Delta backup fails for specific vm with VDI chain error

mbt

I moved the vm last week to the other host and checked if the delta job worked but it didn't. But I didn't give it time to maybe coalesce. I'll migrate the vm and check that out.

One question for my understanding:
The line "Coalesced size = xxx" - does it mean how much of the vhd size is coalesced right now?
I can see that number in the logs slowly increasing over time.

For example:

Aug 27 04:03:13 rigel SMGC: [11997] Coalesced size = 276.902G
Aug 27 05:16:01 rigel SMGC: [11997] Coalesced size = 276.906G
Aug 27 06:01:39 rigel SMGC: [11997] Coalesced size = 276.910G
Aug 27 07:05:36 rigel SMGC: [11997] Coalesced size = 292.246G
Aug 27 08:03:28 rigel SMGC: [11997] Coalesced size = 298.625G
Aug 27 09:00:06 rigel SMGC: [11997] Coalesced size = 301.609G
Aug 27 10:01:26 rigel SMGC: [11997] Coalesced size = 301.770G
Aug 27 10:56:06 rigel SMGC: [11997] Coalesced size = 301.938G

And I got 475 entrys from 4 a.m until now (11 a.m.).

FYI: There's a total of 12 VMs on both pool members, including the XO vm.

mbt

@Peg:

Not sure if this is the vdi tree you mentioned, but I get this when triggering a sr rescan in the log:

Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194] SR f951 ('rigel: sr') (28 VDIs in 9 VHD trees):
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         03035c65[VHD](40.000G//40.086G|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         03190d28[VHD](10.000G//10.027G|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         *f74fa838[VHD](15.000G//14.633G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             a23e7cbd[VHD](15.000G//15.035G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         *62feee6c[VHD](50.000G//36.227G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             667cf6a9[VHD](50.000G//8.000M|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             19333817[VHD](50.000G//50.105G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         *43454904[VHD](500.000G//500.949G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             dcdef81b[VHD](500.000G//8.000M|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             *775aa9af[VHD](500.000G//301.961G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]                 *894dbc3a[VHD](500.000G//21.406G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]                     7ef76d55[VHD](500.000G//500.984G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         *cb9ff226[VHD](40.000G//34.605G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             *2a99181e[VHD](40.000G//4.238G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]                 6371a662[VHD](40.000G//40.086G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]                 e5af497f[VHD](40.000G//8.000M|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             b70f6e7f[VHD](40.000G//8.000M|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         *0494da11[VHD](100.000G//2.207G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             63b37e30[VHD](100.000G//8.000M|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             2ca68323[VHD](100.000G//100.203G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         *d80f9f3d[VHD](70.000G//28.410G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             bfb778e9[VHD](70.000G//8.000M|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             *f56b9b4e[VHD](70.000G//716.000M|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]                 3978cd9a[VHD](70.000G//8.000M|n)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]                 1c6e7b14[VHD](70.000G//70.145G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]         *971a59b8[VHD](10.000G//5.859G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             48edb7f4[VHD](10.000G//10.027G|ao)
Aug 27 11:04:52 rigel SMGC: [28194]             5dddf827[VHD](10.000G//8.000M|n)

olivierlambert

I wonder why it's so slow. What's your load average on the dom0?

It could worth to investigate about the SR speed, coalesce is doing a lot of small random read/writes. You have a bottleneck somewhere.

mbt

Hi Olivier!

[11:09 rigel ~]# uptime
 11:09:41 up 28 days, 21:18,  3 users,  load average: 1,13, 1,28, 1,29

As I mentioned, usually it is "vhd-util scan" running 100% on a single core with no disk read / write at all according to htop. Then comes "vhd-util coalesce" with e.g. 270 M/s read / 120 M/s write

I'm not sure what the sr stats in XO are showing as I sometimes see the coalescing i/o in htop without anything going on in the stats. Currently it looks like this:

rigel: sr (rigel) 2019-08-27 11-15-17.png

olivierlambert

How long is your chain in XO SR view/Advanced tab

mbt

Usually looks like this:

rigel: sr (rigel) 2019-08-27 11-21-11.png

Sometimes the 500 GB vdi depth goes down to 1 for a couple of seconds max.

olivierlambert

Can you do a xapi-explore-sr so I can see the whole chain in details?

