Re: Read/Write NFS I/O performance degraded by FLUSH_STABLE page flushing

[Peter Staubach <staubach@redhat.com>]

Trond Myklebust wrote:
> Look... This happens when you _flush_ the file to stable storage if
> there is only a single write < wsize. It isn't the business of the NFS
> layer to decide when you flush the file; that's an application
> decision...
>
>   

I think that one easy way to show why this optimization is
not quite what we would all like, why there only being a
single write _now_ isn't quite sufficient, is to write a
block of a file and then read it back.  Things like
compilers and linkers might do this during their random
access to the file being created.  I would guess that this
audit thing that Brian has refered to does the same sort
of thing.

       ps

ps. Why do we flush dirty pages before they can be read?
I am not even clear why we care about waiting for an
already existing flush to be completed before using the
page to satisfy a read system call.

> Trond
>
>
>
> On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 11:55 -0400, Brian R Cowan wrote:
>   
>> Been working this issue with Red hat, and didn't need to go to the list... 
>> Well, now I do... You mention that "The main type of workload we're 
>> targetting with this patch is the app that opens a file, writes < 4k and 
>> then closes the file." Well, it appears that this issue also impacts 
>> flushing pages from filesystem caches.
>>
>> The reason this came up in my environment is that our product's build 
>> auditing gives the the filesystem cache an interesting workout. When 
>> ClearCase audits a build, the build places data in a few places, 
>> including:
>> 1) a build audit file that usually resides in /tmp. This build audit is 
>> essentially a log of EVERY file open/read/write/delete/rename/etc. that 
>> the programs called in the build script make in the clearcase "view" 
>> you're building in. As a result, this file can get pretty large.
>> 2) The build outputs themselves, which in this case are being written to a 
>> remote storage location on a Linux or Solaris server, and
>> 3) a file called .cmake.state, which is a local cache that is written to 
>> after the build script completes containing what is essentially a "Bill of 
>> materials" for the files created during builds in this "view."
>>
>> We believe that the build audit file access is causing build output to get 
>> flushed out of the filesystem cache. These flushes happen *in 4k chunks.* 
>> This trips over this change since the cache pages appear to get flushed on 
>> an individual basis.
>>
>> One note is that if the build outputs were going to a clearcase view 
>> stored on an enterprise-level NAS device, there isn't as much of an issue 
>> because many of these return from the stable write request as soon as the 
>> data goes into the battery-backed memory disk cache on the NAS. However, 
>> it really impacts writes to general-purpose OS's that follow Sun's lead in 
>> how they handle "stable" writes. The truly annoying part about this rather 
>> subtle change is that the NFS client is specifically ignoring the client 
>> mount options since we cannot force the "async" mount option to turn off 
>> this behavior.
>>
>> =================================================================
>> Brian Cowan
>> Advisory Software Engineer
>> ClearCase Customer Advocacy Group (CAG)
>> Rational Software
>> IBM Software Group
>> 81 Hartwell Ave
>> Lexington, MA
>>  
>> Phone: 1.781.372.3580
>> Web: http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/support/
>>  
>>
>> Please be sure to update your PMR using ESR at 
>> http://www-306.ibm.com/software/support/probsub.html or cc all 
>> correspondence to sw_support@us.ibm.com to be sure your PMR is updated in 
>> case I am not available.
>>
>>
>>
>> From:
>> Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
>> To:
>> Peter Staubach <staubach@redhat.com>
>> Cc:
>> Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>, Brian R Cowan/Cupertino/IBM@IBMUS, 
>> linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org
>> Date:
>> 04/30/2009 05:23 PM
>> Subject:
>> Re: Read/Write NFS I/O performance degraded by FLUSH_STABLE page flushing
>> Sent by:
>> linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 2009-04-30 at 16:41 -0400, Peter Staubach wrote:
>>     
>>> Chuck Lever wrote:
>>>       
>>>> On Apr 30, 2009, at 4:12 PM, Brian R Cowan wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>>           
>> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=ab0a3dbedc51037f3d2e22ef67717a987b3d15e2
>>
>>     
>>> Actually, the "stable" part can be a killer.  It depends upon
>>> why and when nfs_flush_inode() is invoked.
>>>
>>> I did quite a bit of work on this aspect of RHEL-5 and discovered
>>> that this particular code was leading to some serious slowdowns.
>>> The server would end up doing a very slow FILE_SYNC write when
>>> all that was really required was an UNSTABLE write at the time.
>>>
>>> Did anyone actually measure this optimization and if so, what
>>> were the numbers?
>>>       
>> As usual, the optimisation is workload dependent. The main type of
>> workload we're targetting with this patch is the app that opens a file,
>> writes < 4k and then closes the file. For that case, it's a no-brainer
>> that you don't need to split a single stable write into an unstable + a
>> commit.
>>
>> So if the application isn't doing the above type of short write followed
>> by close, then exactly what is causing a flush to disk in the first
>> place? Ordinarily, the client will try to cache writes until the cows
>> come home (or until the VM tells it to reclaim memory - whichever comes
>> first)...
>>
>> Cheers
>>   Trond
>>
>> --
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>>
>>     
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