Messages in this thread | | | From | Divyesh Shah <> | Date | Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:49:17 -0700 | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/4] block: Per-partition block IO performance histograms |
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On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 3:29 AM, Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 14 2010, Divyesh Shah wrote: >> The following patchset implements per partition 2-d histograms for IO to block >> devices. The 3 types of histograms added are: >> >> 1) request histograms - 2-d histogram of total request time in ms (queueing + >> service) broken down by IO size (in bytes). >> 2) dma histograms - 2-d histogram of total service time in ms broken down by >> IO size (in bytes). >> 3) seek histograms - 1-d histogram of seek distance >> >> All of these histograms are per-partition. The first 2 are further divided into >> separate read and write histograms. The buckets for these histograms are >> configurable via config options as well as at runtime (per-device). >> >> These histograms have proven very valuable to us over the years to understand >> the seek distribution of IOs over our production machines, detect large >> queueing delays, find latency outliers, etc. by being used as part of an >> always-on monitoring system. >> >> They can be reset by writing any value to them which makes them useful for >> tests and debugging too. >> >> This was initially written by Edward Falk in 2006 and I've forward ported >> and improved it a few times it across kernel versions. >> >> He had also sent a very old version of this patchset (minus some features like >> runtime configurable buckets) back then to lkml - see >> http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0611.1/2684.html >> Some of the reasons mentioned for not including these patches are given below. >> >> I'm requesting re-consideration for this patchset in light of the following >> arguments. >> >> 1) This can be done with blktrace too, why add another API? >> >> Yes blktrace can be used to get this kind of information w/ some help from >> userspace post-processing. However, to use this as an always-on monitoring tool >> w/ blktrace and have negligible performance overhead is difficult to achieve. >> I did a quick 10-thread iozone direct IO write phase run w/ and w/o blktrace >> on a traditional rotational disk to get a feel of the impact on throughput. >> This was kernel built from Jens' for-2.6.35 branch and did not have these new >> block histogram patches. >> o w/o blktrace: >> Children see throughput for 10 initial writers = 95211.22 KB/sec >> Parent sees throughput for 10 initial writers = 37593.20 KB/sec >> Min throughput per thread = 9078.65 KB/sec >> Max throughput per thread = 10055.59 KB/sec >> Avg throughput per thread = 9521.12 KB/sec >> Min xfer = 462848.00 KB >> >> o w/ blktrace: >> Children see throughput for 10 initial writers = 93527.98 KB/sec >> Parent sees throughput for 10 initial writers = 38594.47 KB/sec >> Min throughput per thread = 9197.06 KB/sec >> Max throughput per thread = 9640.09 KB/sec >> Avg throughput per thread = 9352.80 KB/sec >> Min xfer = 490496.00 KB >> >> This is about 1.8% average throughput loss per thread. >> The extra cpu time spent with blktrace is in addition to this loss of >> throughput. This overhead will only go up on faster SSDs. > > blktrace definitely has a bit of overhead, even if I tried to keep it at > a minimum. I'm not too crazy about adding all this extra accounting for > something we can already get with the tracing that we have available. > > The above blktrace run, I take it that was just a regular unmasked run? > Did you try and tailor the information logged? If you restricted to > logging just the particual event(s) that you need to generate this data, > the overhead would be a LOT smaller.
Yes this was an unmasked run. I will try running some tests for only these specific events and report back the results. However, I am going to be away from work/email for the next 6 days (on vacation) so there will be some delay before I can reply back.
>> 2) sysfs should be only for one value per file. There are some exceptions but we >> are working on fixing them. Please don't add new ones. >> >> There are excpetions like meminfo, etc. that violate this guideline (I'm not >> sure if its an enforced rule) and some actually make sense since there is no way >> of representing structured data. Though these block histograms are multi-valued >> one can also interpret them as one logical piece of information. > > Not a problem in my book. There's also the case of giving a real > snapshot of the information as opposed to collecting from several files.
That is a good point too. Thanks for your comments!
> > -- > Jens Axboe > > -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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