Token-based flow control
This patch allows two fio jobs to be kept to a certain
proportion of each other using token-based flow control.
There are three new parameters: flow, flow_watermark, and
flow_sleep, documented in the fio options. An example of an fio
job using these parameters is below:
[global]
norandommap
thread
time_based
runtime=30
direct=1
ioengine=libaio
iodepth=256
size=100g
bs=8k
filename=/tmp/testfile
flow_watermark=100
flow_sleep=1000
[job2]
numjobs=1
rw=write
flow=-8
[job1]
numjobs=1
rw=randread
flow=1
The motivating application of this patch was to allow random reads
and sequential writes at a particular given proportion.
This initial version is only correct when run with 'thread', as shared
state is represented with a global variable. It also only allows two
jobs to be synchronized properly. A future version might do more, but
no more functionality was needed for my application.
Tested: Ran a few fio jobs with this flow control, observing
the proportion of IOPS to match what was intended by the job file.
Varied the flow_watermark and flow_sleep parameters and observed
the effect on throughput.
Signed-off-by: Dan Ehrenberg <dehrenberg@google.com>
Modified by me to support flow_id, so an arbitrary number of flows can
be used. This means it no longer relies on global context, so it can be
used from a thread or process alike. Also added man page documentation.
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
diff --git a/fio.1 b/fio.1
index 75c8ec6..910812f 100644
--- a/fio.1
+++ b/fio.1
@@ -958,6 +958,27 @@
.BI gid \fR=\fPint
Set group ID, see \fBuid\fR.
.TP
+.BI flow_id \fR=\fPint
+The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a global flow. See
+\fBflow\fR.
+.TP
+.BI flow \fR=\fPint
+Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then there is a
+\fBflow counter\fR which is used to regulate the proportion of activity between
+two or more jobs. fio attempts to keep this flow counter near zero. The
+\fBflow\fR parameter stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the
+flow counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if one job has
+\fBflow=8\fR and another job has \fBflow=-1\fR, then there will be a roughly
+1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
+.TP
+.BI flow_watermark \fR=\fPint
+The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow counter is allowed to
+reach before the job must wait for a lower value of the counter.
+.TP
+.BI flow_sleep \fR=\fPint
+The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow watermark has been
+exceeded before retrying operations
+.TP
.BI clat_percentiles \fR=\fPbool
Enable the reporting of percentiles of completion latencies.
.TP