Update user manual to use blktap for file-based VBDs.

Signed-off-by: Andrew Warfield <andrew.warfield@xensource.com>
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Andrew Warfield committed 2006-09-04 13:54:36 -07:00
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@@ -1654,26 +1654,58 @@ Now unmount (this is important!):
In the configuration file set:
\begin{quote}
\verb_disk = ['file:/full/path/to/vm1disk,sda1,w']_
\verb_disk = ['tap:aio:/full/path/to/vm1disk,sda1,w']_
\end{quote}
As the virtual machine writes to its `disk', the sparse file will be
filled in and consume more space up to the original 2GB.
{\bf Note that file-backed VBDs may not be appropriate for backing
I/O-intensive domains.} File-backed VBDs are known to experience
{\em{Note:}} Users that have worked with file-backed VBDs on Xen in previous
versions will be interested to know that this support is not provided through
the blktap driver instead of the loopback driver. This change results in
file-based block devices that are higher-performance, more scalable, and which
provide better safety properties for VBD data. All that is required to update
your existing file-backed VM configurations is to change VBD configuration
lines from:
\begin{quote}
\verb_disk = ['file:/full/path/to/vm1disk,sda1,w']_
\end{quote}
to:
\begin{quote}
\verb_disk = ['tap:aio:/full/path/to/vm1disk,sda1,w']_
\end{quote}
\subsection{Loopback-mounted file-backed VBDs (deprecated)}
{\em{{\bf{Note:}} Loopback mounted VBDs have now been replaced with
blktap-based support for raw image files, as described above. This
section remains to detail a configuration that was used by older Xen
versions.}}
Raw image file-backed VBDs amy also be attached to VMs using the
Linux loopback driver. The only required change to the raw file
instructions above are to specify the configuration entry as:
\begin{quote}
\verb_disk = ['file:/full/path/to/vm1disk,sda1,w']_
\end{quote}
{\bf Note that loopback file-backed VBDs may not be appropriate for backing
I/O-intensive domains.} This approach is known to experience
substantial slowdowns under heavy I/O workloads, due to the I/O
handling by the loopback block device used to support file-backed VBDs
in dom0. Better I/O performance can be achieved by using either
LVM-backed VBDs (Section~\ref{s:using-lvm-backed-vbds}) or physical
devices as VBDs (Section~\ref{s:exporting-physical-devices-as-vbds}).
in dom0. Loopbach support remains for old Xen installations, and users
are strongly encouraged to use the blktap-based file support (using
``{\tt{tap:aio}}'' as described above).
Linux supports a maximum of eight file-backed VBDs across all domains
by default. This limit can be statically increased by using the
\emph{max\_loop} module parameter if CONFIG\_BLK\_DEV\_LOOP is
compiled as a module in the dom0 kernel, or by using the
\emph{max\_loop=n} boot option if CONFIG\_BLK\_DEV\_LOOP is compiled
directly into the dom0 kernel.
Additionally, Linux supports a maximum of eight loopback file-backed
VBDs across all domains by default. This limit can be statically
increased by using the \emph{max\_loop} module parameter if
CONFIG\_BLK\_DEV\_LOOP is compiled as a module in the dom0 kernel, or
by using the \emph{max\_loop=n} boot option if CONFIG\_BLK\_DEV\_LOOP
is compiled directly into the dom0 kernel. Again, users are encouraged
to use the blktap-based file support described above which scales to much
larger number of active VBDs.
\section{Using LVM-backed VBDs}
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