[Libguestfs] [PATCH v2] v2v/v2v.ml: Use larger request size for -o rhv-upload

[Laszlo Ersek]

On 02/14/22 14:01, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 12:53:01PM +0100, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
>> On 02/14/22 10:56, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>>> This change slowed things down (slightly) for me, although the change
>>> is within the margin of error so it probably made no difference.
>>>
>>> Before:
>>>
>>> $ time ./run virt-v2v -i disk /var/tmp/fedora-35.qcow2 -o rhv-upload -oc https://ovirt4410/ovirt-engine/api -op /tmp/ovirt-passwd -oo rhv-direct -os ovirt-data -on test14 -of raw
>>> [   0.0] Setting up the source: -i disk /var/tmp/fedora-35.qcow2
>>> [   1.0] Opening the source
>>> [   6.5] Inspecting the source
>>> [  10.5] Checking for sufficient free disk space in the guest
>>> [  10.5] Converting Fedora Linux 35 (Thirty Five) to run on KVM
>>> virt-v2v: warning: /files/boot/grub2/device.map/hd0 references unknown 
>>> device "vda".  You may have to fix this entry manually after conversion.
>>> virt-v2v: This guest has virtio drivers installed.
>>> [  57.0] Mapping filesystem data to avoid copying unused and blank areas
>>> [  59.0] Closing the overlay
>>> [  59.6] Assigning disks to buses
>>> [  59.6] Checking if the guest needs BIOS or UEFI to boot
>>> [  59.6] Setting up the destination: -o rhv-upload -oc https://ovirt4410/ovirt-engine/api -os ovirt-data
>>> [  79.3] Copying disk 1/1
>>> █ 100% [****************************************]
>>> [  89.9] Creating output metadata
>>> [  94.0] Finishing off
>>>
>>> real	 1m34.213s
>>> user	 0m6.585s
>>> sys	 0m11.880s
>>>
>>>
>>> After:
>>>
>>> $ time ./run virt-v2v -i disk /var/tmp/fedora-35.qcow2 -o rhv-upload -oc https://ovirt4410/ovirt-engine/api -op /tmp/ovirt-passwd -oo rhv-direct -os ovirt-data -on test15 -of raw
>>> [   0.0] Setting up the source: -i disk /var/tmp/fedora-35.qcow2
>>> [   1.0] Opening the source
>>> [   7.4] Inspecting the source
>>> [  11.7] Checking for sufficient free disk space in the guest
>>> [  11.7] Converting Fedora Linux 35 (Thirty Five) to run on KVM
>>> virt-v2v: warning: /files/boot/grub2/device.map/hd0 references unknown 
>>> device "vda".  You may have to fix this entry manually after conversion.
>>> virt-v2v: This guest has virtio drivers installed.
>>> [  59.6] Mapping filesystem data to avoid copying unused and blank areas
>>> [  61.5] Closing the overlay
>>> [  62.2] Assigning disks to buses
>>> [  62.2] Checking if the guest needs BIOS or UEFI to boot
>>> [  62.2] Setting up the destination: -o rhv-upload -oc https://ovirt4410/ovirt-engine/api -os ovirt-data
>>> [  81.6] Copying disk 1/1
>>> █ 100% [****************************************]
>>> [  91.3] Creating output metadata
>>> [  96.0] Finishing off
>>>
>>> real	 1m36.275s
>>> user	 0m4.700s
>>> sys	 0m14.070s
>>
>> My ACK on Nir's v2 patch basically means that I defer to you on its
>> review -- I don't have anything against it, but I understand it's
>> (perhaps a temporary) workaround until we find a more sustainable (and
>> likely much more complex) solution.
> 
> Sure, I don't mind taking this as a temporary solution.  The code
> itself is perfectly fine.  The request size here is essentially an
> optimization hint, it doesn't affect the architecture.
> 
> An architectural problem that affects both nbdkit & nbdcopy is that
> NBD commands drive the nbdkit backend and the nbdcopy loop.  If we
> make the nbdcopy --request-size larger, NBD commands ask for more
> data, nbdkit-vddk-plugin makes larger VixDiskLib_ReadAsynch requests,
> which at some point breaks the VMware server.  (This is fairly easy to
> solve in nbdkit-vddk-plugin or with a filter.)
> 
> But nbdcopy needs to be reworked to make the input and output requests
> separate, so that nbdcopy will coalesce and split blocks as it copies.
> This is difficult.
> 
> Another problem I'm finding (eg
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2039255#c9) is that
> performance of new virt-v2v is extremely specific to input and output
> mode, and hardware and network configurations.  For reasons that I
> don't fully understand.

How are the nbdcopy source and destination coupled with each other? From
work I'd done a decade ago, I remember that connecting two
network-oriented (UDP) processes with a small-buffer pipe between them
caused very bad effects. Whenever either process was blocked on the
network (or on a timer, for example), the pipe went immediately full or
empty (dependent on the particular blocked process), which in turn
blocked the other process almost immediately. So the mitigation for that
was to create a simple local app, to be inserted between the two
network-oriented processes in the pipeline, just to de-couple them from
each other, and make sure that a write to the pipe, or a read from it,
would effectively never block. (The app-in-the-middle did have a maximum
buffer size, but it was configurable, so not a practical limitation; it
could be multiple tens of MB if needed.)

If nbdcopy does some internal queueing (perhaps implicitly, i.e. by
allowing multiple requests to be in flight at the same time), then
seeing some stats on those "in real time" could be enlightening.

Just guessing of course...

Thanks
Laszlo