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[0/4,RFC] nfsd: allocate/free session-based DRC slots on demand

Message ID 20241113055345.494856-1-neilb@suse.de (mailing list archive)
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Series nfsd: allocate/free session-based DRC slots on demand | expand

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NeilBrown Nov. 13, 2024, 5:38 a.m. UTC
This patch set aims to allocate session-based DRC slots on demand, and
free them when not in use, or when memory is tight.

I've tested with NFSD_MAX_UNUSED_SLOTS set to 1 so that freeing is
overly agreesive, and with lots of printks, and it seems to do the right
thing, though memory pressure has never freed anything - I think you
need several clients with a non-trivial number of slots allocated before
the thresholds in the shrinker code will trigger any freeing.

I haven't made use of the CB_RECALL_SLOT callback.  I'm not sure how
useful that is.  There are certainly cases where simply setting the
target in a SEQUENCE reply might not be enough, but I doubt they are
very common.  You would need a session to be completely idle, with the
last request received on it indicating that lots of slots were still in
use.

Currently we allocate slots one at a time when the last available slot
was used by the client, and only if a NOWAIT allocation can succeed.  It
is possible that this isn't quite agreesive enough.  When performing a
lot of writeback it can be useful to have lots of slots, but memory
pressure is also likely to build up on the server so GFP_NOWAIT is likely
to fail.  Maybe occasionally using a firmer request (outside the
spinlock) would be justified.

We free slots when the number of unused slots passes some threshold -
currently 6 (because ...  why not).  Possible a hysteresis should be
added so we don't free unused slots for a least N seconds.

When the shrinker wants to apply presure we remove slots equally from
all sessions.  Maybe there should be some proportionality but that would
be more complex and I'm not sure it would gain much.  Slot 0 can never
be freed of course.

I'm very interested to see what people think of the over-all approach,
and of the specifics of the code.

Thanks,
NeilBrown


 [PATCH 1/4] nfsd: remove artificial limits on the session-based DRC
 [PATCH 2/4] nfsd: allocate new session-based DRC slots on demand.
 [PATCH 3/4] nfsd: free unused session-DRC slots
 [PATCH 4/4] nfsd: add shrinker to reduce number of slots allocated

Comments

Daire Byrne Nov. 13, 2024, 11:23 a.m. UTC | #1
Neil,

I'm curious if this work relates to:

https://bugzilla.linux-nfs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=375
https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAPt2mGMZh9=Vwcqjh0J4XoTu3stOnKwswdzApL4wCA_usOFV_g@mail.gmail.com

As my thread described, we currently use NFSv3 for our high latency
NFS re-export cases simply because it performs way better for parallel
client operations. You see, when you use re-exporting serving many
clients, you are in effect taking all those client operations and
stuffing them through a single client (the re-export server) which
then becomes a bottleneck. Add any kind of latency on top (>10ms) and
the NFSD_CACHE_SIZE_SLOTS_PER_SESSION (32) for NFSv4 becomes a major
bottleneck for a single client (re-export server).

We also used your "VFS: support parallel updates in the one directory"
patches for similar reasons up until I couldn't port it to newer
kernels anymore (my kernel code munging skills are not sufficient!).

Sorry to spam the thread if I am misinterpreting what this patch set
is all about.

