[libvirt] [RFC][scale] new API for querying domains stats

[Francesco Romani]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Francesco Romani" <fromani at redhat.com>
> To: libvir-list at redhat.com
> Sent: Friday, July 4, 2014 6:44:07 PM
> Subject: Re: [libvirt] [RFC][scale] new API for querying domains stats

> > > However, a question here about bulk APIs.
> > > One cornerstone of oVirt is shared storage (NFS, ISCSI...); another is
> > > qemu/kvm,
> > > and COW images are supported (probably even the default, need to check).
> > > 
> > > Due to storage being unavailable because a network outage, it happened
> > > that
> > > virDomainGetBlockInfo blocked beyond recover.
> > > 
> > > On such scenarios, how will a bulk API behave? There will be a timeout or
> > > something else?
> > 
> > It depends on the storage and the way it is configured. If NFS is mounted
> > with 'hard' + 'nointr' any call libvirt makes to dead storage will get
> > stuck in an uninterruptable sleep in kernel space. There's no way for
> > libvirt to time out since by the very definition of 'hard' mount option
> > it does not time out. If you mount with 'soft' then the calls libvirt
> > makes will time out.
> 
> My bad, I worded poorly my question.
> 
> What I mean is: on top of what the kernel or QEMU (libnfs, libiscsi) does,
> there are plans for any additional mechanism/safeguard?
> (I guess no, I'm asking just to be sure).

Hi,

maybe borderline offtopic, but still about blocking calls:

We (VDSM/oVirt developers) are reviewing our usage of libvirt in sampling.
Afer a (quick) inspection of the code, I believe the following calls cannot
block due to FS/storage issues, as they do not need it in any way

I'm quite confident about these
* virDomainGetCPUStats: uses cgroups only (no FS/storage access)
* virDomainInterfaceStats: uses /proc/net/dev  (no FS/storage access)
* virDomainGetVcpus: uses uses /proc and syscall for PCPU affinity (no FS/storage access)
* virDomainSchedulerParameters: which uses cgroups (no FS/storage access)

Not sure about this, but it looks to me they don't need to access FS/storage either:
* virDomainGetVcpusFlags
* virDomainGetMetadata


Can please anyone confirm or deny?

Thanks and best regards

-- 
Francesco Romani
RedHat Engineering Virtualization R & D
Phone: 8261328
IRC: fromani