One thing puzzled me is that in JBOD case, the per-disk writeout performance is smaller than the corresponding single-disk case even when they have comparable bdi_thresh. Tracing shows find that in single disk case, bdi_writeback is always kept high while in JBOD case, it could drop low from time to time and correspondingly bdi_reclaimable could sometimes rush high. The fix is to watch bdi_reclaimable and kick background writeback as soon as it goes high. This resembles the global background threshold but in per-bdi manner. The trick is, as long as bdi_reclaimable does not go high, bdi_writeback naturally won't go low because bdi_reclaimable+bdi_writeback ~= bdi_thresh. With less fluctuated writeback pages, JBOD performance is observed to increase noticeably in various cases. vmstat:nr_written values before/after patch: 3.1.0-rc4-wo-underrun+ 3.1.0-rc4-bgthresh3+ ------------------------ ------------------------ 125596480 +25.9% 158179363 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 61790815 +110.4% 130032231 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 58853546 -0.1% 58823828 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 110159811 +24.7% 137355377 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 69544762 +10.8% 77080047 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 50644862 +0.5% 50890006 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X 42677090 +28.0% 54643527 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 47491324 +13.3% 53785605 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 52548986 +0.9% 53001031 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 26783091 +36.8% 36650248 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 35526347 +14.0% 40492312 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 44670723 -1.1% 44177606 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X 127996037 +22.4% 156719990 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 57518856 +3.8% 59677625 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 51919909 +12.2% 58269894 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 86410514 +79.0% 154660433 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 40132519 +38.6% 55617893 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 48423248 +7.5% 52042927 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X 206041046 +44.1% 296846536 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X 72312903 -19.4% 58272885 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X 50635672 -0.5% 50384787 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X 68308534 +115.7% 147324758 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 57882933 +14.5% 66269621 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 52183472 +12.8% 58855181 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 53788956 +94.2% 104460352 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 44493342 +35.5% 60298210 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X 42641209 +18.9% 50681038 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx> --- fs/fs-writeback.c | 17 ++++++++++++----- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) --- linux-next.orig/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-10-02 10:28:55.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-10-02 10:42:22.000000000 +0800 @@ -658,14 +658,21 @@ long writeback_inodes_wb(struct bdi_writ return nr_pages - work.nr_pages; } -static inline bool over_bground_thresh(void) +static bool over_bground_thresh(struct backing_dev_info *bdi) { unsigned long background_thresh, dirty_thresh; global_dirty_limits(&background_thresh, &dirty_thresh); - return (global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) + - global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) > background_thresh); + if (global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) + + global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) > background_thresh) + return true; + + if (bdi_stat(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE) > + bdi_dirty_limit(bdi, background_thresh)) + return true; + + return false; } /* @@ -727,7 +734,7 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writ * For background writeout, stop when we are below the * background dirty threshold */ - if (work->for_background && !over_bground_thresh()) + if (work->for_background && !over_bground_thresh(wb->bdi)) break; if (work->for_kupdate) { @@ -811,7 +818,7 @@ static unsigned long get_nr_dirty_pages( static long wb_check_background_flush(struct bdi_writeback *wb) { - if (over_bground_thresh()) { + if (over_bground_thresh(wb->bdi)) { struct wb_writeback_work work = { .nr_pages = LONG_MAX, -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>