Daire


On Wed, 13 Nov 2024 at 05:54, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de> wrote:
>
> This patch set aims to allocate session-based DRC slots on demand, and
> free them when not in use, or when memory is tight.
>
> I've tested with NFSD_MAX_UNUSED_SLOTS set to 1 so that freeing is
> overly agreesive, and with lots of printks, and it seems to do the right
> thing, though memory pressure has never freed anything - I think you
> need several clients with a non-trivial number of slots allocated before
> the thresholds in the shrinker code will trigger any freeing.
>
> I haven't made use of the CB_RECALL_SLOT callback.  I'm not sure how
> useful that is.  There are certainly cases where simply setting the
> target in a SEQUENCE reply might not be enough, but I doubt they are
> very common.  You would need a session to be completely idle, with the
> last request received on it indicating that lots of slots were still in
> use.
>
> Currently we allocate slots one at a time when the last available slot
> was used by the client, and only if a NOWAIT allocation can succeed.  It
> is possible that this isn't quite agreesive enough.  When performing a
> lot of writeback it can be useful to have lots of slots, but memory
> pressure is also likely to build up on the server so GFP_NOWAIT is likely
> to fail.  Maybe occasionally using a firmer request (outside the
> spinlock) would be justified.
>
> We free slots when the number of unused slots passes some threshold -
> currently 6 (because ...  why not).  Possible a hysteresis should be
> added so we don't free unused slots for a least N seconds.
>
> When the shrinker wants to apply presure we remove slots equally from
> all sessions.  Maybe there should be some proportionality but that would
> be more complex and I'm not sure it would gain much.  Slot 0 can never
> be freed of course.
>
> I'm very interested to see what people think of the over-all approach,
> and of the specifics of the code.
>
> Thanks,
> NeilBrown
>
>
>  [PATCH 1/4] nfsd: remove artificial limits on the session-based DRC
>  [PATCH 2/4] nfsd: allocate new session-based DRC slots on demand.
>  [PATCH 3/4] nfsd: free unused session-DRC slots
>  [PATCH 4/4] nfsd: add shrinker to reduce number of slots allocated
>
Chuck Lever III Nov. 13, 2024, 2:48 p.m. UTC | #2
> On Nov 13, 2024, at 12:38 AM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de> wrote:
> 
> This patch set aims to allocate session-based DRC slots on demand, and
> free them when not in use, or when memory is tight.
> 
> I've tested with NFSD_MAX_UNUSED_SLOTS set to 1 so that freeing is
> overly agreesive, and with lots of printks, and it seems to do the right
> thing, though memory pressure has never freed anything - I think you
> need several clients with a non-trivial number of slots allocated before
> the thresholds in the shrinker code will trigger any freeing.

Can you describe your test set-up? Generally a system
with less than 4GB of memory can trigger shrinkers
pretty easily.

If we never see the mechanism being triggered due to
memory exhaustion, then I wonder if the additional
complexity is adding substantial value.


> I haven't made use of the CB_RECALL_SLOT callback.  I'm not sure how
> useful that is.  There are certainly cases where simply setting the
> target in a SEQUENCE reply might not be enough, but I doubt they are
> very common.  You would need a session to be completely idle, with the
> last request received on it indicating that lots of slots were still in
> use.
> 
> Currently we allocate slots one at a time when the last available slot
> was used by the client, and only if a NOWAIT allocation can succeed.  It
> is possible that this isn't quite agreesive enough.  When performing a
> lot of writeback it can be useful to have lots of slots, but memory
> pressure is also likely to build up on the server so GFP_NOWAIT is likely
> to fail.  Maybe occasionally using a firmer request (outside the
> spinlock) would be justified.

I'm wondering why GFP_NOWAIT is used here, and I admit
I'm not strongly familiar with the code or mechanism.
Why not always use GFP_KERNEL ?


> We free slots when the number of unused slots passes some threshold -
> currently 6 (because ...  why not).  Possible a hysteresis should be
> added so we don't free unused slots for a least N seconds.

Generally freeing unused resources is un-Linux like. :-)
Can you provide a rationale for why this is needed?


> When the shrinker wants to apply presure we remove slots equally from
> all sessions.  Maybe there should be some proportionality but that would
> be more complex and I'm not sure it would gain much.  Slot 0 can never
> be freed of course.
> 
> I'm very interested to see what people think of the over-all approach,
> and of the specifics of the code.
> 
> Thanks,
> NeilBrown
> 
> 
> [PATCH 1/4] nfsd: remove artificial limits on the session-based DRC
> [PATCH 2/4] nfsd: allocate new session-based DRC slots on demand.
> [PATCH 3/4] nfsd: free unused session-DRC slots
> [PATCH 4/4] nfsd: add shrinker to reduce number of slots allocated
> 

--
Chuck Lever