o Documentation for io-controller. Signed-off-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@xxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/block/00-INDEX | 2 + Documentation/block/io-controller.txt | 360 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 362 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 Documentation/block/io-controller.txt diff --git a/Documentation/block/00-INDEX b/Documentation/block/00-INDEX index 961a051..dc8bf95 100644 --- a/Documentation/block/00-INDEX +++ b/Documentation/block/00-INDEX @@ -10,6 +10,8 @@ capability.txt - Generic Block Device Capability (/sys/block/<disk>/capability) deadline-iosched.txt - Deadline IO scheduler tunables +io-controller.txt + - IO controller for provding hierarchical IO scheduling ioprio.txt - Block io priorities (in CFQ scheduler) request.txt diff --git a/Documentation/block/io-controller.txt b/Documentation/block/io-controller.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bf95bf7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/block/io-controller.txt @@ -0,0 +1,360 @@ + IO Controller + ============= + +Overview +======== + +This patchset implements a proportional weight IO controller. That is one +can create cgroups and assign prio/weights to those cgroups and task group +will get access to disk proportionate to the weight of the group. + +These patches modify elevator layer and individual IO schedulers to do +IO control hence this io controller works only on block devices which use +one of the standard io schedulers can not be used with any xyz logical block +device. + +The assumption/thought behind modifying IO scheduler is that resource control +is needed only on leaf nodes where the actual contention for resources is +present and not on intertermediate logical block devices. + +Consider following hypothetical scenario. Lets say there are three physical +disks, namely sda, sdb and sdc. Two logical volumes (lv0 and lv1) have been +created on top of these. Some part of sdb is in lv0 and some part is in lv1. + + lv0 lv1 + / \ / \ + sda sdb sdc + +Also consider following cgroup hierarchy + + root + / \ + A B + / \ / \ + T1 T2 T3 T4 + +A and B are two cgroups and T1, T2, T3 and T4 are tasks with-in those cgroups. +Assuming T1, T2, T3 and T4 are doing IO on lv0 and lv1. These tasks should +get their fair share of bandwidth on disks sda, sdb and sdc. There is no +IO control on intermediate logical block nodes (lv0, lv1). + +So if tasks T1 and T2 are doing IO on lv0 and T3 and T4 are doing IO on lv1 +only, there will not be any contetion for resources between group A and B if +IO is going to sda or sdc. But if actual IO gets translated to disk sdb, then +IO scheduler associated with the sdb will distribute disk bandwidth to +group A and B proportionate to their weight. + +CFQ already has the notion of fairness and it provides differential disk +access based on priority and class of the task. Just that it is flat and +with cgroup stuff, it needs to be made hierarchical to achive a good +hierarchical control on IO. + +Rest of the IO schedulers (noop, deadline and AS) don't have any notion +of fairness among various threads. They maintain only one queue where all +the IO gets queued (internally this queue is split in read and write queue +for deadline and AS). With this patchset, now we maintain one queue per +cgropu per device and then try to do fair queuing among those queues. + +One of the concerns raised with modifying IO schedulers was that we don't +want to replicate the code in all the IO schedulers. These patches share +the fair queuing code which has been moved to a common layer (elevator +layer). Hence we don't end up replicating code across IO schedulers. Following +diagram depicts the concept. + + -------------------------------- + | Elevator Layer + Fair Queuing | + -------------------------------- + | | | | + NOOP DEADLINE AS CFQ + +Design +====== +This patchset primarily uses BFQ (Budget Fair Queuing) code to provide +fairness among different IO queues. Fabio and Paolo implemented BFQ which uses +B-WF2Q+ algorithm for fair queuing. + +Why BFQ? + +- Not sure if weighted round robin logic of CFQ can be easily extended for + hierarchical mode. One of the things is that we can not keep dividing + the time slice of parent group among childrens. Deeper we go in hierarchy + time slice will get smaller. + + One of the ways to implement hierarchical support could be to keep track + of virtual time and service provided to queue/group and select a queue/group + for service based on any of the various available algoriths. + + BFQ already had support for hierarchical scheduling, taking those patches + was easier. + +- BFQ was designed to provide tighter bounds/delay w.r.t service provided + to a queue. Delay/Jitter with BFQ is O(1). + + Note: BFQ originally used amount of IO done (number of sectors) as notion + of service