Speaker
Vipin Sharma
(Google)
Description
Live Update enables host kernel updates with minimal guest downtime by preserving VM state across kexec. While memory preservation (via KHO/LUO) covers VM RAM, pass-through PCIe devices assigned to VMs (e.g., GPUs, NICs, NVMe, accelerators) require kernel support to maintain device state across the reboot boundary.
This talk presents the design of VFIO Live Update (Phase 1, recently posted in v5 [1]) and our roadmap toward continuous DMA [2]. Phase 1 establishes base support for preserving VFIO cdev device file descriptors across kexec using the Live Update Orchestrator (LUO) and Kexec Handover (KHO).
We will discuss:
- Current State: What is the current state of VFIO patches?.
- Upstream Path: We will discuss few of the concerns regarding VFIO patches.
- Data storage and cleanup: Clarification on what to save and what should be cleanup during error.
- Future series: Future series toward making VFIO LU feature complete like:noiommu -> iommufd -> SR-IOV VFs).
Looking forward to get community feedback on our approach and align on the future direction of VFIO Live Update.
References
Author
Vipin Sharma
(Google)