mbt

rigel: sr (28 VDIs)
├── HDD - 03190d28-19b7-4f99-b9b1-d0cace96eeca - 10.03 Gi
├── customer Web Dev: Boot - 03035c65-2e11-47c5-bc0c-c796937fc91d - 40.09 Gi
├─┬ customer server 2017 0 - 43454904-e56b-4375-b2fb-40691ab28e12 - 500.95 Gi
│ ├── customer server 2017 0 - dcdef81b-ec1a-481f-9c66-ea8a9f46b0c8 - 0.01 Gi
│ └─┬ base copy - 775aa9af-f731-45e0-a649-045ab1983935 - 301.96 Gi
│   └─┬ customer server 2017 0 - 31869c7f-b0b6-4deb-9a8e-95aad0baee4c - 0.15 Gi
│     └── customer server 2017 0 - 7ef76d55-683d-430f-91e6-39e5cceb9ec1 - 500.98 Gi
├─┬ base copy - 0494da11-f89a-436c-b1d0-e1a1f54bcc90 - 2.21 Gi
│ ├── customer yyy - 63b37e30-d9e8-4b54-9fae-780b5e134d79 - 0.01 Gi
│ └── customer yyy - 2ca68323-29c8-4a7a-807c-7302a0ba361a - 100.2 Gi
├─┬ base copy - 62feee6c-3aab-471e-89ae-184c5daf2c44 - 36.23 Gi
│ ├── customer aaa 2017 0 - 667cf6a9-7e63-4902-9fde-bbe9ef9926ce - 0.01 Gi
│ └── customer aaa 2017 0 - 19333817-ce9d-4825-9cd6-eab5bb9f3af7 - 50.11 Gi
├─┬ base copy - 971a59b8-1017-4d2f-8c08-68f0a0ec36e9 - 5.86 Gi
│ ├── customer zzz - 5dddf827-1c84-4807-aa1d-3506da0c8927 - 0.01 Gi
│ └── customer zzz - 48edb7f4-d8d4-4125-b9a5-829ef139b45c - 10.03 Gi
├─┬ base copy - cb9ff226-bbf6-4865-beb9-7c5028304576 - 34.61 Gi
│ ├── System - b70f6e7f-928a-4a65-ae68-0f80e0cd7955 - 0.01 Gi
│ └─┬ base copy - 2a99181e-09f0-4991-be44-19a8f9fbe2e6 - 4.24 Gi
│   ├── System - e5af497f-9dad-46cd-8233-bacf361ceed9 - 0.01 Gi
│   └── System - 6371a662-499f-4a21-a875-1b74ed304454 - 40.09 Gi
├─┬ base copy - d80f9f3d-314d-4842-80e2-847022c5a22c - 28.41 Gi
│ ├── Data - bfb778e9-414f-4283-bc72-e552fa24851a - 0.01 Gi
│ └─┬ base copy - f56b9b4e-4bbd-4336-88c0-9ce7758cc195 - 0.7 Gi
│   ├── Data - 3978cd9a-419d-4016-8f60-3621f8cacdd0 - 0.01 Gi
│   └── Data - 1c6e7b14-8cb8-4568-9be7-a22983a2ab1c - 70.14 Gi
└─┬ base copy - f74fa838-499a-4a1b-b9eb-87f65525f591 - 14.63 Gi
  └── XO customer 0 - a23e7cbd-aaa0-4dbf-804b-61089f3c8f43 - 15.04 Gi

olivierlambert

Thanks! So here is the logic: leaf coalesce will (or should ) merge a base copy and its child ONLY if this base copy get only one child.

Also, here is a good read: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX201296

You can check if your SR got leaf coalesce enabled, there's no reason to not have it, but still a check to do.

_danielgurgel

GC is an architectural problem in XenServer | CH. I've been fighting about this with Citrix for a long time and I never see this problem being in fact solved or a documentation of a troubleshooting that really works.

For Enterprise Support | Premium, the procedure to be executed is always the FULL COPY of the VM, which is unfeasible in most cases for a problem that is so recurring.

In CH8 (updated) I have the same problems and I started to have problem in other Pools 7.1 CU2 after installing XS71ECU2009. Until then the process came "stable for a while ", after installing I went back to having problems and unfortunately reinstalling and doing a rollback is not feasible... We opted to upgrade to CH8, but the problem remained...

olivierlambert

Yeah that's why we are focusing on SMAPIv3 instead of trying to "fix" something that's probably flawed by design on SR with slow speed (in general, it works relatively well on SSDs)

_danielgurgel

@olivierlambert said in Delta backup fails for specific vm with VDI chain error:

SMAPIv3

But @olivierlambert, in other posts, even with a FULL SSD disk (SC5020F) we have failed the coalesce process ... when you talk about SMAPIv3 is this something to be implemented exclusively in XCP or will it be inherited from CH 8.x?

olivierlambert

@_danielgurgel if you have failed coalesce even on SSD, you should have something that cause the issue. Majority of users don't have this problem, so I suppose the thing is to find what could cause it.

SMAPIv3 is done by Citrix, but we are doing stuff on our side (upstream as possible, harder since Citrix closed some sources). As soon we have something that people could test, we'll push it into testing

mbt

@olivierlambert said in Delta backup fails for specific vm with VDI chain error:

Thanks! So here is the logic: leaf coalesce will (or should ) merge a base copy and its child ONLY if this base copy get only one child.