provided. IOW, it tried to provide fairness in terms of + actual IO done and not in terms of actual time disk access was + given to a queue. + + This patcheset modified BFQ to provide fairness in time domain because + that's what CFQ does. So idea was try not to deviate too much from + the CFQ behavior initially. + + Providing fairness in time domain makes accounting trciky because + due to command queueing, at one time there might be multiple requests + from different queues and there is no easy way to find out how much + disk time actually was consumed by the requests of a particular + queue. More about this in comments in source code. + +We have taken BFQ code as starting point for providing fairness among groups +because it already contained lots of features which we required to implement +hierarhical IO scheduling. With this patch set, I am not trying to ensure O(1) +delay here as my goal is to provide fairness among groups. Most likely that +will mean that latencies are not worse than what cfq currently provides (if +not improved ones). Once fairness is ensured, one can look into more in +ensuring O(1) latencies. + +From data structure point of view, one can think of a tree per device, where +io groups and io queues are hanging and are being scheduled using B-WF2Q+ +algorithm. io_queue, is end queue where requests are actually stored and +dispatched from (like cfqq). + +These io queues are primarily created by and managed by end io schedulers +depending on its semantics. For example, noop, deadline and AS ioschedulers +keep one io queues per cgroup and cfqq keeps one io queue per io_context in +a cgroup (apart from async queues). + +A request is mapped to an io group by elevator layer and which io queue it +is mapped to with in group depends on ioscheduler. Currently "current" task +is used to determine the cgroup (hence io group) of the request. Down the +line we need to make use of bio-cgroup patches to map delayed writes to +right group. + +Going back to old behavior +========================== +In new scheme of things essentially we are creating hierarchical fair +queuing logic in elevator layer and chaning IO schedulers to make use of +that logic so that end IO schedulers start supporting hierarchical scheduling. + +Elevator layer continues to support the old interfaces. So even if fair queuing +is enabled at elevator layer, one can have both new hierchical scheduler as +well as old non-hierarchical scheduler operating. + +Also noop, deadline and AS have option of enabling hierarchical scheduling. +If it is selected, fair queuing is done in hierarchical manner. If hierarchical +scheduling is disabled, noop, deadline and AS should retain their existing +behavior. + +CFQ is the only exception where one can not disable fair queuing as it is +needed for provding fairness among various threads even in non-hierarchical +mode. + +Various user visible config options +=================================== +CONFIG_IOSCHED_NOOP_HIER + - Enables hierchical fair queuing in noop. Not selecting this option + leads to old behavior of noop. + +CONFIG_IOSCHED_DEADLINE_HIER + - Enables hierchical fair queuing in deadline. Not selecting this + option leads to old behavior of deadline. + +CONFIG_IOSCHED_AS_HIER + - Enables hierchical fair queuing in AS. Not selecting this option + leads to old behavior of AS. + +CONFIG_IOSCHED_CFQ_HIER + - Enables hierarchical fair queuing in CFQ. Not selecting this option + still does fair queuing among various queus but it is flat and not + hierarchical. + +CGROUP_BLKIO + - This option enables blkio-cgroup controller for IO tracking + purposes. That means, by this controller one can attribute a write + to the original cgroup and not assume that it belongs to submitting + thread. + +CONFIG_TRACK_ASYNC_CONTEXT + - Currently CFQ attributes the writes to the submitting thread and + caches the async queue pointer in the io context of the process. + If this option is set, it tells cfq and elevator fair queuing logic + that for async writes make use of IO tracking patches and attribute + writes to original cgroup and not to write submitting thread. + +CONFIG_DEBUG_GROUP_IOSCHED + - Throws extra debug messages in blktrace output helpful in doing + doing debugging in hierarchical setup. + + - Also allows for export of extra debug statistics like group queue + and dequeue statistics on device through cgroup interface. + +Config options selected automatically +===================================== +These config options are not user visible and are selected/deselected +automatically based on IO scheduler configurations. + +CONFIG_ELV_FAIR_QUEUING + - Enables/Disables the fair queuing logic at elevator layer. + +CONFIG_GROUP_IOSCHED + - Enables/Disables hierarchical queuing and associated cgroup bits. + +HOWTO +===== +So far I have done very simple testing of running two dd threads in two +different cgroups. Here is