Re: sleeps and waits during io_submit

Brian Foster
2015-12-01T14:56:34Z

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?

> >
> >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...

> > 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?

If so, it would certainly impact that by holding blocks as allocated to
inodes as opposed to putting them in free space trees where they can be
discarded. If not, I don't see how it would make a difference, but
perhaps I misunderstand the point. That said, there's probably others on
the list who can more definitively discuss SSD characteristics than I...

> We can do that for a subset of our files.
>
> We do use XFS_IOC_FSSETXATTR though.
>
> >'mount -o ikeep,'
>
> Interesting. Our files are large so we could try this.
>

Just to be clear... this behavior change is more directly associated
with file count than file size (though indirectly larger files might
mean you have less of them, if that's your point).

To generalize a bit, I'd be more weary of using this option if your
filesystem can be used in an unstructured manner in any way. For
example, if the file count can balloon up and back down temporarily,
that's going to allocate a bunch of metadata space for inodes that won't
ever be reclaimed or reused for anything other than inodes.

> >etc.). Beyond that, you probably want to make sure the log is large
> >enough to support all concurrent operations. See the xfs_log_grant_*
> >tracepoints for a window into if/how long transaction reservations might
> >be waiting on the log.
>
> I see that on an 400G fs, the log is 180MB. Seems plenty large for write
> operations that are mostly large sequential, though I've no real feel for
> the numbers. Will keep an eye on this.
>

FWIW, XFS on recent kernels has grown some sysfs entries that might help
give an idea of log reservation state at runtime. See the entries under
/sys/fs/xfs/<dev>/log for details.

Brian

> Thanks for all the info.
>
> >Brian
> >
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