qcow2: Assign the L2 cache relatively to the image size

Sufficient L2 cache can noticeably improve the performance when using
large images with frequent I/O.

Previously, unless 'cache-size' was specified and was large enough, the
L2 cache was set to a certain size without taking the virtual image size
into account.

Now, the L2 cache assignment is aware of the virtual size of the image,
and will cover the entire image, unless the cache size needed for that is
larger than a certain maximum. This maximum is set to 1 MB by default
(enough to cover an 8 GB image with the default cluster size) but can
be increased or decreased using the 'l2-cache-size' option. This option
was previously documented as the *maximum* L2 cache size, and this patch
makes it behave as such, instead of as a constant size. Also, the
existing option 'cache-size' can limit the sum of both L2 and refcount
caches, as previously.

Signed-off-by: Leonid Bloch <lbloch@janustech.com>
Reviewed-by: Alberto Garcia <berto@igalia.com>
Reviewed-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/qemu-options.hx b/qemu-options.hx
index 2db6247eff..6eef0f5651 100644
--- a/qemu-options.hx
+++ b/qemu-options.hx
@@ -736,9 +736,9 @@ The maximum total size of the L2 table and refcount block caches in bytes
 
 @item l2-cache-size
 The maximum size of the L2 table cache in bytes
-(default: if cache-size is not defined - 1048576 bytes or 8 clusters, whichever
-is larger; otherwise, as large as possible or needed within the cache-size,
-while permitting the requested or the minimal refcount cache size)
+(default: if cache-size is not specified - 1M; otherwise, as large as possible
+within the cache-size, while permitting the requested or the minimal refcount
+cache size)
 
 @item refcount-cache-size
 The maximum size of the refcount block cache in bytes