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Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001Table of contents
2-----------------
3
41. Overview
52. How fio works
63. Running fio
74. Job file format
85. Detailed list of parameters
96. Normal output
107. Terse output
Paul Dubs25c8b9d2011-07-21 17:26:02 +0200118. Trace file format
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +020012
131.0 Overview and history
14------------------------
15fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
16case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
17performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
18such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
19Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
20without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
21
22A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
23of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
24way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
25memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
26reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
27simulate both of these cases, and many more.
28
292.0 How fio works
30-----------------
31The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
32writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
33any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
34is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
35sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
36and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
37bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
38
39 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
40 We may only be reading sequentially from this
41 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
42 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
43
44 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
45 a single value, or it may describe a range of
46 block sizes.
47
48 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
49
50 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
51 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
Jens Axboed0ff85d2007-02-14 01:19:41 +010052 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +020053 SG (SCSI generic sg).
54
Jens Axboe6c219762006-11-03 15:51:45 +010055 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +020056 depth do we want to maintain?
57
58 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
59
60 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
61
62 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
63 this workload over.
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +000064
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +020065The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
66there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
67job behaves.
68
69
703.0 Running fio
71---------------
72See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
73of them.
74
75Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
76(or job files) as parameters:
77
78$ fio job_file
79
80and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
81more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
82of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
83parameter described the the parameter section.
84
Jens Axboeb4692822006-10-27 13:43:22 +020085If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
86parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
87to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
88(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
Jens Axboec2b1e752006-10-30 09:03:13 +010089mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
90also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
91--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
92Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
93until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
94similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
95job until a new [] job entry is seen.
Jens Axboeb4692822006-10-27 13:43:22 +020096
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +020097fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
98in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
Jens Axboe6c219762006-11-03 15:51:45 +010099such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200100
101
1024.0 Job file format
103-------------------
104As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
105what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
106where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
107to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
108A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
109may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
110several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
Jens Axboe65db0852007-02-20 10:22:01 +0100111section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
112'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200113
Aaron Carroll3c54bc42008-10-07 11:25:38 +0200114So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
Jens Axboeb22989b2009-07-17 22:29:23 +0200115randomly reading from a 128MB file.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200116
117; -- start job file --
118[global]
119rw=randread
120size=128m
121
122[job1]
123
124[job2]
125
126; -- end job file --
127
128As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
129described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
Jens Axboec2b1e752006-10-30 09:03:13 +0100130makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
131line, this job would look as follows:
132
133$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
134
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200135
Aaron Carroll3c54bc42008-10-07 11:25:38 +0200136Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200137to files.
138
139; -- start job file --
140[random-writers]
141ioengine=libaio
142iodepth=4
143rw=randwrite
144bs=32k
145direct=0
146size=64m
147numjobs=4
148
149; -- end job file --
150
151Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
152We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
Jens Axboeb22989b2009-07-17 22:29:23 +0200153increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200154fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
Jens Axboeb22989b2009-07-17 22:29:23 +0200155to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
Jens Axboeb4692822006-10-27 13:43:22 +0200156have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
157specify:
158
159$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200160
Jens Axboe74929ac2009-08-05 11:42:37 +02001614.1 Environment variables
162-------------------------
163
Aaron Carroll3c54bc42008-10-07 11:25:38 +0200164fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
165substring of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
166words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
167environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
168is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
169substituted.
170
171As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
172
173$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
174
175; -- start job file --
176[random-writers]
177rw=randwrite
178size=${SIZE}
179numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
180; -- end job file --
181
182This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
183
184; -- start job file --
185[random-writers]
186rw=randwrite
187size=64m
188numjobs=4
189; -- end job file --
190
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200191fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
192inspiration.
193
Jens Axboe74929ac2009-08-05 11:42:37 +02001944.2 Reserved keywords
195---------------------
196
197Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
198internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
199
200$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
201$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
202$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
203
204These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
205automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
Jens Axboe892a6ff2009-11-13 12:19:49 +0100206is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
207perform actions like:
208
209size=8*$mb_memory
210
211and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
212machine.
Jens Axboe74929ac2009-08-05 11:42:37 +0200213
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200214
2155.0 Detailed list of parameters
216-------------------------------
217
218This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
219Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
220a string. The following types are used:
221
222str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
Jens Axboeb09da8f2009-07-17 23:16:17 +0200223time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
Jens Axboee417fd62008-09-11 09:27:15 +0200224 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
225 minutes, and hours.
