Re: ZBC/FLEX FIO addition ideas

[Bart Van Assche <Bart.VanAssche@wdc.com>]

On Fri, 2018-03-23 at 11:30 -0600, Phillip Chen wrote:
> I've been trying out the ZBC changes with a few drives and workloads,
> and the only limitation I've found so far is that random write
> workloads with a queue depth > 1 seem to write beyond the write
> pointer. This isn't particularly surprising, but I wanted to double
> check if this is an expected limitation, and if so, are there plans to
> support queued random writes in the future? Other than that, the
> changes seem to be working just as advertised. I think your zone
> management system will make writing a zone random workload fairly
> straightforward. Thank you for the update!

Hello Phillip,

That is unintended behavior. A fix is ready and passes my own tests. I'm also
working on implementing additional functionality, namely to make it possible
to specify the maximum number of open zones when using fio to test an SMR
drive. I will let you know once all new functionality passes my tests.

Bart.