[fedora-virt] suggestion: a service for tuning ksm according to memory load

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 02:49:23PM +0300, Dan Kenigsberg wrote:
> If you are running a number of qemu-kvm's with similar guests, you can
> gain a lot of memory by using ksm properly.
> 
> An unattended host running a variable number of qemu-kvm's needs to tune
> ksm automatically, since when memory is tight, it's better to spend more
> cpu on merging pages. In more relaxed cases, it's just a waste of time.
> 
> The attached service tries to do just that.
> 
> It monitors how much memory is used by qemu-kvm processes, and starts
> ksm when a threshold is passed. Ksm usually manages to free up some
> memory.
> 
> As long as memory used by qemu is above the defined threshold, ksm tries
> harder and harder to share memory pages (up to a limit). This may happen
> if a guest starts working and consumes new memory. If there's enough
> free memory, ksm cools down.
> 
> Ksmd service has the usual start/status/stop verbs, and an additional
> one: signal. One should use that verb just after one starts a new
> qemu-kvm process or just after such process dies, to let ksm adjust
> immediately.
> 
> Comments and suggestion are welcome.

Looks like a nice idea.

I'd be inclined to split this file up a little to get separation of
the init script bits, from the tuning logic, and to allow ksm / tuning
to be managed more independantly, eg

 - /etc/init.d/ksmd     - to start/stop  ksmd
 - /etc/init.d/ksmtuned - to start/stop the automatic tuning process
 - /usr/sbin/ksmtuned   - the logic from the loop() function & things it calls


That makes it easier for other distros to share the important bits  - eg
the actual tuning logic, even if they use different initscript system

Regards,
Daniel
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