Jens Axboeb09da8f2009-07-17 23:16:17 +0200226int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
227 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
228 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
Jens Axboe57fc29f2010-06-23 22:24:07 +0200229 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
230 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
Jens Axboeb09da8f2009-07-17 23:16:17 +0200231 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
Jens Axboe57fc29f2010-06-23 22:24:07 +0200232 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
233 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
234 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
235 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
236 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
237 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
238 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
239 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200240bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
241 true and false (1 and 0).
Jens Axboeb09da8f2009-07-17 23:16:17 +0200242irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
Jens Axboebf9a3ed2008-06-05 11:53:08 +0200243 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
Jens Axboe0c9baf92007-01-11 15:59:26 +0100244 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
245 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +0100246 int.
Yu-ju Hong83349192011-08-13 00:53:44 +0200247float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200248
249With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
250parameters.
251
252name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
253 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
Jens Axboec2b1e752006-10-30 09:03:13 +0100254 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
Jens Axboe6c219762006-11-03 15:51:45 +0100255 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
Jens Axboec2b1e752006-10-30 09:03:13 +0100256 job.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200257
Jens Axboe61697c32007-02-05 15:04:46 +0100258description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
259 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
260 not parsed.
261
Randy Dunlap37760412009-05-13 07:51:05 +0200262directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200263 in a different location than "./".
264
265filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
266 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
267 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
Jens Axboeed92ac02007-02-06 14:43:52 +0100268 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
Jens Axboe414c2a32009-01-16 13:21:15 +0100269 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
Jens Axboe0fd666b2011-10-06 20:08:53 +0200270 and protocol to use in the format of =host,port,protocol.
Jens Axboe414c2a32009-01-16 13:21:15 +0100271 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
272 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
273 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
274 as the two working files, you would use
Jens Axboe30a45882013-01-30 12:53:55 +0100275 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are
276 accessed as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device,
277 \\.\PhysicalDrive1 for the second etc. Note: Windows and
278 FreeBSD prevent write access to areas of the disk containing
279 in-use data (e.g. filesystems).
280 If the wanted filename does need to include a colon, then
281 escape that with a '\' character. For instance, if the filename
282 is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would use
283 filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name, meaning
284 stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
285 direction set.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200286
Jens Axboebbf6b542007-03-13 15:28:55 +0100287opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
288 directory and down the file system tree.
289
Randy Dunlap37760412009-05-13 07:51:05 +0200290lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
Jens Axboe4d4e80f2008-03-04 10:18:56 +0100291 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
292 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
293 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
294 share files. The lock modes are:
Jens Axboe29c13492008-03-01 19:25:20 +0100295
Jens Axboe4d4e80f2008-03-04 10:18:56 +0100296 none No locking. The default.
297 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
298 excluding all others.
299 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
300 readers may access the file at the
301 same time, but writes get exclusive
302 access.
303
304 The option may be post-fixed with a lock batch number. If
305 set, then each thread/process may do that amount of IOs to
Jens Axboebf9a3ed2008-06-05 11:53:08 +0200306 the file before giving up the lock. Since lock acquisition is
Jens Axboe4d4e80f2008-03-04 10:18:56 +0100307 expensive, batching the lock/unlocks will speed up IO.
Jens Axboe29c13492008-03-01 19:25:20 +0100308
Jens Axboed3aad8f2007-03-15 14:12:05 +0100309readwrite=str
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200310rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
311
312 read Sequential reads
313 write Sequential writes
314 randwrite Random writes
315 randread Random reads
Jens Axboe10b023d2012-03-23 13:40:06 +0100316 rw,readwrite Sequential mixed reads and writes
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200317 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
318
319 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
320 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
Jens Axboe211097b2007-03-22 18:56:45 +0100321 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
Jens Axboe38dad622010-07-20 14:46:00 -0600322 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
323 one by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
324 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
Jens Axboe059b0802011-08-25 09:09:37 +0200325 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
Lucian Adrian Grijincuddb754d2012-04-05 18:18:35 -0600326 suffix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
Jens Axboe059b0802011-08-25 09:09:37 +0200327 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
328 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
329 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
330 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
Jens Axboe38dad622010-07-20 14:46:00 -0600331
332rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
333 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
334 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
335 values are:
336
337 sequential Generate sequential offset
338 identical Generate the same offset
339
340 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
341 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
342 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
Jens Axboe211097b2007-03-22 18:56:45 +0100343 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
344 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
Jens Axboe38dad622010-07-20 14:46:00 -0600345 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
346 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
347 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
348 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
349 offset.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200350
Jens Axboe90fef2d2009-07-17 22:33:32 +0200351kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
352 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
353 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
354 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
355
Jens Axboeee738492007-01-10 11:23:16 +0100356randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
357 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
358
Jens Axboe2615cc42011-03-28 09:35:09 +0200359use_os_rand=bool Fio can either use the random generator supplied by the OS
360 to generator random offsets, or it can use it's own internal
361 generator (based on Tausworthe). Default is to use the
362 internal generator, which is often of better quality and
363 faster.
