memory-hotplug.rst: document the "auto-movable" online policy

Commit e83a437faa62 ("mm/memory_hotplug: introduce "auto-movable" online
policy") introduced a new memory online policy to automatically select a
zone for memory blocks to be onlined.  It added a way to set the active
online policy and tunables for the auto-movable online policy.

Follow-up commits tweaked the "auto-movable" policy to also consider
memory device details when selecting zones for memory blocks to be
onlined.

Let's document the new toggles and how the two online policies we have
work.

[david@redhat.com: updates]
  Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20211011082058.6076-4-david@redhat.com

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210930144117.23641-4-david@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Oscar Salvador <osalvador@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 121 insertions, 20 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
index ee00b70dedde..0f56ecd8ac05 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
@@ -165,9 +165,8 @@ Or alternatively::
 
 	% echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/memory/memoryXXX/online
 
-The kernel will select the target zone automatically, usually defaulting to
-``ZONE_NORMAL`` unless ``movable_node`` has been specified on the kernel
-command line or if the memory block would intersect the ZONE_MOVABLE already.
+The kernel will select the target zone automatically, depending on the
+configured ``online_policy``.
 
 One can explicitly request to associate an offline memory block with
 ZONE_MOVABLE by::
@@ -198,6 +197,9 @@ Auto-onlining can be enabled by writing ``online``, ``online_kernel`` or
 
 	% echo online > /sys/devices/system/memory/auto_online_blocks
 
+Similarly to manual onlining, with ``online`` the kernel will select the
+target zone automatically, depending on the configured ``online_policy``.
+
 Modifying the auto-online behavior will only affect all subsequently added
 memory blocks only.
 
@@ -393,11 +395,16 @@ command line parameters are relevant:
 ======================== =======================================================
 ``memhp_default_state``	 configure auto-onlining by essentially setting
                          ``/sys/devices/system/memory/auto_online_blocks``.
-``movable_node``	 configure automatic zone selection in the kernel. When
-			 set, the kernel will default to ZONE_MOVABLE, unless
-			 other zones can be kept contiguous.
+``movable_node``	 configure automatic zone selection in the kernel when
+			 using the ``contig-zones`` online policy. When
+			 set, the kernel will default to ZONE_MOVABLE when
+			 onlining a memory block, unless other zones can be kept
+			 contiguous.
 ======================== =======================================================
 
+See Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt for a more generic
+description of these command line parameters.
+
 Module Parameters
 ------------------
 
@@ -414,20 +421,114 @@ and they can be observed (and some even modified at runtime) via::
 
 The following module parameters are currently defined:
 
