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authorAndré Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu>2016-03-25 03:53:42 -0300
committerAndré Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu>2016-03-25 03:53:42 -0300
commit03dd4cb26d967f9588437b0fc9cc0e8353322bb7 (patch)
treefa581f6dc1c0596391690d1f67eceef3af8246dc /Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt
parentd4e493caf788ef44982e131ff9c786546904d934 (diff)
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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.
-
-Currently two IO control policies are implemented. First one is 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. The second
-one is throttling policy which can be used to specify upper IO rate limits
-on devices. This policy is implemented in generic block layer and can be
-used on leaf nodes as well as higher level logical devices like device mapper.
-
-HOWTO
-=====
-Proportional Weight division of bandwidth
------------------------------------------
-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); see
- cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?.
-
- mount -t tmpfs cgroup_root /sys/fs/cgroup
- mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio
- mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio
-
-- Create two cgroups
- mkdir -p /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test1/ /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test2
-
-- Set weights of group test1 and test2
- echo 1000 > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test1/blkio.weight
- echo 500 > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/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 $! > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test1/tasks
- cat /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test1/tasks
-
- dd if=/mnt/sdb/zerofile2 of=/dev/null &
- echo $! > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/test2/tasks
- cat /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/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 milliseconds), each group got and how many sectors 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.
-
-Throttling/Upper Limit policy
------------------------------
-- Enable Block IO controller
- CONFIG_BLK_CGROUP=y
-
-- Enable throttling in block layer
- CONFIG_BLK_DEV_THROTTLING=y
-
-- Mount blkio controller (see cgroups.txt, Why are cgroups needed?)
- mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio
-
-- Specify a bandwidth rate on particular device for root group. The format
- for policy is "<major>:<minor> <bytes_per_second>".
-
- echo "8:16 1048576" > /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio/blkio.throttle.read_bps_device
-
- Above will put a limit of 1MB/second on reads happening for root group
- on device having major/minor number 8:16.
-
-- Run dd to read a file and see if rate is throttled to 1MB/s or not.
-
- # dd if=/mnt/common/zerofile of=/dev/null bs=4K count=1024
- # iflag=direct
- 1024+0 records in
- 1024+0 records out
- 4194304 bytes (4.2 MB) copied, 4.0001 s, 1.0 MB/s
-
- Limits for writes can be put using blkio.throttle.write_bps_device file.
-
-Hierarchical Cgroups
-====================
-
-Both CFQ and throttling implement hierarchy support; however,
-throttling's hierarchy support is enabled iff "sane_behavior" is
-enabled from cgroup side, which currently is a development option and
-not publicly available.
-
-If somebody created a hierarchy like as follows.
-
- root
- / \
- test1 test2
- |
- test3
-
-CFQ by default and throttling with "sane_behavior" will handle the
-hierarchy correctly. For details on CFQ hierarchy support, refer to
-Documentation/block/cfq-iosched.txt. For throttling, all limits apply
-to the whole subtree while all statistics are local to the IOs
-directly generated by tasks in that cgroup.
-
-Throttling without "sane_behavior" enabled from cgroup side will
-practically treat all groups at same level as if it looks like the
-following.
-
- pivot
- / / \ \
- root test1 test2 test3
-
-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.
-
-CONFIG_BLK_DEV_THROTTLING
- - Enable block device throttling support in block layer.
-
-Details of cgroup files
-=======================
-Proportional weight policy 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 10 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 > 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.leaf_weight[_device]
- - Equivalents of blkio.weight[_device] for the purpose of
- deciding how much weight tasks in the given cgroup has while
- competing with the cgroup's child cgroups. For details,
- please refer to Documentation/block/cfq-iosched.txt.
-
-- 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 (bio) issued to 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 existing 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.*_recursive
- - Recursive version of various stats. These files show the
- same information as their non-recursive counterparts but
- include stats from all the descendant cgroups.
-
-Throttling/Upper limit policy files
------------------------------------
-- blkio.throttle.read_bps_device
- - Specifies upper limit on READ rate from the device. IO rate is
- specified in bytes per second. Rules are per device. Following is
- the format.
-
- echo "<major>:<minor> <rate_bytes_per_second>" > /cgrp/blkio.throttle.read_bps_device
-
-- blkio.throttle.write_bps_device
- - Specifies upper limit on WRITE rate to the device. IO rate is
- specified in bytes per second. Rules are per device. Following is
- the format.