364
Eric Gourioua596f042011-06-17 09:11:45 +0200365fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
366 Accepted values are:
367
368 none Do not pre-allocate space
369 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
370 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
371 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
372 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
373 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
374
375 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
376 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
377 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
Jens Axboe7bc8c2c2010-01-28 11:31:31 +0100378
Jens Axboed2f3ac32007-03-22 19:24:09 +0100379fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
380 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
381 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
382 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
383 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
384 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
385
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +0100386size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
Jens Axboe7616caf2007-05-25 09:26:05 +0200387 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
388 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance).
Randy Dunlap37760412009-05-13 07:51:05 +0200389 Unless specific nrfiles and filesize options are given,
Jens Axboe7616caf2007-05-25 09:26:05 +0200390 fio will divide this size between the available files
Jens Axboed6667262010-06-25 11:32:48 +0200391 specified by the job. If not set, fio will use the full
392 size of the given files or devices. If the the files
Jens Axboe7bb59102011-07-12 19:47:03 +0200393 do not exist, size must be given. It is also possible to
394 give size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If size=20%
395 is given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the given
396 files or devices.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200397
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +0100398filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
Jens Axboe9c60ce62007-03-15 09:14:47 +0100399 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
400 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
401 given, each created file is the same size.
402
Jens Axboe74586c12011-01-20 10:16:03 -0700403fill_device=bool
404fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
Shawn Lewisaa31f1f2008-01-11 09:45:11 +0100405 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
Jens Axboe3ce9dca2009-06-10 08:55:21 +0200406 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
Jens Axboe4f124322011-01-19 15:35:26 -0700407 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
408 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
409 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
410 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
411 ENOSPC there.
Shawn Lewisaa31f1f2008-01-11 09:45:11 +0100412
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +0100413blocksize=int
414bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
415 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
416 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
Jens Axboef90eff52006-11-06 11:08:21 +0100417 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
418 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write.
419 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, and 8k blocks
Jens Axboe787f7e92006-11-06 13:26:29 +0100420 for writes. If you only wish to set the write size, you
421 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
422 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
Jens Axboea00735e2006-11-03 08:58:08 +0100423
Jens Axboe2b7a01d2009-03-11 11:00:13 +0100424blockalign=int
425ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
426 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
427 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
428 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
429 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
430 files, so it will turn off that option.
431
Jens Axboed3aad8f2007-03-15 14:12:05 +0100432blocksize_range=irange
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200433bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
434 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
435 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
Jens Axboef90eff52006-11-06 11:08:21 +0100436 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
437 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
438 See bs=.
Jens Axboea00735e2006-11-03 08:58:08 +0100439
Jens Axboe564ca972007-12-14 12:21:19 +0100440bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
441 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
442 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
443 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
444 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
445
446 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
447
448 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
449 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
450 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
451
452 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
453
454 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
455 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
456 option like this one:
457
458 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
459
460 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
461 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
462 up to more, it will error out.
463
Jens Axboe720e84a2009-04-21 08:29:55 +0200464 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
465 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
466 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
467 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
468 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
469 specify:
470
471 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90,8k/10
472
Jens Axboed3aad8f2007-03-15 14:12:05 +0100473blocksize_unaligned
Jens Axboe690adba2006-10-30 15:25:09 +0100474bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
475 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
476 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200477
Jens Axboee9459e52007-04-17 15:46:32 +0200478zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
479 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
480
Jens Axboe5973caf2008-05-21 19:52:35 +0200481refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
482 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
483 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
Jens Axboe41ccd842008-05-22 09:17:33 +0200484 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
485 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
Jens Axboe5973caf2008-05-21 19:52:35 +0200486
Jens Axboefd684182011-09-19 09:24:44 +0200487scramble_buffers=bool If refill_buffers is too costly and the target is
488 using data deduplication, then setting this option will
489 slightly modify the IO buffer contents to defeat normal
490 de-dupe attempts. This is not enough to defeat more clever
491 block compression attempts, but it will stop naive dedupe of
492 blocks. Default: true.
