balloon(4)
- NetBSD Manual Pages
BALLOON(4) NetBSD/xen Kernel Interfaces Manual BALLOON(4)
NAME
balloon -- Xen memory balloon driver
SYNOPSIS
balloon* at xenbus?
DESCRIPTION
The balloon driver supports the memory ballooning operations offered in
Xen environments. It allows shrinking or extending a domain's available
memory by passing pages between different domains. At any time, the
total memory available to a domain is called the ``reservation''.
Pages are moved via the use of the balloon, a reserved quantity of memory
available to all domains that can be freely deflated (or inflated) at a
domain's will. Deflating balloon means that pages are moved out from it,
and bound to domain's virtual memory. Respectively, inflating balloon
indicates that pages are moved out of domain's memory and pushed inside
balloon. This is similar to a dynamic allocation of wired physical mem-
ory, except that the pages are not available to domain anymore.
Any domain is free to request memory from balloon up to the maximum value
set by the host's administrator through the mem-max command of xm(1).
Alternatively, the host's administrator is free to request to a particu-
lar domain to give some memory back. This command requires the targeted
domain's cooperation and requires balloon support within it. This can be
done through the mem-set command of xm(1). Alternatively, one can con-
trol the ballooning directly by writing under the ``memory/target'' node
inside Xenstore. This entry controls the target memory reservation of a
given domain, indicated in kilobytes (KiB).
An interface to control balloon is also available through sysctl(8) under
``machdep.xen.balloon'' (all values being in kilobytes):
current (read-only) The current memory reservation of the domain.
min (read-write) The minimum reservation value acceptable by the
domain's balloon driver. Any request that would require domain
to reduce its reservation below this threshold will be refused
by the driver. This can be used by a domain's administrator to
control the number of memory pages that will be kept available
to domain.
max (read-only) The maximum reservation accessible to a domain. Its
value can only be changed by the dom0's administrator, through
the mem-max command of xm(1).
target (read-write) The target reservation of the domain. This entry
serves the same purpose as the ``memory/target'' entry in Xen-
store. This controls the targeted number of pages that the
domain should have. Note that this is only a target, and may
not be achieved for a variety of reasons.
DIAGNOSTICS
WARNING: balloon could not reach target %zu (current %zu) balloon failed
to reach the target reservation. This is typically due to a target set
too low; the kernel prevented memory exhaustion by refusing further allo-
cation.
increase reservation incomplete: was %zu, returned %d The hypervisor
only gave a partial set of memory pages to domain. This happens when
host's memory consumption is high, and hypervisor is unable to give
enough free pages back to domain.
memory 'hot-plug' unsupported - clipping reservation %zu => %zu pages.
An attempt was made by domain to get more memory than initially obtained
during boot. As physical memory pages cannot be added to memory manage-
ment sub-system dynamically, balloon will limit reservation up to the
maximum value it can handle.
ERRORS
When setting the minimum threshold or target reservation entries through
``machdep.xen.balloon'', the following errors can be returned:
[EPERM] The value passed is beyond limits. The new value is
either too low (``min'' is below driver's safeguard
value, or ``target'' is below minimum value), or too
high (``target'' is above maximum value).
SEE ALSO
xm(1), xenbus(4), uvm(9)
Carl A. Waldspurger, "Memory Resource Management in VMware ESX Server",
Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and
Implementation, USENIX Association,
http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi02/tech/full_papers/waldspurger/waldspurger.pdf,
December 9-11, 2002.
HISTORY
The balloon driver first appeared in NetBSD 6.0.
AUTHORS
The balloon driver was written by Cherry G. Mathew <cherry@NetBSD.org>
and Jean-Yves Migeon <jym@NetBSD.org>.
BUGS
There are a number of reasons why a domain may not attain the targeted
memory reservation: balloon can be empty and cannot be collapsed further,
domain may not have enough free memory pages (due to memory fragmenta-
tion, memory exhaustion, ...) so it cannot give enough back to balloon.
Currently, the virtual memory sub-system of NetBSD is not capable of
``hot-plugging'' new memory pages into place. This means that increasing
a domain's memory reservation above its initial maximum value is point-
less, as new memory pages cannot be consumed by the memory management
sub-system.
Over expanding balloon generates high kernel memory pressure. While the
driver tries to stay as conservative as possible to avoid crashes, a very
low memory reservation will lead to unwanted swap or even panic().
SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
Ballooning involves moving pages between different domains. This
includes their content, which can lead to information leak. If you are
running domains of different sensitivities on the same host, consider
disabling the use of ballooning altogether. The NetBSD kernel zeroes all
pages before relinquishing them to balloon but this may not be the case
for other operating systems.
NetBSD 8.1 July 30, 2011 NetBSD 8.1
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