Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] blkback: Fix block I/O latency issue

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 06:54:38PM -0700, Vincent, Pradeep wrote:
> Hey Daniel,
>  
> Thanks for your comments.
>  
> >> The notification avoidance these macros implement does not promote
> >>deliberate latency. This stuff is not dropping events or deferring guest
> requests.
>  
> It only avoids a gratuitious notification sent by the remote end in
> cases where the local one didn't go to sleep yet, and therefore can
> >>guarantee that it's going to process the message ASAP, right after
> >>finishing what's still pending from the previous kick.
>  
> If the design goal was to simply avoid unnecessary interrupts but not
> delay I/Os, then blkback code has a bug.
> 
> If the design goal was to delay the I/Os in order to reducing interrupt
> rate, then I am arguing that the design introduces way too much latency
> that affects many applications.
> 
> Either way, this issue needs to be addressed.


I agree we need to fix this. What I am curious is:
 - what are the workloads under which this patch has a negative effect.
 - I presume you have tested this in the production - what were the numbers
   when it came to high bandwith numbers (so imagine, four or six threads
   putting as much I/O as possible)? Did the level of IRQs go way up
   compared to not running with this patch?


I am wondering if it might be worth looking in something NAPI-type in the
block layer (so polling basically). The concern I've is that this
patch would trigger a interrupt storm for small sized requests which might be
happening at a high rate (say, 512 bytes random writes).

But perhaps the way for this work is to have a ratelimiting code in it
so that there is no chance of interrupt storms.

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