From 6d6ac1c1a3d4f95953aa3b085e8f16692d3a7179 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Vivek Goyal Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:25:29 +0200 Subject: cfq-iosched: Documentation help for new tunables Some documentation to provide help with tunables. Signed-off-by: Vivek Goyal Acked-by: Jeff Moyer Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe --- Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 28 insertions(+) (limited to 'Documentation/cgroups') diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt index 48e0b21b005..6919d62591d 100644 --- a/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt +++ b/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt @@ -217,6 +217,7 @@ Details of cgroup files CFQ sysfs tunable ================= /sys/block//queue/iosched/group_isolation +----------------------------------------------- If group_isolation=1, it provides stronger isolation between groups at the expense of throughput. By default group_isolation is 0. In general that @@ -243,6 +244,33 @@ By default one should run with group_isolation=0. If that is not sufficient and one wants stronger isolation between groups, then set group_isolation=1 but this will come at cost of reduced throughput. +/sys/block//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//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. + What works ========== - Currently only sync IO queues are support. All the buffered writes are -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2