[libvirt] RFC: Improve performance of macvtap device creation

[Michal Privoznik]

On 29.10.2015 18:48, Laine Stump wrote:
> On 10/29/2015 12:49 PM, Tony Krowiak wrote:
>> For a guest domain defined with a large number of macvtap devices, it
>> takes an exceedingly long time to boot the guest. In a test of a guest
>> domain configured with 82 macvtap devices, it took over two minutes
>> for the guest to boot. An strace of the ioctl calls during guest start
>> up showed the SIOCGIFFLAGS ioctl literally being invoked 3,403 times.
>> I was able to isolate the source of the ioctl calls to
>> the*virNetDevMacVLanCreateWithVPortProfile*  function
>> in*virnetdevmacvlan.c*. The macvtap interface name is created by
>> looping over a counter variable, starting with zero, and appending the
>> counter value to 'macvtap'.
> 
> I've wondered ever since the first time I saw that code why it was done
> that way, and why there had never been any performance complaints.
> Lacking any complaints, I promptly forgot about it (until the next time
> I went past the code for some other tangentially related reason.)
> 
> Since you're the first to complain, you have the honor of fixing it :-)
> 
>> With each iteration, a call is made to*virNetDevExists*  (SIOCGIFFLAGS
>> ioctl) to determine if a device with that name already exists, until a
>> unique name is created. In the test case cited above, to create an
>> interface name for the 82nd macvtap device, the*virNetDevExists* 
>> function will be called for interface names 'macvtap0' to 'macvtap80'
>> before it is determined that 'mavtap81' can be used. So if N is the
>> number of macvtap interfaces defined for a guest, the SIOCGIFFLAGS
>> ioctl will be invoked (N x N + N)/2 times to find an unused macvtap
>> device names. That's assuming only one guest is being started, who
>> knows how many times the ioctl may have to be called in an
>> installation running a large number of guests defined with macvtap
>> devices.

Not only that, but unitl c0d162c68c2f19af8d55a435a9e372da33857048 (
contained v1.2.2~32) if two threads were starting a domain concurrently,
they even competed with each other in that specific area of the code.

>>
>> I was able to reduce the amount of time for starting a guest domain
>> defined with 82 macvtap devices from over 2 minutes to about 14
>> seconds by keeping track of the interface name suffixes previously
>> used. I defined two static bit maps (virBitmap), one each for macvtap
>> and macvlan device name suffixes. When a macvtap/macvlan device is
>> created, the index of the next clear bit (virBitmapNextClearBit) is
>> retrieved to create the name. If an interface with that name does not
>> exist, the device is created and the bit at the index used to create
>> the interface name is set (virBitmapSetBit). When a macvtap/macvlan
>> device is deleted, if the interface name has the pattern 'macvtap%d'
>> or 'macvlan%d', the suffix is parsed into a bit index and used to
>> clear the (virBitMapClearBit) bit in the respective bitmap.
> 
> This sounds fine, as long as 1) you recreate the bitmap whenever
> libvirtd is restarted (while scanning through all the interfaces of
> every domain; there is already code being executed in exactly the right
> place - look for qemu_process.c:qemuProcessNotifyNets() and add
> appropriate code inside the loop there), and 2) you retry some number of
> times if a supposedly unused device name is actually in use (to account
> for processes other than libvirt using the same naming convention).

How about re-using the approach we have for virPortAllocator? We
maintain a bitmap of ports. On acquiring new port, we try to bind() to
it. If we succeeded, we set the corresponding bit in the bitmap. Of
course it may happen that a port in the host is already taken but our
bitmap does not think so. That's okay. We just leave the corresponding
bit alone => if we would set it as used, nobody will ever unset it.
Moreover, we will try the port next time, and it may be free.

Moreover, the bitmap is not saved anywhere, nor restored on daemon
restart - this could be changed though.

So what am I saying is practically the same as Laine, just extending his
thoughts and giving you an example how to proceed further :)

Michal