Re: [PATCH 0/2] i386: Fix interrupt based Async PF enablement

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Vitaly Kuznetsov (vkuznets@redhat.com) wrote:
> Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 10:38:06AM +0200, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
> >> Eduardo Habkost <ehabkost@redhat.com> writes:
> >> 
> >> > On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 08:14:30PM +0100, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> >> >> * Paolo Bonzini (pbonzini@redhat.com) wrote:
> >> >> > On 06/04/21 13:42, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
> >> >> > > older machine types are still available (I disable it for <= 5.1 
> >> >> > > but we
> >> >> > > can consider disabling it for 5.2 too). The feature is upstream 
> >> >> > > since
> >> >> > > Linux 5.8, I know that QEMU supports much older kernels but this 
> >> >> > > doesn't
> >> >> > > probably mean that we can't enable new KVM PV features unless all
> >> >> > > supported kernels have it, we'd have to wait many years otherwise.
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > Yes, this is a known problem in fact. :(  In 6.0 we even support RHEL 
> >> >> > 7,
> >> >> > though that will go away in 6.1.
> >> >> > 
> >> >> > We should take the occasion of dropping RHEL7 to be clearer about 
> >> >> > which
> >> >> > kernels are supported.
> >> >> 
> >> >> It would be nice to be able to define sets of KVM functonality that we
> >> >> can either start given machine types with, or provide a separate switch
> >> >> to limit kvm functionality back to some defined point.  We do trip over
> >> >> the same things pretty regularly when accidentally turning on new
> >> >> features.
> >> >
> >> > The same idea can apply to the hyperv=on stuff Vitaly is working
> >> > on.  Maybe we should consider making a generic version of the
> >> > s390x FeatGroup code, use it to define convenient sets of KVM and
> >> > hyperv features.
> >> 
> >> True, the more I look at PV features enablement, the more I think that
> >> we're missing something important in the logic. All machine types we
> >> have are generally suposed to work with the oldest supported kernel so
> >> we should wait many years before enabling some of the new PV features
> >> (KVM or Hyper-V) by default.
> >> 
> >> This also links to our parallel discussion regarding migration
> >> policies. Currently, we can't enable PV features by default based on
> >> their availability on the host because of migration, the set may differ
> >> on the destination host. What if we introduce (and maybe even switch to
> >> it by default) something like
> >> 
> >>  -migratable opportunistic (stupid name, I know)
> >> 
> >> which would allow to enable all features supported by the source host
> >> and then somehow checking that the destination host has them all. This
> >> would effectively mean that it is possible to migrate a VM to a
> >> same-or-newer software (both kernel an QEMU) but not the other way
> >> around. This may be a reasonable choice.
> >
> > I don't think this is usable in pratice. Any large cloud or data center
> > mgmt app using QEMU relies on migration, so can't opportunistically
> > use arbitrary new features. They can only use features in the oldest
> > kernel their deployment cares about. This can be newer than the oldest
> > that QEMU supports, but still older than the newest that exists.
> >
> > ie we have situation where:
> >
> >  - QEMU upstream minimum host is version 7
> >  - Latest possible host is version 45
> >  - A particular deployment has a mixture of hosts at version 24 and 37
> >
> > "-migratable opportunistic"  would let QEMU use features from version 37
> > despite the deployment needing compatibility with host version 24 still.
> >
> 
> True; I was not really thinking about 'big' clouds/data centers, these
> should have enough resources to carefully set all the required features
> and not rely on the 'default'. My thoughts were around using migration
> for host upgrade on smaller (several hosts) deployments and in this case
> it's probably fairly reasonable to require to start with the oldest host
> and upgrade them all if getting new features is one of the upgrade goals.

It's not actually that simple.
Small installations tend to have less spare hardware available and/or
flexibility; if you've got say a 3 or 5 host cluster, once you start
upgrading one node you've now got nowhere to go if you hit a problem.

Dave

> >
> > It is almost as if we need to have a way to explicitly express a minimum
> > required host version that VM requires compatibility with, so deployments
> > can set their own baseline that is newer than QEMU minimum.
> 
> Yes, maybe, but setting the baseline is also a non-trivial task:
> e.g. how would users know which PV features they can enable without
> going through Linux kernel logs or just trying them on the oldest kernel
> they need? This should probably be solved by some upper layer management
> app which would collect feature sets from all hosts and come up with a
> common subset. I'm not sure if this is done by some tools already.
> 
> -- 
> Vitaly
> 
-- 
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / dgilbert@redhat.com / Manchester, UK