new file mode 100644
@@ -0,0 +1,239 @@
+Block replication
+----------------------------------------
+Copyright Fujitsu, Corp. 2016
+Copyright (c) 2016 Intel Corporation
+Copyright (c) 2016 HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.
+
+This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or later.
+See the COPYING file in the top-level directory.
+
+Block replication is used for continuous checkpoints. It is designed
+for COLO (COarse-grain LOck-stepping) where the Secondary VM is running.
+It can also be applied for FT/HA (Fault-tolerance/High Assurance) scenario,
+where the Secondary VM is not running.
+
+This document gives an overview of block replication's design.
+
+== Background ==
+High availability solutions such as micro checkpoint and COLO will do
+consecutive checkpoints. The VM state of the Primary and Secondary VM is
+identical right after a VM checkpoint, but becomes different as the VM
+executes till the next checkpoint. To support disk contents checkpoint,
+the modified disk contents in the Secondary VM must be buffered, and are
+only dropped at next checkpoint time. To reduce the network transportation
+effort during a vmstate checkpoint, the disk modification operations of
+the Primary disk are asynchronously forwarded to the Secondary node.
+
+== Workflow ==
+The following is the image of block replication workflow:
+
+ +----------------------+ +------------------------+
+ |Primary Write Requests| |Secondary Write Requests|
+ +----------------------+ +------------------------+
+ | |
+ | (4)
+ | V
+ | /-------------\
+ | Copy and Forward | |
+ |---------(1)----------+ | Disk Buffer |
+ | | | |
+ | (3) \-------------/
+ | speculative ^
+ | write through (2)
+ | | |
+ V V |
+ +--------------+ +----------------+
+ | Primary Disk | | Secondary Disk |
+ +--------------+ +----------------+
+
+ 1) Primary write requests will be copied and forwarded to Secondary
+ QEMU.
+ 2) Before Primary write requests are written to Secondary disk, the
+ original sector content will be read from Secondary disk and
+ buffered in the Disk buffer, but it will not overwrite the existing
+ sector content (it could be from either "Secondary Write Requests" or
+ previous COW of "Primary Write Requests") in the Disk buffer.
+ 3) Primary write requests will be written to Secondary disk.
+ 4) Secondary write requests will be buffered in the Disk buffer and it
+ will overwrite the existing sector content in the buffer.
+
+== Architecture ==
+We are going to implement block replication from many basic
+blocks that are already in QEMU.
+
+ virtio-blk ||
+ ^ || .----------
+ | || | Secondary
+ 1 Quorum || '----------
+ / \ ||
+ / \ ||
+ Primary 2 filter
+ disk ^ virtio-blk
+ | ^
+ 3 NBD -------> 3 NBD |
+ client || server 2 filter
+ || ^ ^
+--------. || | |
+Primary | || Secondary disk <--------- hidden-disk 5 <--------- active-disk 4
+--------' || | backing ^ backing
+ || | |
+ || | |
+ || '-------------------------'
+ || drive-backup sync=none 6
+
+1) The disk on the primary is represented by a block device with two
+children, providing replication between a primary disk and the host that
+runs the secondary VM. The read pattern (fifo) for quorum can be extended
+to make the primary always read from the local disk instead of going through
+NBD.
+
+2) The new block filter (the name is replication) will control the block
+replication.
+
+3) The secondary disk receives writes from the primary VM through QEMU's
+embedded NBD server (speculative write-through).
+
+4) The disk on the secondary is represented by a custom block device
+(called active-disk). It should start as an empty disk, and the format
+should support bdrv_make_empty() and backing file.
+
+5) The hidden-disk is created automatically. It buffers the original content
+that is modified by the primary VM. It should also start as an empty disk,
+and the driver supports bdrv_make_empty() and backing file.
+
+6) The drive-backup job (sync=none) is run to allow hidden-disk to buffer
+any state that would otherwise be lost by the speculative write-through
+of the NBD server into the secondary disk. So before block replication,
+the primary disk and secondary disk should contain the same data.
+
+== Failure Handling ==
+There are 7 internal errors when block replication is running:
+1. I/O error on primary disk
+2. Forwarding primary write requests failed
+3. Backup failed
+4. I/O error on secondary disk
+5. I/O error on active disk
+6. Making active disk or hidden disk empty failed
+7. Doing failover failed
+In case 1 and 5, we just report the error to the disk layer. In case 2, 3,
+4 and 6, we just report block replication's error to FT/HA manager (which
+decides when to do a new checkpoint, when to do failover).