what you can do. + +- Enable hierarchical scheduling in io scheuduler of your choice (say cfq). + CONFIG_IOSCHED_CFQ_HIER=y + +- Enable IO tracking for async writes. + CONFIG_TRACK_ASYNC_CONTEXT=y + + (This will automatically select CGROUP_BLKIO) + +- Compile and boot into kernel and mount IO controller and blkio io tracking + controller. + + mount -t cgroup -o io,blkio none /cgroup + +- Create two cgroups + mkdir -p /cgroup/test1/ /cgroup/test2 + +- Set weights of group test1 and test2 + echo 1000 > /cgroup/test1/io.weight + echo 500 > /cgroup/test2/io.weight + +- Set "fairness" parameter to 1 at the disk you are testing. + + echo 1 > /sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/fairness + +- 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. Make sure + right io scheduler is being used for the block device where files are + present (the one you compiled in hierarchical mode). + + 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 io.disk_time and io.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. + (It is hard to achieve though :-)). + +Details of cgroup files +======================= +- io.ioprio_class + - Specifies class of the cgroup (RT, BE, IDLE). This is default io + class of the group on all the devices until and unless overridden by + per device rule. (See io.policy). + + 1 = RT; 2 = BE, 3 = IDLE + +- io.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 io.policy). + +- io.disk_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. + +- io.disk_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. + +- io.disk_queue + - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_GROUP_IOSCHED=y. This + gives the statistics about how many a times a group was queued + on 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 queued on a particular device. + +- io.disk_queue + - Debugging aid only enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_GROUP_IOSCHED=y. This + gives the statistics about how many a times a group was de-queued + or removed from the service tree of the device. This basically gives + and idea if we can generate enough IO to create continuously + backlogged groups. First two fields specify the major and minor + number of the device and third field specifies the number + of times a group was de-queued on a particular device. + +- io.policy + - One can specify per cgroup per device rules using this interface. + These rules override the default value of group weight and class as + specified by io.weight and io.ioprio_class. + + Following is the format. + + #echo DEV:weight:ioprio_class > /patch/to/cgroup/io.policy + + weight=0 means removing a policy. + + Examples: + + Configure weight=300 ioprio_class=2 on /dev/hdb in this cgroup + # echo /dev/hdb:300:2 > io.policy + # cat io.policy + dev weight class + /dev/hdb 300 2 + + Configure weight=500 ioprio_class=1 on /dev/hda in this cgroup + # echo /dev/hda:500:1 > io.policy + # cat io.policy + dev weight class + /dev/hda 500 1 + /dev/hdb 300 2 + + Remove the policy for /dev/hda in this cgroup + # echo /dev/hda:0:1 > io.policy + # cat io.policy + dev weight class + /dev/hdb 300 2 + +About configuring request desriptors +==================================== +Traditionally there are 128 request desriptors allocated per request queue +where io scheduler is operating (/sys/block/<disk>/queue/nr_requests). If these +request descriptors are exhausted, processes will put to sleep and woken +up once request descriptors are available. + +With io controller and cgroup stuff, one can not afford to allocate requests +from single pool as one group might allocate lots of requests and then tasks +from other groups might be put to sleep and this other group might be a +higher weight group. Hence to make sure that a group always can get the +request descriptors it is entitled to, one needs to make request descriptor +limit per group on every queue. + +A new parameter /sys/block/<disk>/queue/nr_group_requests has been introduced +and this parameter controlls the maximum number of requests per group. +nr_requests still continues to control total number of request descriptors +on the queue. + +Ideally one should set nr_requests to be following. + +nr_requests = number_of_cgroups * nr_group_requests + +This will make sure that at any point of time nr_group_requests number of +request descriptors will be available for any of the cgroups. + +Currently default nr_requests=512 and nr_group_requests=128. This will make +sure that apart from root group one can create 3 more group without running +into any issues. If one decides to create more cgorus, nr_requests and +nr_group_requests should be adjusted accordingly. + +Probably a better way to assign limit to group request descriptors is through +sysfs interface. This is a future TODO item. -- 1.6.0.6 -- dm-devel mailing list dm-devel@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/dm-devel
