qemu-e2k/docs/devel/vfio-migration.rst

=====================
VFIO device Migration
=====================

Migration of virtual machine involves saving the state for each device that
the guest is running on source host and restoring this saved state on the
destination host. This document details how saving and restoring of VFIO
devices is done in QEMU.

Migration of VFIO devices currently consists of a single stop-and-copy phase.
During the stop-and-copy phase the guest is stopped and the entire VFIO device
data is transferred to the destination.

The pre-copy phase of migration is currently not supported for VFIO devices.
Support for VFIO pre-copy will be added later on.

Note that currently VFIO migration is supported only for a single device. This
is due to VFIO migration's lack of P2P support. However, P2P support is planned
to be added later on.

A detailed description of the UAPI for VFIO device migration can be found in
the comment for the ``vfio_device_mig_state`` structure in the header file
linux-headers/linux/vfio.h.

VFIO implements the device hooks for the iterative approach as follows:

* A ``save_setup`` function that sets up migration on the source.

* A ``load_setup`` function that sets the VFIO device on the destination in
  _RESUMING state.

* A ``state_pending_exact`` function that reads pending_bytes from the vendor
  driver, which indicates the amount of data that the vendor driver has yet to
  save for the VFIO device.

* A ``save_state`` function to save the device config space if it is present.

* A ``save_live_complete_precopy`` function that sets the VFIO device in
  _STOP_COPY state and iteratively copies the data for the VFIO device until
  the vendor driver indicates that no data remains.

* A ``load_state`` function that loads the config section and the data
  sections that are generated by the save functions above.

* ``cleanup`` functions for both save and load that perform any migration
  related cleanup.


The VFIO migration code uses a VM state change handler to change the VFIO
device state when the VM state changes from running to not-running, and
vice versa.

Similarly, a migration state change handler is used to trigger a transition of
the VFIO device state when certain changes of the migration state occur. For
example, the VFIO device state is transitioned back to _RUNNING in case a
migration failed or was canceled.

System memory dirty pages tracking
----------------------------------

A ``log_global_start`` and ``log_global_stop`` memory listener callback informs
the VFIO IOMMU module to start and stop dirty page tracking. A ``log_sync``
memory listener callback marks those system memory pages as dirty which are
used for DMA by the VFIO device. The dirty pages bitmap is queried per
container. All pages pinned by the vendor driver through external APIs have to
be marked as dirty during migration. When there are CPU writes, CPU dirty page
tracking can identify dirtied pages, but any page pinned by the vendor driver
can also be written by the device. There is currently no device or IOMMU
support for dirty page tracking in hardware.

By default, dirty pages are tracked during pre-copy as well as stop-and-copy
phase. So, a page pinned by the vendor driver will be copied to the destination
in both phases. Copying dirty pages in pre-copy phase helps QEMU to predict if
it can achieve its downtime tolerances. If QEMU during pre-copy phase keeps
finding dirty pages continuously, then it understands that even in stop-and-copy
phase, it is likely to find dirty pages and can predict the downtime
accordingly.

QEMU also provides a per device opt-out option ``pre-copy-dirty-page-tracking``
which disables querying the dirty bitmap during pre-copy phase. If it is set to
off, all dirty pages will be copied to the destination in stop-and-copy phase
only.

System memory dirty pages tracking when vIOMMU is enabled
---------------------------------------------------------

With vIOMMU, an IO virtual address range can get unmapped while in pre-copy
phase of migration. In that case, the unmap ioctl returns any dirty pages in
that range and QEMU reports corresponding guest physical pages dirty. During
stop-and-copy phase, an IOMMU notifier is used to get a callback for mapped
pages and then dirty pages bitmap is fetched from VFIO IOMMU modules for those
mapped ranges.

Flow of state changes during Live migration
===========================================

Below is the flow of state change during live migration.
The values in the brackets represent the VM state, the migration state, and
the VFIO device state, respectively.

Live migration save path
------------------------

::

                        QEMU normal running state
                        (RUNNING, _NONE, _RUNNING)
                                  |
                     migrate_init spawns migration_thread
                Migration thread then calls each device's .save_setup()
                       (RUNNING, _SETUP, _RUNNING)
                                  |
                      (RUNNING, _ACTIVE, _RUNNING)
             If device is active, get pending_bytes by .state_pending_exact()
          If total pending_bytes >= threshold_size, call .save_live_iterate()
        Iterate till total pending bytes converge and are less than threshold
                                  |
  On migration completion, vCPU stops and calls .save_live_complete_precopy for
  each active device. The VFIO device is then transitioned into _STOP_COPY state
                  (FINISH_MIGRATE, _DEVICE, _STOP_COPY)
                                  |
     For the VFIO device, iterate in .save_live_complete_precopy until
                         pending data is 0
                   (FINISH_MIGRATE, _DEVICE, _STOP)
                                  |
                 (FINISH_MIGRATE, _COMPLETED, _STOP)
             Migraton thread schedules cleanup bottom half and exits

Live migration resume path
--------------------------

::

              Incoming migration calls .load_setup for each device
                       (RESTORE_VM, _ACTIVE, _STOP)
                                 |
       For each device, .load_state is called for that device section data
                       (RESTORE_VM, _ACTIVE, _RESUMING)
                                 |
    At the end, .load_cleanup is called for each device and vCPUs are started
                       (RUNNING, _NONE, _RUNNING)

Postcopy
========

Postcopy migration is currently not supported for VFIO devices.