Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:37:09 -0500
From: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>
To: "Alan D. Brunelle" <Alan.Brunelle@hp.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jens.axboe@oracle.com
Subject: Re: [RFC] Block IO Controller V2 - some results
Message-ID: <20091116213709.GK13235@redhat.com>
References: <1258404660.3533.150.camel@cail> <20091116211412.GJ13235@redhat.com> <1258407135.3533.152.camel@cail>
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On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 04:32:15PM -0500, Alan D. Brunelle wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-11-16 at 16:14 -0500, Vivek Goyal wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 03:51:00PM -0500, Alan D. Brunelle wrote:
> > > Hi Vivek: 
> > > 
> > > I'm finding some things that don't quite seem right - executive
> > > summary: 
> > 
> > Hi Alan,
> > 
> > Thanks a lot for such an extensive testing and test results. I am still
> > digesting the results but I thought I will make a quick note about writes.
> > This patchset works only for sync IO. If you are performing buffered
> > writes then you will not see any service differentiation. Providing
> > support for buffered write path is in TODO list. 
> 
> Ah, I thought you meant sync I/O versus async I/O. So do you mean that
> the testing should use _direct_ I/O (bypassing the cache)? 

Only for Writes. Reads will anyway show up as sync IO at the CFQ, so
that's not a problem. You can choose to test these either as direct IO
or let them go through page cache.

For writes, you need to use direct IO if you are looking for service
differentiation with current patchset.

Thanks
Vivek

> 
> > 
> > > 
> > > o  I think the apportionment algorithm doesn't work consistently well
> > > for writes.
> > > 
> > > o  I think there are problems with significant performance loss when
> > > doing random I/Os.
> > 
> > This concerns me. I had a quick look and as per your results, even with
> > group_idle=0 you are seeing this regression. I guess this might be coming
> > from the fact that we idle on sync-noidle workload per group and that
> > idling becomes significant as number of groups increase.
> > 
> > Thanks
> > Vivek
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