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Block IO Controller
===================
Overview
========
cgroup subsys "blkio" implements the block io controller. There seems to be
a need of various kinds of IO control policies (like proportional BW, max BW)
both at leaf nodes as well as at intermediate nodes in a storage hierarchy.
Plan is to use the same cgroup based management interface for blkio controller
and based on user options switch IO policies in the background.
In the first phase, this patchset implements proportional weight time based
division of disk policy. It is implemented in CFQ. Hence this policy takes
effect only on leaf nodes when CFQ is being used.
HOWTO
=====
You can do a very simple testing of running two dd threads in two different
cgroups. Here is what you can do.
- Enable Block IO controller
CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP=y
- Enable group scheduling in CFQ
CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED=y
- Compile and boot into kernel and mount IO controller (blkio).
mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
- Create two cgroups
mkdir -p /cgroup/test1/ /cgroup/test2
- Set weights of group test1 and test2
echo 1000 > /cgroup/test1/blkio.weight
echo 500 > /cgroup/test2/blkio.weight
- Create two same size files (say 512MB each) on same disk (file1, file2) and
launch two dd threads in different cgroup to read those files.
sync
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
dd if=/mnt/sdb/zerofile1 of=/dev/null &
echo $! > /cgroup/test1/tasks
cat /cgroup/test1/tasks
dd if=/mnt/sdb/zerofile2 of=/dev/null &
echo $! > /cgroup/test2/tasks
cat /cgroup/test2/tasks
- At macro level, first dd should finish first. To get more precise data, keep
on looking at (with the help of script), at blkio.disk_time and
blkio.disk_sectors files of both test1 and test2 groups. This will tell how
much disk time (in milli seconds), each group got and how many secotors each
group dispatched to the disk. We provide fairness in terms of disk time, so
ideally io.disk_time of cgroups should be in proportion to the weight.
Various user visible config options
===================================
CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP
- Block IO controller.
CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP
- Debug help. Right now some additional stats file show up in cgroup
if this option is enabled.
CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED
- Enables group scheduling in CFQ. Currently only 1 level of group
creation is allowed.
Details of cgroup files
=======================
- blkio.weight
- Specifies per cgroup weight. This is default weight of the group
on all the devices until and unless overridden by per device rule.
(See blkio.weight_device).
Currently allowed range of weights is from 100 to 1000.
- blkio.weight_device
- One can specify per cgroup per device rules using this interface.
These rules override the default value of group weight as specified
by blkio.weight.
Following is the format.
#echo dev_maj:dev_minor weight > /path/to/cgroup/blkio.weight_device
Configure weight=300 on /dev/sdb (8:16) in this cgroup
# echo 8:16 300 > blkio.weight_device
# cat blkio.weight_device
dev weight
8:16 300
Configure weight=500 on /dev/sda (8:0) in this cgroup
# echo 8:0 500 > blkio.weight_device
# cat blkio.weight_device
dev weight
8:0 500
8:16 300
Remove specific weight for /dev/sda in this cgroup
# echo 8:0 0 > blkio.weight_device
# cat blkio.weight_device
dev weight
8:16 300
- blkio.time
- disk time allocated to cgroup per device in milliseconds. First
two fields specify the major and minor number of the device and
third field specifies the disk time allocated to group in
milliseconds.
- blkio.sectors
- number of sectors transferred to/from disk by the group. First
two fields specify the major and minor number of the device and
third field specifies the number of sectors transferred by the
group to/from the device.
- blkio.io_service_bytes
- Number of bytes transferred to/from the disk by the group. These
are further divided by the type of operation - read or write, sync
or async. First two fields specify the major and minor number of the
device, third field specifies the operation type and the fourth field
specifies the number of bytes.
- blkio.io_serviced
- Number of IOs completed to/from the disk by the group. These
are further divided by the type of operation - read or write, sync
or async. First two fields specify the major and minor number of the
device, third field specifies the operation type and the fourth field
specifies the number of IOs.
- blkio.io_service_time
- Total amount of time between request dispatch and request completion
for the IOs done by this cgroup. This is in nanoseconds to make it
meaningful for flash devices too. For devices with queue depth of 1,
this time represents the actual service time. When queue_depth > 1,
that is no longer true as requests may be served out of order. This
may cause the service time for a given IO to include the service time
of multiple IOs when served out of order which may result in total
io_service_time > actual time elapsed. This time is further divided by
the type of operation - read or write, sync or async. First two fields
specify the major and minor number of the device, third field
specifies the operation type and the fourth field specifies the
io_service_time in ns.
