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1 | Block IO Controller | ||
2 | =================== | ||
3 | Overview | ||
4 | ======== | ||
5 | cgroup subsys "blkio" implements the block io controller. There seems to be | ||
6 | a need of various kinds of IO control policies (like proportional BW, max BW) | ||
7 | both at leaf nodes as well as at intermediate nodes in a storage hierarchy. | ||
8 | Plan is to use the same cgroup based management interface for blkio controller | ||
9 | and based on user options switch IO policies in the background. | ||
10 | |||
11 | In the first phase, this patchset implements proportional weight time based | ||
12 | division of disk policy. It is implemented in CFQ. Hence this policy takes | ||
13 | effect only on leaf nodes when CFQ is being used. | ||
14 | |||
15 | HOWTO | ||
16 | ===== | ||
17 | You can do a very simple testing of running two dd threads in two different | ||
18 | cgroups. Here is what you can do. | ||
19 | |||
20 | - Enable group scheduling in CFQ | ||
21 | CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED=y | ||
22 | |||
23 | - Compile and boot into kernel and mount IO controller (blkio). | ||
24 | |||
25 | mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup | ||
26 | |||
27 | - Create two cgroups | ||
28 | mkdir -p /cgroup/test1/ /cgroup/test2 | ||
29 | |||
30 | - Set weights of group test1 and test2 | ||
31 | echo 1000 > /cgroup/test1/blkio.weight | ||
32 | echo 500 > /cgroup/test2/blkio.weight | ||
33 | |||
34 | - Create two same size files (say 512MB each) on same disk (file1, file2) and | ||
35 | launch two dd threads in different cgroup to read those files. | ||
36 | |||
37 | sync | ||
38 | echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches | ||
39 | |||
40 | dd if=/mnt/sdb/zerofile1 of=/dev/null & | ||
41 | echo $! > /cgroup/test1/tasks | ||
42 | cat /cgroup/test1/tasks | ||
43 | |||
44 | dd if=/mnt/sdb/zerofile2 of=/dev/null & | ||
45 | echo $! > /cgroup/test2/tasks | ||
46 | cat /cgroup/test2/tasks | ||
47 | |||
48 | - At macro level, first dd should finish first. To get more precise data, keep | ||
49 | on looking at (with the help of script), at blkio.disk_time and | ||
50 | blkio.disk_sectors files of both test1 and test2 groups. This will tell how | ||
51 | much disk time (in milli seconds), each group got and how many secotors each | ||
52 | group dispatched to the disk. We provide fairness in terms of disk time, so | ||
53 | ideally io.disk_time of cgroups should be in proportion to the weight. | ||
54 | |||
55 | Various user visible config options | ||
56 | =================================== | ||
57 | CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED | ||
58 | - Enables group scheduling in CFQ. Currently only 1 level of group | ||
59 | creation is allowed. | ||
60 | |||
61 | CONFIG_DEBUG_CFQ_IOSCHED | ||
62 | - Enables some debugging messages in blktrace. Also creates extra | ||
63 | cgroup file blkio.dequeue. | ||
64 | |||
65 | Config options selected automatically | ||
66 | ===================================== | ||
67 | These config options are not user visible and are selected/deselected | ||
68 | automatically based on IO scheduler configuration. | ||
69 | |||
70 | CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP | ||
71 | - Block IO controller. Selected by CONFIG_CFQ_GROUP_IOSCHED. | ||
72 | |||
73 | CONFIG_DEBUG_BLK_CGROUP | ||
74 | - Debug help. Selected by CONFIG_DEBUG_CFQ_IOSCHED. | ||
75 | |||
76 | Details of cgroup files | ||
77 | ======================= | ||
78 | - blkio.weight | ||
79 | - Specifies per cgroup weight. | ||
80 | |||
81 | Currently allowed range of weights is from 100 to 1000. | ||
82 | |||
83 | - blkio.time | ||
84 | - disk time allocated to cgroup per device in milliseconds. First | ||
85 | two fields specify the major and minor number of the device and | ||
86 | third field specifies the disk time allocated to group in | ||
87 | milliseconds. | ||
88 | |||
89 | - blkio.sectors | ||
90 | - number of sectors transferred to/from disk by the group. First | ||
91 | two fields specify the major and minor number of the device and | ||
92 | third field specifies the number of sectors transferred by the | ||
93 | group to/from the device. | ||
94 | |||
95 | - blkio.dequeue | ||
96 | - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_CFQ_IOSCHED=y. This | ||
97 | gives the statistics about how many a times a group was dequeued | ||
98 | from service tree of the device. First two fields specify the major | ||
99 | and minor number of the device and third field specifies the number | ||
100 | of times a group was dequeued from a particular device. | ||
101 | |||
102 | CFQ sysfs tunable | ||
103 | ================= | ||
104 | /sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/group_isolation | ||
105 | |||
106 | If group_isolation=1, it provides stronger isolation between groups at the | ||
107 | expense of throughput. By default group_isolation is 0. In general that | ||
108 | means that if group_isolation=0, expect fairness for sequential workload | ||
109 | only. Set group_isolation=1 to see fairness for random IO workload also. | ||
110 | |||
111 | Generally CFQ will put random seeky workload in sync-noidle category. CFQ | ||
112 | will disable idling on these queues and it does a collective idling on group | ||
113 | of such queues. Generally these are slow moving queues and if there is a | ||
114 | sync-noidle service tree in each group, that group gets exclusive access to | ||
115 | disk for certain period. That means it will bring the throughput down if | ||
116 | group does not have enough IO to drive deeper queue depths and utilize disk | ||
117 | capacity to the fullest in the slice allocated to it. But the flip side is | ||
118 | that even a random reader should get better latencies and overall throughput | ||
119 | if there are lots of sequential readers/sync-idle workload running in the | ||
120 | system. | ||
121 | |||
122 | If group_isolation=0, then CFQ automatically moves all the random seeky queues | ||
123 | in the root group. That means there will be no service differentiation for | ||
124 | that kind of workload. This leads to better throughput as we do collective | ||
125 | idling on root sync-noidle tree. | ||
126 | |||
127 | By default one should run with group_isolation=0. If that is not sufficient | ||
128 | and one wants stronger isolation between groups, then set group_isolation=1 | ||
129 | but this will come at cost of reduced throughput. | ||
130 | |||
131 | What works | ||
132 | ========== | ||
133 | - Currently only sync IO queues are support. All the buffered writes are | ||
134 | still system wide and not per group. Hence we will not see service | ||
135 | differentiation between buffered writes between groups. | ||