[PATCH v5 00/10] xen-block: multi hardware-queues/rings support

From: Bob Liu
Date: Fri Nov 13 2015 - 22:12:43 EST


Note: These patches were based on original work of Arianna's internship for
GNOME's Outreach Program for Women.

After using blk-mq api, a guest has more than one(nr_vpus) software request
queues associated with each block front. These queues can be mapped over several
rings(hardware queues) to the backend, making it very easy for us to run
multiple threads on the backend for a single virtual disk.

By having different threads issuing requests at the same time, the performance
of guest can be improved significantly.

Test was done based on null_blk driver:
dom0: v4.3-rc7 16vcpus 10GB "modprobe null_blk"
domU: v4.3-rc7 16vcpus 10GB

[test]
rw=read
direct=1
ioengine=libaio
bs=4k
time_based
runtime=30
filename=/dev/xvdb
numjobs=16
iodepth=64
iodepth_batch=64
iodepth_batch_complete=64
group_reporting

Results:
iops1: After commit("xen/blkfront: make persistent grants per-queue").
iops2: After commit("xen/blkback: make persistent grants and free pages pool per-queue").

Queues: 1 4 8 16
Iops orig(k): 810 1064 780 700
Iops1(k): 810 1230(~20%) 1024(~20%) 850(~20%)
Iops2(k): 810 1410(~35%) 1354(~75%) 1440(~100%)

With 4 queues after this series we can get ~75% increase in IOPS, and
performance won't drop if incresing queue numbers.

Please find the respective chart in this link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/agrcy2pbzbsvmwv/iops.png?dl=0

---
v5:
* Rebase to xen/tip.git tags/for-linus-4.4-rc0-tag.
* Comments from Konrad.

v4:
* Rebase to v4.3-rc7.
* Comments from Roger.

v3:
* Rebased to v4.2-rc8.

Bob Liu (10):
xen/blkif: document blkif multi-queue/ring extension
xen/blkfront: separate per ring information out of device info
xen/blkfront: pseudo support for multi hardware queues/rings
xen/blkfront: split per device io_lock
xen/blkfront: negotiate number of queues/rings to be used with backend
xen/blkback: separate ring information out of struct xen_blkif
xen/blkback: pseudo support for multi hardware queues/rings
xen/blkback: get the number of hardware queues/rings from blkfront
xen/blkfront: make persistent grants per-queue
xen/blkback: make pool of persistent grants and free pages per-queue

drivers/block/xen-blkback/blkback.c | 386 ++++++++++---------
drivers/block/xen-blkback/common.h | 78 ++--
drivers/block/xen-blkback/xenbus.c | 359 ++++++++++++------
drivers/block/xen-blkfront.c | 718 ++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
include/xen/interface/io/blkif.h | 48 +++
5 files changed, 971 insertions(+), 618 deletions(-)

--
1.8.3.1

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