- blkio.io_wait_time
- Total amount of time the IOs for this cgroup spent waiting in the
scheduler queues for service. This can be greater than the total time
elapsed since it is cumulative io_wait_time for all IOs. It is not a
measure of total time the cgroup spent waiting but rather a measure of
the wait_time for its individual IOs. For devices with queue_depth > 1
this metric does not include the time spent waiting for service once
the IO is dispatched to the device but till it actually gets serviced
(there might be a time lag here due to re-ordering of requests by the
device). This is in nanoseconds to make it meaningful for flash
devices too. This time is further divided by the type of operation -
read or write, sync or async. First two fields specify the major and
minor number of the device, third field specifies the operation type
and the fourth field specifies the io_wait_time in ns.
- blkio.io_merged
- Total number of bios/requests merged into requests belonging to this
cgroup. This is further divided by the type of operation - read or
write, sync or async.
- blkio.io_queued
- Total number of requests queued up at any given instant for this
cgroup. This is further divided by the type of operation - read or
write, sync or async.
- blkio.avg_queue_size
- Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y.
The average queue size for this cgroup over the entire time of this
cgroup's existence. Queue size samples are taken each time one of the
queues of this cgroup gets a timeslice.
- blkio.group_wait_time
- Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y.
This is the amount of time the cgroup had to wait since it became busy
(i.e., went from 0 to 1 request queued) to get a timeslice for one of
its queues. This is different from the io_wait_time which is the
cumulative total of the amount of time spent by each IO in that cgroup
waiting in the scheduler queue. This is in nanoseconds. If this is
read when the cgroup is in a waiting (for timeslice) state, the stat
will only report the group_wait_time accumulated till the last time it
got a timeslice and will not include the current delta.
- blkio.empty_time
- Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y.
This is the amount of time a cgroup spends without any pending
requests when not being served, i.e., it does not include any time
spent idling for one of the queues of the cgroup. This is in
nanoseconds. If this is read when the cgroup is in an empty state,
the stat will only report the empty_time accumulated till the last
time it had a pending request and will not include the current delta.
- blkio.idle_time
- Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y.
This is the amount of time spent by the IO scheduler idling for a
given cgroup in anticipation of a better request than the exising ones
from other queues/cgroups. This is in nanoseconds. If this is read
when the cgroup is in an idling state, the stat will only report the
idle_time accumulated till the last idle period and will not include
the current delta.
- blkio.dequeue
- Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP=y. This
gives the statistics about how many a times a group was dequeued
from service tree of the device. First two fields specify the major
and minor number of the device and third field specifies the number
of times a group was dequeued from a particular device.
- blkio.reset_stats
- Writing an int to this file will result in resetting all the stats
for that cgroup.
CFQ sysfs tunable
=================
/sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/group_isolation
-----------------------------------------------
If group_isolation=1, it provides stronger isolation between groups at the
expense of throughput. By default group_isolation is 0. In general that
means that if group_isolation=0, expect fairness for sequential workload
only. Set group_isolation=1 to see fairness for random IO workload also.
Generally CFQ will put random seeky workload in sync-noidle category. CFQ
will disable idling on these queues and it does a collective idling on group
of such queues. Generally these are slow moving queues and if there is a
sync-noidle service tree in each group, that group gets exclusive access to
disk for certain period. That means it will bring the throughput down if
group does not have enough IO to drive deeper queue depths and utilize disk
capacity to the fullest in the slice allocated to it. But the flip side is
that even a random reader should get better latencies and overall throughput
if there are lots of sequential readers/sync-idle workload running in the
system.
If group_isolation=0, then CFQ automatically moves all the random seeky queues
in the root group. That means there will be no service differentiation for
that kind of workload. This leads to better throughput as we do collective
idling on root sync-noidle tree.
By default one should run with group_isolation=0. If that is not sufficient
and one wants stronger isolation between groups, then set group_isolation=1
but this will come at cost of reduced throughput.
/sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/slice_idle
------------------------------------------
On a faster hardware CFQ can be slow, especially with sequential workload.
This happens because CFQ idles on a single queue and single queue might not
drive deeper request queue depths to keep the storage busy. In such scenarios
one can try setting slice_idle=0 and that would switch CFQ to IOPS
(IO operations per second) mode on NCQ supporting hardware.
That means CFQ will not idle between cfq queues of a cfq group and hence be
able to driver higher queue depth and achieve better throughput. That also
means that cfq provides fairness among groups in terms of IOPS and not in
terms of disk time.
/sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/group_idle
------------------------------------------
If one disables idling on individual cfq queues and cfq service trees by
setting slice_idle=0, group_idle kicks in. That means CFQ will still idle
on the group in an attempt to provide fairness among groups.
By default group_idle is same as slice_idle and does not do anything if
slice_idle is enabled.
One can experience an overall throughput drop if you have created multiple
groups and put applications in that group which are not driving enough
IO to keep disk busy. In that case set group_idle=0, and CFQ will not idle
on individual groups and throughput should improve.
What works
==========
- Currently only sync IO queues are support. All the buffered writes are
still system wide and not per group. Hence we will not see service
differentiation between buffered writes between groups.
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