Re: [PATCH] virtio-blk: Add stats VQ to collect information about devices

Avi Kivity
2011-08-18T15:10:37Z

On 08/17/2011 09:38 PM, Sasha Levin wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-08-17 at 16:00 -0700, Avi Kivity wrote:
> > On 08/16/2011 12:47 PM, Sasha Levin wrote:
> > > This patch adds support for an optional stats vq that works similary to the
> > > stats vq provided by virtio-balloon.
> > >
> > > The purpose of this change is to allow collection of statistics about working
> > > virtio-blk devices to easily analyze performance without having to tap into
> > > the guest.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Why can't you get the same info from the host? i.e. read sectors?
>
> Some of the stats you can collect from the host, but some you can't.
>
> The ones you can't include all the timing statistics and the internal
> queue statistics (read/write merges).

Surely you can time the actual amount of time the I/O takes? It doesn't
account for the virtio round-trip, but does it matter?

Why is the merge count important for the host?

>
> The idea behind providing all of the stats on the stats vq (which is
> basically what you see in '/dev/block/[device]/stats') is to give a
> consistent snapshot of the state of the device.
>
>

What can you do with it?

--
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