1xl-numa-placement(7) Xen xl-numa-placement(7)
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6 xl-numa-placement - Guest Automatic NUMA Placement in libxl and xl
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9 Rationale
10 NUMA (which stands for Non-Uniform Memory Access) means that the memory
11 accessing times of a program running on a CPU depends on the relative
12 distance between that CPU and that memory. In fact, most of the NUMA
13 systems are built in such a way that each processor has its local
14 memory, on which it can operate very fast. On the other hand, getting
15 and storing data from and on remote memory (that is, memory local to
16 some other processor) is quite more complex and slow. On these
17 machines, a NUMA node is usually defined as a set of processor cores
18 (typically a physical CPU package) and the memory directly attached to
19 the set of cores.
20 NUMA awareness becomes very important as soon as many domains start
22 running memory-intensive workloads on a shared host. In fact, the cost
23 of accessing non node-local memory locations is very high, and the
24 performance degradation is likely to be noticeable.
25 For more information, have a look at the Xen NUMA Introduction
27 <https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_on_NUMA_Machines> page on the
28 Wiki.
29 Xen and NUMA machines: the concept of node-affinity
31 The Xen hypervisor deals with NUMA machines throughout the concept of
32 node-affinity. The node-affinity of a domain is the set of NUMA nodes
33 of the host where the memory for the domain is being allocated (mostly,
34 at domain creation time). This is, at least in principle, different and
35 unrelated with the vCPU (hard and soft, see below) scheduling affinity,
36 which instead is the set of pCPUs where the vCPU is allowed (or
37 prefers) to run.
38 Of course, despite the fact that they belong to and affect different
40 subsystems, the domain node-affinity and the vCPUs affinity are not
41 completely independent. In fact, if the domain node-affinity is not
42 explicitly specified by the user, via the proper libxl calls or xl
43 config item, it will be computed basing on the vCPUs' scheduling
44 affinity.
45 Notice that, even if the node affinity of a domain may change on-line,
47 it is very important to "place" the domain correctly when it is fist
48 created, as the most of its memory is allocated at that time and can
49 not (for now) be moved easily.
50 Placing via pinning and cpupools
52 The simplest way of placing a domain on a NUMA node is setting the hard
53 scheduling affinity of the domain's vCPUs to the pCPUs of the node.
54 This also goes under the name of vCPU pinning, and can be done through
55 the "cpus=" option in the config file (more about this below). Another
56 option is to pool together the pCPUs spanning the node and put the
57 domain in such a cpupool with the "pool=" config option (as documented
58 in our Wiki <https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Cpupools_Howto>).
59 In both the above cases, the domain will not be able to execute outside
61 the specified set of pCPUs for any reasons, even if all those pCPUs are
62 busy doing something else while there are others, idle, pCPUs.
63 So, when doing this, local memory accesses are 100% guaranteed, but
65 that may come at he cost of some load imbalances.
66 NUMA aware scheduling
68 If using the credit1 scheduler, and starting from Xen 4.3, the
69 scheduler itself always tries to run the domain's vCPUs on one of the
70 nodes in its node-affinity. Only if that turns out to be impossible, it
71 will just pick any free pCPU. Locality of access is less guaranteed
72 than in the pinning case, but that comes along with better chances to
73 exploit all the host resources (e.g., the pCPUs).
74 Starting from Xen 4.5, credit1 supports two forms of affinity: hard and
76 soft, both on a per-vCPU basis. This means each vCPU can have its own
77 soft affinity, stating where such vCPU prefers to execute on. This is
78 less strict than what it (also starting from 4.5) is called hard
79 affinity, as the vCPU can potentially run everywhere, it just prefers
80 some pCPUs rather than others. In Xen 4.5, therefore, NUMA-aware
81 scheduling is achieved by matching the soft affinity of the vCPUs of a
82 domain with its node-affinity.
83 In fact, as it was for 4.3, if all the pCPUs in a vCPU's soft affinity
85 are busy, it is possible for the domain to run outside from there. The
86 idea is that slower execution (due to remote memory accesses) is still
87 better than no execution at all (as it would happen with pinning). For
88 this reason, NUMA aware scheduling has the potential of bringing
89 substantial performances benefits, although this will depend on the
90 workload.
91 Notice that, for each vCPU, the following three scenarios are possbile:
93 • a vCPU is pinned to some pCPUs and does not have any soft affinity
95 In this case, the vCPU is always scheduled on one of the pCPUs to
96 which it is pinned, without any specific peference among them.
97 • a vCPU has its own soft affinity and is not pinned to any
99 particular pCPU. In this case, the vCPU can run on every pCPU.
100 Nevertheless, the scheduler will try to have it running on one of
101 the pCPUs in its soft affinity;
102 • a vCPU has its own vCPU soft affinity and is also pinned to some
104 pCPUs. In this case, the vCPU is always scheduled on one of the
105 pCPUs onto which it is pinned, with, among them, a preference for
106 the ones that also forms its soft affinity. In case pinning and
107 soft affinity form two disjoint sets of pCPUs, pinning "wins", and
108 the soft affinity is just ignored.
109 Guest placement in xl
111 If using xl for creating and managing guests, it is very easy to ask
112 for both manual or automatic placement of them across the host's NUMA
113 nodes.
114 Note that xm/xend does a very similar thing, the only differences being
116 the details of the heuristics adopted for automatic placement (see
117 below), and the lack of support (in both xm/xend and the Xen versions
118 where that was the default toolstack) for NUMA aware scheduling.
