Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264195AbTICTsS (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Sep 2003 15:48:18 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264389AbTICTrH (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Sep 2003 15:47:07 -0400 Received: from holomorphy.com ([66.224.33.161]:22922 "EHLO holomorphy") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264315AbTICTpz (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Sep 2003 15:45:55 -0400 Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 12:46:58 -0700 From: William Lee Irwin III To: Alan Cox Cc: Larry McVoy , "Brown, Len" , Giuliano Pochini , Larry McVoy , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Scaling noise Message-ID: <20030903194658.GC1715@holomorphy.com> Mail-Followup-To: William Lee Irwin III , Alan Cox , Larry McVoy , "Brown, Len" , Giuliano Pochini , Larry McVoy , Linux Kernel Mailing List References: <20030903111934.GF10257@work.bitmover.com> <20030903180037.GP4306@holomorphy.com> <20030903180547.GD5769@work.bitmover.com> <20030903181550.GR4306@holomorphy.com> <1062613931.19982.26.camel@dhcp23.swansea.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1062613931.19982.26.camel@dhcp23.swansea.linux.org.uk> Organization: The Domain of Holomorphy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2322 Lines: 50 On Mer, 2003-09-03 at 19:15, William Lee Irwin III wrote: >> Independent operating system instances running under a hypervisor don't >> qualify as a cache-coherent cluster that I can tell; it's merely dynamic >> partitioning, which is great, but nothing to do with clustering or SMP. On Wed, Sep 03, 2003 at 07:32:12PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > Now add a clusterfs and tell me the difference, other than there being a > lot less sharing going on... The sharing matters; e.g. libc and other massively shared bits are replicated in memory once per instance, which increases memory and cache footprint(s). A number of other consequences of the sharing loss: The number of systems to manage proliferates. Pagecache access suddenly involves cross-instance communication instead of swift memory access and function calls, with potentially enormous invalidation latencies. Userspace IPC goes from shared memory and pipes and sockets inside a single instance (which are just memory copies) to cross-instance data traffic, which involves slinging memory around through the hypervisor's interface, which is slower. The limited size of a single instance bounds the size of individual applications, which at various times would like to have larger memory footprints or consume more cpu time than fits in a single instance. i.e. something resembling external fragmentation of system resources. Process migration is confined to within a single instance without some very ugly bits; things such as forking servers and dynamic task creation algorithms like thread pools fall apart here. There's suddenly competition for and a need for dynamic shifting around of resources not shared across instances, like private disk space and devices, shares of cpu, IP numbers and other system identifiers, and even such things as RAM and virtual cpus. AFAICT this raises more issues than it addresses. Not that the issues aren't worth addressing, but there's a lot more to do than Larry saying "I think this is a good idea" before expecting anyone to even think it's worth thinking about. -- wli - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/