+In case 7, if active commit failed, we use replication failover failed state
+in Secondary's write operation (what decides which target to write).
+
+== New block driver interface ==
+We add three block driver interfaces to control block replication:
+a. replication_start_all()
+ Start block replication, called in migration/checkpoint thread.
+ We must call block_replication_start_all() in secondary QEMU before
+ calling block_replication_start_all() in primary QEMU. The caller
+ must hold the I/O mutex lock if it is in migration/checkpoint
+ thread.
+b. replication_do_checkpoint_all()
+ This interface is called after all VM state is transferred to
+ Secondary QEMU. The Disk buffer will be dropped in this interface.
+ The caller must hold the I/O mutex lock if it is in migration/checkpoint
+ thread.
+c. replication_get_error_all()
+ This interface is called to check if error happened in replication.
+ The caller must hold the I/O mutex lock if it is in migration/checkpoint
+ thread.
+d. replication_stop_all()
+ It is called on failover. We will flush the Disk buffer into
+ Secondary Disk and stop block replication. The vm should be stopped
+ before calling it if you use this API to shutdown the guest, or other
+ things except failover. The caller must hold the I/O mutex lock if it is
+ in migration/checkpoint thread.
+
+== Usage ==
+Primary:
+ -drive if=xxx,driver=quorum,read-pattern=fifo,id=colo1,vote-threshold=1,\
+ children.0.file.filename=1.raw,\
+ children.0.driver=raw
+
+ Run qmp command in primary qemu:
+ { 'execute': 'human-monitor-command',
+ 'arguments': {
+ 'command-line': 'drive_add -n buddy driver=replication,mode=primary,file.driver=nbd,file.host=xxxx,file.port=xxxx,file.export=colo1,node-name=nbd_client1'
+ }
+ }
+ { 'execute': 'x-blockdev-change',
+ 'arguments': {
+ 'parent': 'colo1',
+ 'node': 'nbd_client1'
+ }
+ }
+ Note:
+ 1. There should be only one NBD Client for each primary disk.
+ 2. host is the secondary physical machine's hostname or IP
+ 3. Each disk must have its own export name.
+ 4. It is all a single argument to -drive and you should ignore the
+ leading whitespace.
+ 5. The qmp command line must be run after running qmp command line in
+ secondary qemu.
+ 6. After failover we need remove children.1 (replication driver).
+
+Secondary:
+ -drive if=none,driver=raw,file.filename=1.raw,id=colo1 \
+ -drive if=xxx,id=topxxx,driver=replication,mode=secondary,top-id=topxxx\
+ file.file.filename=active_disk.qcow2,\
+ file.driver=qcow2,\
+ file.backing.file.filename=hidden_disk.qcow2,\
+ file.backing.driver=qcow2,\
+ file.backing.backing=colo1
+
+ Then run qmp command in secondary qemu:
+ { 'execute': 'nbd-server-start',
+ 'arguments': {
+ 'addr': {
+ 'type': 'inet',
+ 'data': {
+ 'host': 'xxx',
+ 'port': 'xxx'
+ }
+ }
+ }
+ }
+ { 'execute': 'nbd-server-add',
+ 'arguments': {
+ 'device': 'colo1',
+ 'writable': true
+ }
+ }
+
+ Note:
+ 1. The export name in secondary QEMU command line is the secondary
+ disk's id.
+ 2. The export name for the same disk must be the same
+ 3. The qmp command nbd-server-start and nbd-server-add must be run
+ before running the qmp command migrate on primary QEMU
+ 4. Active disk, hidden disk and nbd target's length should be the
+ same.
+ 5. It is better to put active disk and hidden disk in ramdisk.
+ 6. It is all a single argument to -drive, and you should ignore
+ the leading whitespace.
+
+After Failover:
+Primary:
+ The secondary host is down, so we should run the following qmp command
+ to remove the nbd child from the quorum:
+ { 'execute': 'x-blockdev-change',
+ 'arguments': {
+ 'parent': 'colo1',
+ 'child': 'children.1'
+ }
+ }
+ { 'execute': 'human-monitor-command',
+ 'arguments': {
+ 'command-line': 'drive_del xxxx'
+ }
+ }
+ Note: there is no qmp command to remove the blockdev now
+
+Secondary:
+ The primary host is down, so we should do the following thing:
+ { 'execute': 'nbd-server-stop' }
+
+TODO:
+1. Continuous block replication
+2. Shared disk