Also, here is a good read: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX201296

You can check if your SR got leaf coalesce enabled, there's no reason to not have it, but still a check to do.

With "only one child" you mean no nested child (aka grandchild)?
As I understand leaf-coalesce can be turned off explicitly and otherwise is on implicitely. It wasn't turned off.
Only thing I could do (I guess) was turn it on explicitely - just to make sure.

[15:31 rigel ~]# xe sr-param-get uuid=f951f048-dfcb-8bab-8339-463e9c9b708c param-name=other-config param-key=leaf-coalesce
true

Nothing has changed so far, so I guess I should go on and see what happens this time if I migrate the vm to the other host?

olivierlambert

Okay so it wasn't disabled, as it should.

To trigger a coalesce, you need to delete a snapshot. So it's trivial to test: create a snapshot, then remove it. Then you'll see a VDI that must be coalesce in Xen Orchestra.

To answer the question: doesn't matter if the child got child too. As long there is only one direct child, it means coalesce should be triggered.

mbt

That doesn't seem to have an effect in the behaviour other then a bunch of new messages in the log.

I'll check in a couple of hours. If the behaviour persists I'll migrate the vm and we'll see how it behaves on the other host.

olivierlambert

Create a snap, display the chain with xapi-explore-sr. Then remove the snap, and check again. Something should have changed

mbt

It changed from

rigel: sr (30 VDIs)
├─┬ customer server 2017 0 - 43454904-e56b-4375-b2fb-40691ab28e12 - 500.95 Gi
│ ├── customer server 2017 0 - dcdef81b-ec1a-481f-9c66-ea8a9f46b0c8 - 0.01 Gi
│ └─┬ base copy - 775aa9af-f731-45e0-a649-045ab1983935 - 318.47 Gi
│   └─┬ customer server 2017 0 - d7204256-488d-4283-a991-8a59466e4f62 - 24.54 Gi
│     └─┬ base copy - 1578f775-4f53-4de4-a775-d94f04fbf701 - 0.05 Gi
│       ├── customer server 2017 0 - 8bcae3c3-15af-4c66-ad49-d76d516e211c - 0.01 Gi
│       └── customer server 2017 0 - 7ef76d55-683d-430f-91e6-39e5cceb9ec1 - 500.98 Gi

to

rigel: sr (29 VDIs)
├─┬ customer server 2017 0 - 43454904-e56b-4375-b2fb-40691ab28e12 - 500.95 Gi
│ ├── customer server 2017 0 - dcdef81b-ec1a-481f-9c66-ea8a9f46b0c8 - 0.01 Gi
│ └─┬ base copy - 775aa9af-f731-45e0-a649-045ab1983935 - 318.47 Gi
│   └─┬ customer server 2017 0 - d7204256-488d-4283-a991-8a59466e4f62 - 24.54 Gi
│     └─┬ base copy - 1578f775-4f53-4de4-a775-d94f04fbf701 - 0.05 Gi
│       └── customer server 2017 0 - 7ef76d55-683d-430f-91e6-39e5cceb9ec1 - 500.98 Gi

olivierlambert

Can you use --full because we can't have colors in copy/paste from your terminal

mbt

A moment later it changed to

rigel: sr (28 VDIs)
├─┬ customer server 2017 0 - 43454904-e56b-4375-b2fb-40691ab28e12 - 500.95 Gi
│ ├── customer server 2017 0 - dcdef81b-ec1a-481f-9c66-ea8a9f46b0c8 - 0.01 Gi
│ └─┬ base copy - 775aa9af-f731-45e0-a649-045ab1983935 - 318.47 Gi
│   └─┬ base copy - 1578f775-4f53-4de4-a775-d94f04fbf701 - 0.05 Gi
│     └── customer server 2017 0 - 7ef76d55-683d-430f-91e6-39e5cceb9ec1 - 500.98 Gi

Unfortunately I cannot do a --full, as it gives me an error:

✖ Maximum call stack size exceeded
RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded
    at assign (/usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/node_modules/human-format/index.js:21:19)
    at humanFormat (/usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/node_modules/human-format/index.js:221:12)
    at formatSize (/usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/dist/index.js:66:36)
    at makeVdiNode (/usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/dist/index.js:230:60)
    at /usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/dist/index.js:241:26
    at /usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/dist/index.js:101:27
    at arrayEach (/usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/node_modules/lodash/_arrayEach.js:15:9)
    at forEach (/usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/node_modules/lodash/forEach.js:38:10)
    at mapFilter (/usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/dist/index.js:100:25)
    at makeVdiNode (/usr/lib/node_modules/xapi-explore-sr/dist/index.js:238:15)