Re: [Xen-devel] How can Xen trigger a context switch in an HVM guest domain?

[XiaYubin <xiayubin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, George,

Thank you for your reply. Actually, I'm looking for a generic
mechanism of cooperative scheduling. The independence of  guest OS can
make such mechanism more convincing and practical, just like the
balloon driver does.

Maybe you are wondering why I asked such a wired question, let me
describe it with more details. My current work is based on "Task-aware
VM scheduling", which is published on VEE'09. By monitoring CR3
changing at VMM level, Xen can get information of tasks' CPU
consumption to identify CPU hogs and I/O tasks. Therefore, the
task-aware mechanism offers a more fine-grained scheduler than the
original VCPU-level scheduler, as a VCPU may run CPU hogs and I/O
tasks in a mixed style.

Imagine there are n VMs. One of them, named mix-VM, runs two tasks:
cpuhog and iotask (network). The other VMs, named CPU-VM, run just
cpuhog. All VMs are using PV driver ( GPLPV driver for Windows).

Here's what supposed to happen when iotask receiving an network
packet: The NIC raises an IRQ, passes to Xen, then domain-0 sends an
inter-domain event to mix-VM, which is likely to be in run-queue. Xen
then schedules it to run immediately and set its state to
preempting-state. Right after that, the mix-VM *should* schedules
iotask to process the incoming packet, and then schedules cpuhog after
processing. When the CR3 is changing to cpuhog, Xen knows that the
mix-VM has finished I/O processing (here we assume that the priority
of cpuhog is usually lower than iotask in most OS), and schedules the
mix-VM out to finish its preempting-state. Therefore, the mix-VM can
preempt other VMs to process I/O ASAP, while making the preempting
time as short as possible to keep fairness. The point is: cpuhog
should not run in preempting-state.

However, a problem arises when the mix-VM sending packets. When iotask
sends an amount of data (using TCP protocol), it will block and wait
to be waked up after guest kernel sending all the data, which may be
split into thousands of TCP packets. The mix-VM will receives an ACK
packet every time it sending a packet, which makes it enter
preempting-state. Note that at this moment, the CR3 of mix-VM is
cpuhog's (as the only running process). After the guest kernel
processing the ACK packet and sending next packet, it switches to user
mode, which means the cpuhog gets to run in preempting-state. The
point is: as there is no CR3-changing, Xen has no way to run.

One way is to add a hook at user/kernel mode switching, then Xen can
catch the moment when cpuhog gets to run. However, this way costs too
much. Another way is to force a VM to schedule when it entering
preempting-state. Therefore, it will trap to Xen when CR3 is changed,
and Xen can finish its preempting-state when it schedules cpuhog to
run. That's why I want to trigger guest context switch from Xen. I
don't really care *which* process it will switch to, I just want to
get Xen a chance to run. The point is: is there a better/simpler way
to solve this problem?

Hope I described the problem clearly. And would you please show more
details about the thought of "reschedule event channel"? Thanks!

--
Yubin

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 11:20 PM, George Dunlap
<George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Context switching is a choice the guest OS has to make, and how that's
> done will differ based on the operating system.  I think if you're
> thinking about modifying the guest scheduler, you're probably better
> off starting with Linux.  Even if there's a way to convince Windows to
> call schedule() to pick a new process, I'm not sure you'll be able to
> tell it *which* process to choose.
>
> As far as mechanism on Xen's side, it would be easy enough to allocate
> a "reschedule" event channel for the guest, such that whenever you
> want to trigger a guest reschedule, just raise the event channel.
>
>  -George
>
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 11:02 AM, XiaYubin <xiayubin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hi, all,
>>
>> As I'm doing some research in cooperative scheduling between Xen and
>> guest domain, I want to know how many ways can Xen trigger a context
>> switch inside an HVM guest domain (which runs Windows in my case). Do
>> I have to write a driver (like balloon-driver)? Or a user process is
>> enough? Or there is an even simpler way?
>>
>> All your suggestions are appreciated. Thanks! :)
>>
>> --
>> Yubin
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Xen-devel mailing list
>> Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>>
>

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