119 Placing the guest manually
121 Thanks to the "cpus=" option, it is possible to specify where a domain
122 should be created and scheduled on, directly in its config file. This
123 affects NUMA placement and memory accesses as, in this case, the
124 hypervisor constructs the node-affinity of a VM basing right on its
125 vCPU pinning when it is created.
126 This is very simple and effective, but requires the user/system
128 administrator to explicitly specify the pinning for each and every
129 domain, or Xen won't be able to guarantee the locality for their memory
130 accesses.
131 That, of course, also mean the vCPUs of the domain will only be able to
133 execute on those same pCPUs.
134 It is is also possible to have a "cpus_soft=" option in the xl config
136 file, to specify the soft affinity for all the vCPUs of the domain.
137 This affects the NUMA placement in the following way:
138 • if only "cpus_soft=" is present, the VM's node-affinity will be
140 equal to the nodes to which the pCPUs in the soft affinity mask
141 belong;
142 • if both "cpus_soft=" and "cpus=" are present, the VM's node-
144 affinity will be equal to the nodes to which the pCPUs present both
145 in hard and soft affinity belong.
146 Placing the guest automatically
148 If neither "cpus=" nor "cpus_soft=" are present in the config file,
149 libxl tries to figure out on its own on which node(s) the domain could
150 fit best. If it finds one (some), the domain's node affinity get set
151 to there, and both memory allocations and NUMA aware scheduling (for
152 the credit scheduler and starting from Xen 4.3) will comply with it.
153 Starting from Xen 4.5, this also means that the mask resulting from
154 this "fitting" procedure will become the soft affinity of all the vCPUs
155 of the domain.
156 It is worthwhile noting that optimally fitting a set of VMs on the NUMA
158 nodes of an host is an incarnation of the Bin Packing Problem. In fact,
159 the various VMs with different memory sizes are the items to be packed,
160 and the host nodes are the bins. As such problem is known to be NP-
161 hard, we will be using some heuristics.
162 The first thing to do is find the nodes or the sets of nodes (from now
164 on referred to as 'candidates') that have enough free memory and enough
165 physical CPUs for accommodating the new domain. The idea is to find a
166 spot for the domain with at least as much free memory as it has
167 configured to have, and as much pCPUs as it has vCPUs. After that, the
168 actual decision on which candidate to pick happens accordingly to the
169 following heuristics:
170 • candidates involving fewer nodes are considered better. In case two
172 (or more) candidates span the same number of nodes,
173 • candidates with a smaller number of vCPUs runnable on them (due to
175 previous placement and/or plain vCPU pinning) are considered
176 better. In case the same number of vCPUs can run on two (or more)
177 candidates,
178 • the candidate with with the greatest amount of free memory is
180 considered to be the best one.
181 Giving preference to candidates with fewer nodes ensures better
183 performance for the guest, as it avoid spreading its memory among
184 different nodes. Favoring candidates with fewer vCPUs already runnable
185 there ensures a good balance of the overall host load. Finally, if more
186 candidates fulfil these criteria, prioritizing the nodes that have the
187 largest amounts of free memory helps keeping the memory fragmentation
188 small, and maximizes the probability of being able to put more domains
189 there.
190 Guest placement in libxl
192 xl achieves automatic NUMA placement because that is what libxl does by
193 default. No API is provided (yet) for modifying the behaviour of the
194 placement algorithm. However, if your program is calling libxl, it is
195 possible to set the "numa_placement" build info key to "false" (it is
196 "true" by default) with something like the below, to prevent any
197 placement from happening:
198 libxl_defbool_set(&domain_build_info->numa_placement, false);
200 Also, if "numa_placement" is set to "true", the domain's vCPUs must not
202 be pinned (i.e., "domain_build_info->cpumap" must have all its bits
203 set, as it is by default), or domain creation will fail with
204 "ERROR_INVAL".
205 Starting from Xen 4.3, in case automatic placement happens (and is
207 successful), it will affect the domain's node-affinity and not its vCPU
208 pinning. Namely, the domain's vCPUs will not be pinned to any pCPU on
209 the host, but the memory from the domain will come from the selected
210 node(s) and the NUMA aware scheduling (if the credit scheduler is in
211 use) will try to keep the domain's vCPUs there as much as possible.
212 Besides than that, looking and/or tweaking the placement algorithm
214 search "Automatic NUMA placement" in libxl_internal.h.
215 Note this may change in future versions of Xen/libxl.
217 Xen < 4.5
219 The concept of vCPU soft affinity has been introduced for the first
220 time in Xen 4.5. In 4.3, it is the domain's node-affinity that drives
221 the NUMA-aware scheduler. The main difference is soft affinity is per-
222 vCPU, and so each vCPU can have its own mask of pCPUs, while node-
223 affinity is per-domain, that is the equivalent of having all the vCPUs
224 with the same soft affinity.
225 Xen < 4.3
227 As NUMA aware scheduling is a new feature of Xen 4.3, things are a
228 little bit different for earlier version of Xen. If no "cpus=" option
229 is specified and Xen 4.2 is in use, the automatic placement algorithm
230 still runs, but the results is used to pin the vCPUs of the domain to
231 the output node(s). This is consistent with what was happening with
232 xm/xend.
233 On a version of Xen earlier than 4.2, there is not automatic placement
235 at all in xl or libxl, and hence no node-affinity, vCPU affinity or
236 pinning being introduced/modified.
237 Limitations
239 Analyzing various possible placement solutions is what makes the
240 algorithm flexible and quite effective. However, that also means it
241 won't scale well to systems with arbitrary number of nodes. For this
242 reason, automatic placement is disabled (with a warning) if it is
243 requested on a host with more than 16 NUMA nodes.
2444.15.1 2021-11-23 xl-numa-placement(7)