[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [Xen-devel] how to assign resources exclusive to a single domU



On 02/26/2015 09:57 AM, Olaf Hering wrote:
While working on pvscsi support for libxl I noticed that assigning a
resource exclusivly to just a single domU via libxl will be a major
effort. Up to now libxl could rely on the fact that a resource can be
either shared or the backend deals with the attempt to share.

There are two cases in pvscsi:

  1) a single physical HST:CHN:TGT:LUN device must be assigned to just a
     single domU. While the (xenlinux) backend driver allows to assign
     the device to more than one domU the sharing can not work in
     practice.

You should keep in mind that *some* cases might be absolutely okay.
Please don't assume all sharing configurations are nonsense!

  2) the xenlinux backend driver has two modes: emulation and raw. With
     raw mode the SCSI commands coming from domU will be passed directly
     to the physical device. I think its required to make sure that all
     devices connected to a physical scsi host must operate either
     entirely in raw mode or on emulation mode.

This can be mapped to case #1: the raw mode is selected by assigning
all LUNs of a target to a guest via "feature-host". If case #1 is
verified it wouldn't be possible to assign some LUNs multiple times
which would be required to have a mixture of raw and emulation for
a target.

I wouldn't do more than xend in this case. The pvops upstream pvscsi
backend doesn't need the emulation mode any more, this is handled by
the generic target infrastructure .

To handle both cases libxl could either assume that the admin is
responsible for proper configuration:
  - just one domU per physical device
  - if raw mode is enabled all devices on the physcial scsi host will be
    assigned to just one domU

Like in the non-virtualized world: the admin has to ensure that devices
in the SAN are either used by only one system, or that the systems
using it coordinate the shared usage.

Or libxl gets functionality to verify that two cases above are really
enforced. Doing that means that there has to be some global lock under
which the system state in xenstore is parsed and the to be assigned domU
configuration is compared:
  - are the physical devices already assigned
  - is the raw mode properly configured

In xend the case #1 was not handled. There is some code for case #2, I
have to check how complete the enforcement in xend was.

I wonder what should be done in my changes for libxl.

If you are doing something, please add a flag to be able to disable
the additional security checks regarding multiple assignment.


Juergen

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel


 


Rackspace

Lists.xenproject.org is hosted with RackSpace, monitoring our
servers 24x7x365 and backed by RackSpace's Fanatical Support®.