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authorVivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com>2010-08-23 12:25:29 +0200
committerJens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>2010-08-23 12:25:29 +0200
commit6d6ac1c1a3d4f95953aa3b085e8f16692d3a7179 (patch)
tree2524afc21ddf04bff04e23f47d18973262c0eb26 /Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt
parentc4e7893ebc3a5c507b53f59b9de448db20849944 (diff)
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cfq-iosched: Documentation help for new tunables
Some documentation to provide help with tunables. Signed-off-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com> Acked-by: Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt28
1 files changed, 28 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt b/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt
index 48e0b21b0059..6919d62591d9 100644
--- a/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt
+++ b/Documentation/cgroups/blkio-controller.txt
@@ -217,6 +217,7 @@ Details of cgroup files
CFQ sysfs tunable
=================
/sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/group_isolation
+-----------------------------------------------
If group_isolation=1, it provides stronger isolation between groups at the
expense of throughput. By default group_isolation is 0. In general that
@@ -243,6 +244,33 @@ By default one should run with group_isolation=0. If that is not sufficient
and one wants stronger isolation between groups, then set group_isolation=1
but this will come at cost of reduced throughput.
+/sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/slice_idle
+------------------------------------------
+On a faster hardware CFQ can be slow, especially with sequential workload.
+This happens because CFQ idles on a single queue and single queue might not
+drive deeper request queue depths to keep the storage busy. In such scenarios
+one can try setting slice_idle=0 and that would switch CFQ to IOPS
+(IO operations per second) mode on NCQ supporting hardware.
+
+That means CFQ will not idle between cfq queues of a cfq group and hence be
+able to driver higher queue depth and achieve better throughput. That also
+means that cfq provides fairness among groups in terms of IOPS and not in
+terms of disk time.
+
+/sys/block/<disk>/queue/iosched/group_idle
+------------------------------------------
+If one disables idling on individual cfq queues and cfq service trees by
+setting slice_idle=0, group_idle kicks in. That means CFQ will still idle
+on the group in an attempt to provide fairness among groups.
+
+By default group_idle is same as slice_idle and does not do anything if
+slice_idle is enabled.
+
+One can experience an overall throughput drop if you have created multiple
+groups and put applications in that group which are not driving enough
+IO to keep disk busy. In that case set group_idle=0, and CFQ will not idle
+on individual groups and throughput should improve.
+
What works
==========
- Currently only sync IO queues are support. All the buffered writes are