[pbs-devel] [PATCH proxmox-backup-qemu 1/1] restore: make chunk loading more parallel

Dominik Csapak d.csapak at proxmox.com
Mon Jul 14 10:34:38 CEST 2025


by using async futures to load chunks and stream::buffer_unordered to
buffer up to 16 of them, depending on write/load speed, use tokio's task
spawn to make sure the continue to run in the background, since
buffer_unordered starts them, but does not poll them to completion
unless we're awaiting.

With this, we don't need to increase the number of threads in the
runtime to trigger parallel reads and network traffic to us. This way
it's only limited by CPU if decoding and/or decrypting is the
bottleneck.

Benchmark results:

2 scenarios:
A:  Network: over a local bridge, so not real limit
    Datastore: A fast NVME SSD
    Backup: 60GiB

B:  Network: over a 10G link (same switch)
    Datastore: Spinner Raid10 with 6 disks, 2 NVME special devices
    Backup: 60GiB

concurrency   duration A   speed A     duration B   speed B
1 (current)   110s         557MB/s     739s         83MB/s
1 (new)       111s         550MB/s     737s         83MB/s
4             55s          1128MB/s    246s         249MB/s
8             42s          1446MB/s    171s         358MB/s
12            37s          1642MB/s    150s         408MB/s
16            40s          1514MB/s    140s         436MB/s
20            37           1638MB/s    136s         448MB/s

I saw an increase in CPU usage proportional to the speed increase, so
while in the current version it uses less than a single core total,
using 16 parallel futures resulted in 3-4 available threads of the
tokio runtime to be utilized.

The concurrency and the number of threads can be set with the
environment variables PBS_RESTORE_FETCH_CONCURRENCY and
PBS_RESTORE_MAX_THREADS respectively, since there is no universal way to
know which settings are best or wanted.

In any case, if the target and/or source storage is too slow, there will
be back/forward pressure, and this change should only matter for storage
systems where IO depth plays a role and that are fast enough.

The way we count the finished chunks also changes a bit, since they
can come unordered, so we can't rely on the index position to calculate
the percentage.

This patch is loosely based on the patch from Adam Kalisz[0], but removes
the need to increase the blocking threads and uses the (actually always
used) underlying async implementation for reading remote chunks.

0: https://lore.proxmox.com/pve-devel/mailman.719.1751052794.395.pve-devel@lists.proxmox.com/

Signed-off-by: Dominik Csapak <d.csapak at proxmox.com>
Based-on-patch-by: Adam Kalisz <adam.kalisz at notnullmakers.com>
---
 src/restore.rs | 80 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------
 1 file changed, 63 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/restore.rs b/src/restore.rs
index 5a5a398..6cafd78 100644
--- a/src/restore.rs
+++ b/src/restore.rs
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ use std::convert::TryInto;
 use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};
 
 use anyhow::{bail, format_err, Error};
+use futures::StreamExt;
 use once_cell::sync::OnceCell;
 use tokio::runtime::Runtime;
 
@@ -13,7 +14,7 @@ use pbs_datastore::cached_chunk_reader::CachedChunkReader;
 use pbs_datastore::data_blob::DataChunkBuilder;
 use pbs_datastore::fixed_index::FixedIndexReader;
 use pbs_datastore::index::IndexFile;
-use pbs_datastore::read_chunk::ReadChunk;
+use pbs_datastore::read_chunk::AsyncReadChunk;
 use pbs_datastore::BackupManifest;
 use pbs_key_config::load_and_decrypt_key;
 use pbs_tools::crypt_config::CryptConfig;
@@ -29,6 +30,12 @@ struct ImageAccessInfo {
     archive_size: u64,
 }
 
+//the default number of buffered futures that concurrently load chunks
+const MAX_BUFFERED_FUTURES: usize = 16;
+
+// the default number of maximum worker threads for tokio
+const MAX_WORKER_THREADS: usize = 4;
+
 pub(crate) struct RestoreTask {
     setup: BackupSetup,
     runtime: Arc<Runtime>,
@@ -66,11 +73,17 @@ impl RestoreTask {
     }
 
     pub fn new(setup: BackupSetup) -> Result<Self, Error> {
+        let worker_threads = std::env::var("PBS_RESTORE_MAX_THREADS")
+            .ok()
+            .and_then(|val| val.parse::<usize>().ok())
+            .unwrap_or(MAX_WORKER_THREADS);
+        eprintln!("using up to {worker_threads} threads");
         let runtime = get_runtime_with_builder(|| {
             let mut builder = tokio::runtime::Builder::new_multi_thread();
             builder.enable_all();
+            // we don't use much blocking code, so two should be enough
             builder.max_blocking_threads(2);
-            builder.worker_threads(4);
+            builder.worker_threads(worker_threads);
             builder.thread_name("proxmox-restore-worker");
             builder
         });
@@ -165,26 +178,59 @@ impl RestoreTask {
 
         let start_time = std::time::Instant::now();
 
-        for pos in 0..index.index_count() {
-            let digest = index.index_digest(pos).unwrap();
+        let read_queue = (0..index.index_count()).map(|pos| {
+            let digest = *index.index_digest(pos).unwrap();
             let offset = (pos * index.chunk_size) as u64;
-            if digest == &zero_chunk_digest {
-                let res = write_zero_callback(offset, index.chunk_size as u64);
-                if res < 0 {
-                    bail!("write_zero_callback failed ({})", res);
+            let chunk_reader = chunk_reader.clone();
+            async move {
+                let chunk = if digest == zero_chunk_digest {
+                    None
+                } else {
+                    let raw_data = tokio::task::spawn(async move {
+                        AsyncReadChunk::read_chunk(&chunk_reader, &digest).await
+                    })
+                    .await??;
+                    Some(raw_data)
+                };
+
+                Ok::<_, Error>((chunk, offset))
+            }
+        });
+
+        let concurrency = std::env::var("PBS_RESTORE_FETCH_CONCURRENCY")
+            .ok()
+            .and_then(|val| val.parse::<usize>().ok())
+            .unwrap_or(MAX_BUFFERED_FUTURES);
+        eprintln!("fetching up to {concurrency} chunks in parallel");
+
+        // this buffers futures and pre-fetches some chunks for us
+        let mut stream = futures::stream::iter(read_queue).buffer_unordered(concurrency);
+
+        let mut count = 0;
+        while let Some(res) = stream.next().await {
+            let res = res?;
+            match res {
+                (None, offset) => {
+                    let res = write_zero_callback(offset, index.chunk_size as u64);
+                    if res < 0 {
+                        bail!("write_zero_callback failed ({})", res);
+                    }
+                    bytes += index.chunk_size;
+                    zeroes += index.chunk_size;
                 }
-                bytes += index.chunk_size;
-                zeroes += index.chunk_size;
-            } else {
-                let raw_data = ReadChunk::read_chunk(&chunk_reader, digest)?;
-                let res = write_data_callback(offset, &raw_data);
-                if res < 0 {
-                    bail!("write_data_callback failed ({})", res);
+                (Some(raw_data), offset) => {
+                    let res = write_data_callback(offset, &raw_data);
+                    if res < 0 {
+                        bail!("write_data_callback failed ({})", res);
+                    }
+                    bytes += raw_data.len();
                 }
-                bytes += raw_data.len();
             }
+
+            count += 1;
+
             if verbose {
-                let next_per = ((pos + 1) * 100) / index.index_count();
+                let next_per = (count * 100) / index.index_count();
                 if per != next_per {
                     eprintln!(
                         "progress {}% (read {} bytes, zeroes = {}% ({} bytes), duration {} sec)",
-- 
2.39.5





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