From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.0 required=3.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,MENTIONS_GIT_HOSTING,SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS,URIBL_BLOCKED autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 076BAC04E87 for ; Sat, 18 May 2019 20:50:59 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [209.132.180.67]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB63B20833 for ; Sat, 18 May 2019 20:50:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1729396AbfERUux (ORCPT ); Sat, 18 May 2019 16:50:53 -0400 Received: from outgoing-stata.csail.mit.edu ([128.30.2.210]:48063 "EHLO outgoing-stata.csail.mit.edu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1725446AbfERUux (ORCPT ); Sat, 18 May 2019 16:50:53 -0400 Received: from c-73-193-85-113.hsd1.wa.comcast.net ([73.193.85.113] helo=srivatsab-a01.vmware.com) by outgoing-stata.csail.mit.edu with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:128) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1hS6I2-000S32-KG; Sat, 18 May 2019 16:50:46 -0400 Subject: Re: CFQ idling kills I/O performance on ext4 with blkio cgroup controller To: Paolo Valente Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-block , linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, cgroups@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, axboe@kernel.dk, jack@suse.cz, jmoyer@redhat.com, tytso@mit.edu, amakhalov@vmware.com, anishs@vmware.com, srivatsab@vmware.com References: <8d72fcf7-bbb4-2965-1a06-e9fc177a8938@csail.mit.edu> <1812E450-14EF-4D5A-8F31-668499E13652@linaro.org> From: "Srivatsa S. Bhat" Message-ID: <46c6a4be-f567-3621-2e16-0e341762b828@csail.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 18 May 2019 13:50:42 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.6.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1812E450-14EF-4D5A-8F31-668499E13652@linaro.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-block-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-block@vger.kernel.org On 5/18/19 11:39 AM, Paolo Valente wrote: > I've addressed these issues in my last batch of improvements for BFQ, > which landed in the upcoming 5.2. If you give it a try, and still see > the problem, then I'll be glad to reproduce it, and hopefully fix it > for you. > Hi Paolo, Thank you for looking into this! I just tried current mainline at commit 72cf0b07, but unfortunately didn't see any improvement: dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/test.img bs=512 count=10000 oflag=dsync With mq-deadline, I get: 5120000 bytes (5.1 MB, 4.9 MiB) copied, 3.90981 s, 1.3 MB/s With bfq, I get: 5120000 bytes (5.1 MB, 4.9 MiB) copied, 84.8216 s, 60.4 kB/s Please let me know if any more info about my setup might be helpful. Thank you! Regards, Srivatsa VMware Photon OS > >> Il giorno 18 mag 2019, alle ore 00:16, Srivatsa S. Bhat ha scritto: >> >> >> Hi, >> >> One of my colleagues noticed upto 10x - 30x drop in I/O throughput >> running the following command, with the CFQ I/O scheduler: >> >> dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/test.img bs=512 count=10000 oflags=dsync >> >> Throughput with CFQ: 60 KB/s >> Throughput with noop or deadline: 1.5 MB/s - 2 MB/s >> >> I spent some time looking into it and found that this is caused by the >> undesirable interaction between 4 different components: >> >> - blkio cgroup controller enabled >> - ext4 with the jbd2 kthread running in the root blkio cgroup >> - dd running on ext4, in any other blkio cgroup than that of jbd2 >> - CFQ I/O scheduler with defaults for slice_idle and group_idle >> >> >> When docker is enabled, systemd creates a blkio cgroup called >> system.slice to run system services (and docker) under it, and a >> separate blkio cgroup called user.slice for user processes. So, when >> dd is invoked, it runs under user.slice. >> >> The dd command above includes the dsync flag, which performs an >> fdatasync after every write to the output file. Since dd is writing to >> a file on ext4, jbd2 will be active, committing transactions >> corresponding to those fdatasync requests from dd. (In other words, dd >> depends on jdb2, in order to make forward progress). But jdb2 being a >> kernel thread, runs in the root blkio cgroup, as opposed to dd, which >> runs under user.slice. >> >> Now, if the I/O scheduler in use for the underlying block device is >> CFQ, then its inter-queue/inter-group idling takes effect (via the >> slice_idle and group_idle parameters, both of which default to 8ms). >> Therefore, everytime CFQ switches between processing requests from dd >> vs jbd2, this 8ms idle time is injected, which slows down the overall >> throughput tremendously! >> >> To verify this theory, I tried various experiments, and in all cases, >> the 4 pre-conditions mentioned above were necessary to reproduce this >> performance drop. For example, if I used an XFS filesystem (which >> doesn't use a separate kthread like jbd2 for journaling), or if I dd'ed >> directly to a block device, I couldn't reproduce the performance >> issue. Similarly, running dd in the root blkio cgroup (where jbd2 >> runs) also gets full performance; as does using the noop or deadline >> I/O schedulers; or even CFQ itself, with slice_idle and group_idle set >> to zero. >> >> These results were reproduced on a Linux VM (kernel v4.19) on ESXi, >> both with virtualized storage as well as with disk pass-through, >> backed by a rotational hard disk in both cases. The same problem was >> also seen with the BFQ I/O scheduler in kernel v5.1. >> >> Searching for any earlier discussions of this problem, I found an old >> thread on LKML that encountered this behavior [1], as well as a docker >> github issue [2] with similar symptoms (mentioned later in the >> thread). >> >> So, I'm curious to know if this is a well-understood problem and if >> anybody has any thoughts on how to fix it. >> >> Thank you very much! >> >> >> [1]. https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/11/19/359 >> >> [2]. https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/21485 >> https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/21485#issuecomment-222941103 >> >> Regards, >> Srivatsa >