Re: IO performance test on the tcm-vhost scsi

["Nicholas A. Bellinger" <nab@linux-iscsi.org>]

On Thu, 2012-06-14 at 17:57 +0800, Cong Meng wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-06-13 at 12:08 -0700, Nicholas A. Bellinger wrote:
> > On Wed, 2012-06-13 at 18:13 +0800, mengcong wrote:
> > > Hi folks, I did an IO performance test on the tcm-vhost scsi. I want to share 
> > > the test result data here.
> > > 
> > > 
> > >                     seq-read        seq-write       rand-read     rand-write
> > >                     8k     256k     8k     256k     8k   256k     8k   256k
> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > bare-metal          67951  69802    67064  67075    1758 29284    1969 26360
> > > tcm-vhost-iblock    61501  66575    51775  67872    1011 22533    1851 28216
> > > tcm-vhost-pscsi     66479  68191    50873  67547    1008 22523    1818 28304
> > > virtio-blk          26284  66737    23373  65735    1724 28962    1805 27774
> > > scsi-disk           36013  60289    46222  62527    1663 12992    1804 27670
> > > 
> > > unit: KB/s
> > > seq-read/write = sequential read/write
> > > rand-read/write = random read/write
> > > 8k,256k are blocksize of the IO
> > > 
> > > In tcm-vhost-iblock test, the emulate_write_cache attr was enabled.
> > > In virtio-blk test, cache=none,aio=native were set.
> > > In scsi-disk test, cache=none,aio=native were set, and LSI HBA was used.
> > > 
> > > I also tried to do the test with a scsi-generic LUN (pass through the 
> > > physical partition /dev/sgX device). But I couldn't setup it
> > > successfully. It's a pity.
> > > 
> > > Benchmark tool: fio, with ioengine=aio,direct=1,iodepth=8 set for all tests.
> > > kvm vm: 2 cpus and 2G ram
> > > 
> > 
> > These initial performance results look quite promising for virtio-scsi.
> > 
> > I'd be really interested to see how a raw flash block device backend
> > that locally can do ~100K 4k mixed R/W random IOPs compares with
> > virtio-scsi guest performance as the random small block fio workload
> > increases..
> flash block == Solid state disk? I have no one on hand. 
> > 

It just so happens there is a FusionIO HBA nearby..  ;)

However, I'm quite busy with customer items the next days but am really
looking forward to giving this a shot with some fast raw block flash
backends soon..

Also, it's about time to convert tcm_vhost from using the old
TFO->new_cmd_map() to native cmwq..  This will certainly help overall
tcm_vhost performance, especially with shared backends across multiple
VMs where parts of I/O backend execution can happen in separate kworker
process context.

Btw, I'll likely end up doing this conversion to realize the performance
benefits when testing with raw flash backends, but I'm more than happy
to take a patch ahead of that if you have the extra cycles to spare.

> > Also note there is a bottleneck wrt to random small block I/O
> > performance (per LUN) on the Linux/SCSI initiator side that is effecting
> > things here.  We've run into this limitation numerous times with using
> > SCSI LLDs as backend TCM devices, and I usually recommend using iblock
> > export with raw block flash backends for achieving the best small block
> > random I/O performance results.  A number of high performance flash
> > storage folks do something similar with raw block access (Jen's CC'ed)
> > 
> > As per Stefan's earlier question, how does virtio-scsi to QEMU SCSI
> > userspace compare with these results..?  Is there a reason why these
> > where not included in the initial results..?
> > 
> This should be a mistake I made. I will do this pattern later.
> 

Thanks!

--nab