Re: [PATCH V3 00/11] block-throttle: add .high limit

On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 11:30:53AM -0700, Shaohua Li wrote:

On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 10:49:46AM -0400, Tejun Heo wrote:

quoted

Hello, Paolo.

On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 02:37:00PM +0200, Paolo Valente wrote:

quoted

In this respect, for your generic, unpredictable scenario to make
sense, there must exist at least one real system that meets the
requirements of such a scenario.  Or, if such a real system does not
yet exist, it must be possible to emulate it.  If it is impossible to
achieve this last goal either, then I miss the usefulness
of looking for solutions for such a scenario.

That said, let's define the instance(s) of the scenario that you find
most representative, and let's test BFQ on it/them.  Numbers will give
us the answers.  For example, what about all or part of the following
groups:
. one cyclically doing random I/O for some second and then sequential I/O
for the next seconds
. one doing, say, quasi-sequential I/O in ON/OFF cycles
. one starting an application cyclically
. one playing back or streaming a movie

For each group, we could then measure the time needed to complete each
phase of I/O in each cycle, plus the responsiveness in the group
starting an application, plus the frame drop in the group streaming
the movie.  In addition, we can measure the bandwidth/iops enjoyed by
each group, plus, of course, the aggregate throughput of the whole
system.  In particular we could compare results with throttling, BFQ,
and CFQ.

Then we could write resulting numbers on the stone, and stick to them
until something proves them wrong.

What do you (or others) think about it?

That sounds great and yeah it's lame that we didn't start with that.
Shaohua, would it be difficult to compare how bfq performs against
blk-throttle?

I had a test of BFQ. I'm using BFQ found at
http://algogroup.unimore.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/sources.php. version is
4.7.0-v8r3. It's a LSI SSD, queue depth 32. I use default setting. fio script
is:

[global]
ioengine=libaio
direct=1
readwrite=randread
bs=4k
runtime=60
time_based=1
file_service_type=random:36
overwrite=1
thread=0
group_reporting=1
filename=/dev/sdb
iodepth=1
numjobs=8

[groupA]
prio=2

[groupB]
new_group
prio=6

I'll change iodepth, numjobs and prio in different tests. result unit is MB/s.

iodepth=1 numjobs=1 prio 4:4
CFQ: 28:28 BFQ: 21:21 deadline: 29:29

iodepth=8 numjobs=1 prio 4:4
CFQ: 162:162 BFQ: 102:98 deadline: 205:205

iodepth=1 numjobs=8 prio 4:4
CFQ: 157:157 BFQ: 81:92 deadline: 196:197

iodepth=1 numjobs=1 prio 2:6
CFQ: 26.7:27.6 BFQ: 20:6 deadline: 29:29

iodepth=8 numjobs=1 prio 2:6
CFQ: 166:174 BFQ: 139:72  deadline: 202:202

iodepth=1 numjobs=8 prio 2:6
CFQ: 148:150 BFQ: 90:77 deadline: 198:197

More tests:

iodepth=8 numjobs=1 prio 2:6, group A has 50M/s limit
CFQ:51:207  BFQ: 51:45  deadline: 51:216

iodepth=1 numjobs=1 prio 2:6, group A bs=4k, group B bs=64k
CFQ:25:249  BFQ: 23:42  deadline: 26:251

Thanks,
Shaohua