Re: sleeps and waits during io_submit

[Avi Kivity <avi@scylladb.com>]

On 12/01/2015 06:01 PM, Brian Foster wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 05:22:38PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
>>
>> On 12/01/2015 04:56 PM, Brian Foster wrote:
>>> On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 03:58:28PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
>>>> On 12/01/2015 03:11 PM, Brian Foster wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 11:08:47AM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
>>>>>> On 11/30/2015 06:14 PM, Brian Foster wrote:
>>>>>>> On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 04:29:13PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 11/30/2015 04:10 PM, Brian Foster wrote:
>>>>> ...
>>>>>>> The agsize/agcount mkfs-time heuristics change depending on the type of
>>>>>>> storage. A single AG can be up to 1TB and if the fs is not considered
>>>>>>> "multidisk" (e.g., no stripe unit/width is defined), 4 AGs is the
>>>>>>> default up to 4TB. If a stripe unit is set, the agsize/agcount is
>>>>>>> adjusted depending on the size of the overall volume (see
>>>>>>> xfsprogs-dev/mkfs/xfs_mkfs.c:calc_default_ag_geometry() for details).
>>>>>> We'll experiment with this.  Surely it depends on more than the amount of
>>>>>> storage?  If you have a high op rate you'll be more likely to excite
>>>>>> contention, no?
>>>>>>
>>>>> Sure. The absolute optimal configuration for your workload probably
>>>>> depends on more than storage size, but mkfs doesn't have that
>>>>> information. In general, it tries to use the most reasonable
>>>>> configuration based on the storage and expected workload. If you want to
>>>>> tweak it beyond that, indeed, the best bet is to experiment with what
>>>>> works.
>>>> We will do that.
>>>>
>>>>>>>> Are those locks held around I/O, or just CPU operations, or a mix?
>>>>>>> I believe it's a mix of modifications and I/O, though it looks like some
>>>>>>> of the I/O cases don't necessarily wait on the lock. E.g., the AIL
>>>>>>> pushing case will trylock and defer to the next list iteration if the
>>>>>>> buffer is busy.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ok.  For us sleeping in io_submit() is death because we have no other thread
>>>>>> on that core to take its place.
>>>>>>
>>>>> The above is with regard to metadata I/O, whereas io_submit() is
>>>>> obviously for user I/O.
>>>> Won't io_submit() also trigger metadata I/O?  Or is that all deferred to
>>>> async tasks?  I don't mind them blocking each other as long as they let my
>>>> io_submit alone.
>>>>
>>> Yeah, it can trigger metadata reads, force the log (the stale buffer
>>> example) or push the AIL (wait on log space). Metadata changes made
>>> directly via your I/O request are logged/committed via transactions,
>>> which are generally processed asynchronously from that point on.
>>>
>>>>>   io_submit() can probably block in a variety of
>>>>> places afaict... it might have to read in the inode extent map, allocate
>>>>> blocks, take inode/ag locks, reserve log space for transactions, etc.
>>>> Any chance of changing all that to be asynchronous?  Doesn't sound too hard,
>>>> if somebody else has to do it.
>>>>
>>> I'm not following... if the fs needs to read in the inode extent map to
>>> prepare for an allocation, what else can the thread do but wait? Are you
>>> suggesting the request kick off whatever the blocking action happens to
>>> be asynchronously and return with an error such that the request can be
>>> retried later?
>> Not quite, it should be invisible to the caller.
>>
>> That is, the code called by io_submit() (file_operations::write_iter, it
>> seems to be called today) can kick off this operation and have it continue
>> from where it left off.
>>
> Isn't that generally what happens today?

You tell me.  According to $subject, apparently not enough.  Maybe we're 
triggering it more often, or we suffer more when it does trigger (the 
latter probably more likely).

>   We submit an I/O which is
> asynchronous in nature and wait on a completion, which causes the cpu to
> schedule and execute another task until the completion is set by I/O
> completion (via an async callback). At that point, the issuing thread
> continues where it left off. I suspect I'm missing something... can you
> elaborate on what you'd do differently here (and how it helps)?

Just apply the same technique everywhere: convert locks to trylock + 
schedule a continuation on failure.

>
>> Seastar (the async user framework which we use to drive xfs) makes writing
>> code like this easy, using continuations; but of course from ordinary
>> threaded code it can be quite hard.
>>
>> btw, there was an attempt to make ext[34] async using this method, but I
>> think it was ripped out.  Yes, the mortal remains can still be seen with
>> 'git grep EIOCBQUEUED'.
>>
>>>>> It sounds to me that first and foremost you want to make sure you don't
>>>>> have however many parallel operations you typically have running
>>>>> contending on the same inodes or AGs. Hint: creating files under
>>>>> separate subdirectories is a quick and easy way to allocate inodes under
>>>>> separate AGs (the agno is encoded into the upper bits of the inode
>>>>> number).
>>>> Unfortunately our directory layout cannot be changed.  And doesn't this
>>>> require having agcount == O(number of active files)?  That is easily in the
>>>> thousands.
>>>>
>>> I think Glauber's O(nr_cpus) comment is probably the more likely
>>> ballpark, but really it's something you'll probably just need to test to
>>> see how far you need to go to avoid AG contention.
>>>
>>> I'm primarily throwing the subdir thing out there for testing purposes.
>>> It's just an easy way to create inodes in a bunch of separate AGs so you
>>> can determine whether/how much it really helps with modified AG counts.
>>> I don't know enough about your application design to really comment on
>>> that...
>> We have O(cpus) shards that operate independently.  Each shard writes 32MB
>> commitlog files (that are pre-truncated to 32MB to allow concurrent writes
>> without blocking); the files are then flushed and closed, and later removed.
>> In parallel there are sequential writes and reads of large files using 128kB
>> buffers), as well as random reads.  Files are immutable (append-only), and
>> if a file is being written, it is not concurrently read.  In general files
>> are not shared across shards.  All I/O is async and O_DIRECT.  open(),
>> truncate(), fdatasync(), and friends are called from a helper thread.
>>
>> As far as I can tell it should a very friendly load for XFS and SSDs.
>>
>>>>>   Reducing the frequency of block allocation/frees might also be
>>>>> another help (e.g., preallocate and reuse files,
>>>> Isn't that discouraged for SSDs?
>>>>
>>> Perhaps, if you're referring to the fact that the blocks are never freed
>>> and thus never discarded..? Are you running fstrim?
>> mount -o discard.  And yes, overwrites are supposedly more expensive than
>> trim old data + allocate new data, but maybe if you compare it with the work
>> XFS has to do, perhaps the tradeoff is bad.
>>
> Ok, my understanding is that '-o discard' is not recommended in favor of
> periodic fstrim for performance reasons, but that may or may not still
> be the case.

I understand that most SSDs have queued trim these days, but maybe I'm 
optimistic.

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