-
- echo "<major>:<minor> <rate_bytes_per_second>" > /cgrp/blkio.throttle.write_bps_device
-
-- blkio.throttle.read_iops_device
- - Specifies upper limit on READ rate from the device. IO rate is
- specified in IO per second. Rules are per device. Following is
- the format.
-
- echo "<major>:<minor> <rate_io_per_second>" > /cgrp/blkio.throttle.read_iops_device
-
-- blkio.throttle.write_iops_device
- - Specifies upper limit on WRITE rate to the device. IO rate is
- specified in io per second. Rules are per device. Following is
- the format.
-
- echo "<major>:<minor> <rate_io_per_second>" > /cgrp/blkio.throttle.write_iops_device
-
-Note: If both BW and IOPS rules are specified for a device, then IO is
- subjected to both the constraints.
-
-- blkio.throttle.io_serviced
- - Number of IOs (bio) issued to 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.throttle.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.
-
-Common files among various policies
------------------------------------
-- 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/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.
-
-Writeback
-=========
-
-Page cache is dirtied through buffered writes and shared mmaps and
-written asynchronously to the backing filesystem by the writeback
-mechanism. Writeback sits between the memory and IO domains and
-regulates the proportion of dirty memory by balancing dirtying and
-write IOs.
-
-On traditional cgroup hierarchies, relationships between different
-controllers cannot be established making it impossible for writeback
-to operate accounting for cgroup resource restrictions and all
-writeback IOs are attributed to the root cgroup.
-
-If both the blkio and memory controllers are used on the v2 hierarchy
-and the filesystem supports cgroup writeback, writeback operations
-correctly follow the resource restrictions imposed by both memory and
-blkio controllers.
-
-Writeback examines both system-wide and per-cgroup dirty memory status
-and enforces the more restrictive of the two. Also, writeback control
-parameters which are absolute values - vm.dirty_bytes and
-vm.dirty_background_bytes - are distributed across cgroups according
-to their current writeback bandwidth.
-
-There's a peculiarity stemming from the discrepancy in ownership
-granularity between memory controller and writeback. While memory
-controller tracks ownership per page, writeback operates on inode
-basis. cgroup writeback bridges the gap by tracking ownership by
-inode but migrating ownership if too many foreign pages, pages which
-don't match the current inode ownership, have been encountered while
-writing back the inode.
-
-This is a conscious design choice as writeback operations are
-inherently tied to inodes making strictly following page ownership
-complicated and inefficient. The only use case which suffers from
-this compromise is multiple cgroups concurrently dirtying disjoint
-regions of the same inode, which is an unlikely use case and decided
-to be unsupported. Note that as memory controller assigns page
-ownership on the first use and doesn't update it until the page is
-released, even if cgroup writeback strictly follows page ownership,
-multiple cgroups dirtying overlapping areas wouldn't work as expected.
-In general, write-sharing an inode across multiple cgroups is not well
-supported.
-
-Filesystem support for cgroup writeback
----------------------------------------
-
-A filesystem can make writeback IOs cgroup-aware by updating
-address_space_operations->writepage[s]() to annotate bio's using the
-following two functions.
-
-* wbc_init_bio(@wbc, @bio)
-
- Should be called for each bio carrying writeback data and associates
- the bio with the inode's owner cgroup. Can be called anytime
- between bio allocation and submission.
-
-* wbc_account_io(@wbc, @page, @bytes)
-
- Should be called for each data segment being written out. While
- this function doesn't care exactly when it's called during the
- writeback session, it's the easiest and most natural to call it as
- data segments are added to a bio.
-
-With writeback bio's annotated, cgroup support can be enabled per
-super_block by setting MS_CGROUPWB in ->s_flags. This allows for
-selective disabling of cgroup writeback support which is helpful when
-certain filesystem features, e.g. journaled data mode, are
-incompatible.
-
-wbc_init_bio() binds the specified bio to its cgroup. Depending on
-the configuration, the bio may be executed at a lower priority and if
-the writeback session is holding shared resources, e.g. a journal
-entry, may lead to priority inversion. There is no one easy solution
-for the problem. Filesystems can try to work around specific problem
-cases by skipping wbc_init_bio() or using bio_associate_blkcg()
-directly.