[libvirt] Sparse image volDownload

Daniel P. Berrange berrange at redhat.com
Mon Dec 7 15:09:46 UTC 2015


On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 04:04:40PM +0100, Michal Privoznik wrote:
> On 07.12.2015 14:51, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 02:46:59PM +0100, Michal Privoznik wrote:
> >> Dear list,
> >>
> >> I'd like to hear your opinion on the following bug:
> >>
> >> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1282859
> >>
> >> Long story short, Imagine the following scenario:
> >>
> >> 1. Create 4GB file full of zeroes
> >> 2. virsh vol-download it
> >>
> >> What happens is that all those 4GB are transferred byte after byte
> >> through our RPC system. Not only this puts needles pressure on our event
> >> loop, it's suboptimal for network and other resources too.
> >>
> >> I'd like to explore our options here keeping in mind that the original
> >> volume might have been sparse and we ought to keep it sparse on the
> >> destination too.
> >>
> >> In the bug the reporter (Matthew Booth) suggests introducing new type of
> >> RPC message that will let us keep our APIs unchanged. The source will
> >> scan the file for windows of zeroes bigger than some value. When found
> >> the new type of message is passed to client without need to copy those
> >> zeroes. Yes, this is very similar to RLE.
> >>
> >> If we are going that way, should we enable users to put a compression
> >> program in between read()/write() and our RPC? Well, should we let users
> >> to choose what compression program we will put there? Because there are
> >> better compression algorithms than RLE.
> > 
> > It only looks like compression if you're solely looking at the network
> > data transfer. A keep feature of sparse support is that we preserve
> > the sparseness on both sides.
> > 
> > ie, if I have a sparse raw file locally, and vol-upload it, it should
> > remain a sparse file on the server. Likewise vol-downloading a sparse
> > file should let me create a sparse file locally.  For this reason the
> > RPC program must explicitly represent data holes, and not merely
> > consider them a type of compression algorithm, as that would not let
> > us preserve the holes on both ends of the stream.
> 
> Right. But how could we apply both our RLE algorithm and an external
> program on the same stream? Should we multiplex and send holes to the
> other side as they are and run the rest through the external compression
> program? Otherwise I don't see how we could preserve sparseness.

I think we should just focus on sending holes in the RPC protocol
right now, and not try todo compression at the same time, as we need
to be able to represent holes in the protocol regardless of whether
compression is present.

Regards,
Daniel
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