WARNING - OLD ARCHIVES

This is an archived copy of the Xen.org mailing list, which we have preserved to ensure that existing links to archives are not broken. The live archive, which contains the latest emails, can be found at http://lists.xen.org/
   
 
 
Xen 
 
Home Products Support Community News
 
   
 

xen-devel

[Xen-devel] NUMA guest: best-fit-nodes algorithm (was Re: [PATCH 00/11]

To: Dulloor <dulloor@xxxxxxxxx>, "Cui, Dexuan" <dexuan.cui@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Xen-devel] NUMA guest: best-fit-nodes algorithm (was Re: [PATCH 00/11] PV NUMA Guests)
From: Andre Przywara <andre.przywara@xxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:45:58 +0200
Cc: xen-devel <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Nakajima, Jun" <jun.nakajima@xxxxxxxxx>
Delivery-date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:48:47 -0700
Envelope-to: www-data@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
List-help: <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=help>
List-id: Xen developer discussion <xen-devel.lists.xensource.com>
List-post: <mailto:xen-devel@lists.xensource.com>
List-subscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=subscribe>
List-unsubscribe: <http://lists.xensource.com/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel>, <mailto:xen-devel-request@lists.xensource.com?subject=unsubscribe>
Sender: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090820)
Dulloor wrote:
> Cui, Dexuan <dexuan.cui@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> xc_select_best_fit_nodes() decides the "min-set" of host nodes that
>> will be used for the guest. It only considers the current memory
>> usage of the system. Maybe we should also condider the cpu load? And >> the number of the nodes must be 2^^n? And how to handle the case
>> #vcpu is < #vnode?
>> And looks your patches only consider the guest's memory requirement
>> -- guest's vcpu requirement is neglected? e.g., a guest may not need
>> a very large amount of memory while it needs many vcpus.
>> xc_select_best_fit_nodes() should consider this when
>> determining the number of vnode.
> I agree with you. I was planning to consider vcpu load as the next
> step. Also, I am looking for a good heuristic. I looked at the
> nodeload heuristic (currently in xen), but found it too naive.
> But, if you/Andre think it is a good heuristic, I will add the
> support. Actually, I think in future we should do away with strict
> vcpu-affinities and rely more on a scheduler with necessary NUMA
> support to complement our placement strategies.
>
> As of now, we don't SPLIT, if #vcpu < #vnode. We use STRIPING in that
> case.
Determing the current load of a node is quite a hard thing to do currently in Xen. If guests are pinned to nodes (which I'd consider necessary with the current credit scheduler), then using this affinity is a good heuristic to find good nodes, at least the best I can think of. So until we have a NUMA aware scheduler, we should go with this solution. Of course it only measures the theoretical load of a node and doesn't distinguish between idle and loaded guests. One would need something like a permanently running xm top to gather statistics about the guest's load, but that is something for a future patch.
(Or is there a guest load metric already measured in Xen?)

Regards,
Andre.


--
Andre Przywara
AMD-Operating System Research Center (OSRC), Dresden, Germany
Tel: +49 351 448-3567-12


_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>