-======================== =======================================================
-``memmap_on_memory``	 read-write: Allocate memory for the memmap from the
-			 added memory block itself. Even if enabled, actual
-			 support depends on various other system properties and
-			 should only be regarded as a hint whether the behavior
-			 would be desired.
-
-			 While allocating the memmap from the memory block
-			 itself makes memory hotplug less likely to fail and
-			 keeps the memmap on the same NUMA node in any case, it
-			 can fragment physical memory in a way that huge pages
-			 in bigger granularity cannot be formed on hotplugged
-			 memory.
-======================== =======================================================
+================================ ===============================================
+``memmap_on_memory``		 read-write: Allocate memory for the memmap from
+				 the added memory block itself. Even if enabled,
+				 actual support depends on various other system
+				 properties and should only be regarded as a
+				 hint whether the behavior would be desired.
+
+				 While allocating the memmap from the memory
+				 block itself makes memory hotplug less likely
+				 to fail and keeps the memmap on the same NUMA
+				 node in any case, it can fragment physical
+				 memory in a way that huge pages in bigger
+				 granularity cannot be formed on hotplugged
+				 memory.
+``online_policy``		 read-write: Set the basic policy used for
+				 automatic zone selection when onlining memory
+				 blocks without specifying a target zone.
+				 ``contig-zones`` has been the kernel default
+				 before this parameter was added. After an
+				 online policy was configured and memory was
+				 online, the policy should not be changed
+				 anymore.
+
+				 When set to ``contig-zones``, the kernel will
+				 try keeping zones contiguous. If a memory block
+				 intersects multiple zones or no zone, the
+				 behavior depends on the ``movable_node`` kernel
+				 command line parameter: default to ZONE_MOVABLE
+				 if set, default to the applicable kernel zone
+				 (usually ZONE_NORMAL) if not set.
+
+				 When set to ``auto-movable``, the kernel will
+				 try onlining memory blocks to ZONE_MOVABLE if
+				 possible according to the configuration and
+				 memory device details. With this policy, one
+				 can avoid zone imbalances when eventually
+				 hotplugging a lot of memory later and still
+				 wanting to be able to hotunplug as much as
+				 possible reliably, very desirable in
+				 virtualized environments. This policy ignores
+				 the ``movable_node`` kernel command line
+				 parameter and isn't really applicable in
+				 environments that require it (e.g., bare metal
+				 with hotunpluggable nodes) where hotplugged
+				 memory might be exposed via the
+				 firmware-provided memory map early during boot
+				 to the system instead of getting detected,
+				 added and onlined  later during boot (such as
+				 done by virtio-mem or by some hypervisors
+				 implementing emulated DIMMs). As one example, a
+				 hotplugged DIMM will be onlined either
+				 completely to ZONE_MOVABLE or completely to
+				 ZONE_NORMAL, not a mixture.
+				 As another example, as many memory blocks
+				 belonging to a virtio-mem device will be
+				 onlined to ZONE_MOVABLE as possible,
+				 special-casing units of memory blocks that can
+				 only get hotunplugged together. *This policy
+				 does not protect from setups that are
+				 problematic with ZONE_MOVABLE and does not
+				 change the zone of memory blocks dynamically
+				 after they were onlined.*
+``auto_movable_ratio``		 read-write: Set the maximum MOVABLE:KERNEL
+				 memory ratio in % for the ``auto-movable``
+				 online policy. Whether the ratio applies only
+				 for the system across all NUMA nodes or also
+				 per NUMA nodes depends on the
+				 ``auto_movable_numa_aware`` configuration.
+
+				 All accounting is based on present memory pages
+				 in the zones combined with accounting per
+				 memory device. Memory dedicated to the CMA
+				 allocator is accounted as MOVABLE, although
+				 residing on one of the kernel zones. The
+				 possible ratio depends on the actual workload.
+				 The kernel default is "301" %, for example,
+				 allowing for hotplugging 24 GiB to a 8 GiB VM
+				 and automatically onlining all hotplugged
+				 memory to ZONE_MOVABLE in many setups. The
+				 additional 1% deals with some pages being not
+				 present, for example, because of some firmware
+				 allocations.
+
+				 Note that ZONE_NORMAL memory provided by one
+				 memory device does not allow for more
+				 ZONE_MOVABLE memory for a different memory
+				 device. As one example, onlining memory of a
+				 hotplugged DIMM to ZONE_NORMAL will not allow
+				 for another hotplugged DIMM to get onlined to
+				 ZONE_MOVABLE automatically. In contrast, memory
+				 hotplugged by a virtio-mem device that got
+				 onlined to ZONE_NORMAL will allow for more
+				 ZONE_MOVABLE memory within *the same*
+				 virtio-mem device.
+``auto_movable_numa_aware``	 read-write: Configure whether the
+				 ``auto_movable_ratio`` in the ``auto-movable``
+				 online policy also applies per NUMA
+				 node in addition to the whole system across all
+				 NUMA nodes. The kernel default is "Y".
+
+				 Disabling NUMA awareness can be helpful when
+				 dealing with NUMA nodes that should be
+				 completely hotunpluggable, onlining the memory
+				 completely to ZONE_MOVABLE automatically if
+				 possible.
+
+				 Parameter availability depends on CONFIG_NUMA.
+================================ ===============================================
 
 ZONE_MOVABLE
 ============