493
Jens Axboec5751c62012-03-15 15:02:56 +0100494buffer_compress_percentage=int If this is set, then fio will attempt to
495 provide IO buffer content (on WRITEs) that compress to
496 the specified level. Fio does this by providing a mix of
497 random data and zeroes. Note that this is per block size
498 unit, for file/disk wide compression level that matches
499 this setting, you'll also want to set refill_buffers.
500
501buffer_compress_chunk=int See buffer_compress_percentage. This
502 setting allows fio to manage how big the ranges of random
503 data and zeroed data is. Without this set, fio will
504 provide buffer_compress_percentage of blocksize random
505 data, followed by the remaining zeroed. With this set
506 to some chunk size smaller than the block size, fio can
507 alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO
508 buffer.
509
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200510nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
511
Jens Axboe390b1532007-03-09 13:03:00 +0100512openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
513 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
514 simultaneous opens.
515
Jens Axboe5af1c6f2007-03-01 10:06:10 +0100516file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
517 service next. The following types are defined:
518
519 random Just choose a file at random.
520
521 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
522 is the default.
523
Jens Axboea086c252009-03-04 08:27:37 +0100524 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
525 the next. Multiple files can still be
526 open depending on 'openfiles'.
527
Jens Axboe1907dbc2007-03-12 11:44:28 +0100528 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
529 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
530 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
531 have been issued.
532
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200533ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
534 types are defined:
535
536 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
537 used to position the io location.
538
gurudas paia31041e2007-10-23 15:12:30 +0200539 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
540
Gurudas Paie05af9e2008-02-06 11:16:15 +0100541 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
Jens Axboe1d2af022008-02-04 10:59:07 +0100542
Jens Axboe15d182a2009-01-16 19:15:07 +0100543 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
544 may only support queued behaviour with
545 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
Steven Langde890a12011-11-09 14:03:34 +0100546 This engine defines engine specific options.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200547
548 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
549
Jens Axboe417f0062008-06-02 11:59:30 +0200550 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
551
Bruce Cran03e20d62011-01-02 20:14:54 +0100552 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
553
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200554 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
555 to/from using memcpy(3).
556
557 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
558 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
559 space to the kernel.
560
Jens Axboed0ff85d2007-02-14 01:19:41 +0100561 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
562 regular read/write async.
563
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200564 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
Jens Axboe6c219762006-11-03 15:51:45 +0100565 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200566 the target is an sg character device
567 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
568 io.
569
Jens Axboea94ea282006-11-24 12:37:34 +0100570 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
571 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
572 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
573
Jens Axboeed92ac02007-02-06 14:43:52 +0100574 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
Steven Langde890a12011-11-09 14:03:34 +0100575 Depending on the protocol used, the hostname,
576 port, listen and filename options are used to
577 specify what sort of connection to make, while
578 the protocol option determines which protocol
579 will be used.
580 This engine defines engine specific options.
Jens Axboeed92ac02007-02-06 14:43:52 +0100581
Jens Axboe9cce02e2007-06-22 15:42:21 +0200582 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
583 map data and send/receive.
Steven Langde890a12011-11-09 14:03:34 +0100584 This engine defines engine specific options.
Jens Axboe9cce02e2007-06-22 15:42:21 +0200585
gurudas pai53aec0a2007-10-05 13:20:18 +0200586 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
Jens Axboeba0fbe12007-03-09 14:34:23 +0100587 cycles according to the cpuload= and
588 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
589 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
Gurudas Pai36ecec82008-02-08 08:50:14 +0100590 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
591 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
592 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
593 CPU at the desired rate.
Jens Axboeba0fbe12007-03-09 14:34:23 +0100594
Jens Axboee9a18062007-03-21 08:51:56 +0100595 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
596 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
597 to async IO. See
598
599 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
600
601 for more info on GUASI.
602
ren yufei21b8aee2011-08-01 10:01:57 +0200603 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
Bart Van Asscheeb52fa32011-08-15 09:01:05 +0200604 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
605 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
606 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
ren yufei21b8aee2011-08-01 10:01:57 +0200607
Dmitry Monakhovd54fce82012-09-20 15:37:17 +0400608 falloc IO engine that does regular fallocate to
609 simulate data transfer as fio ioengine.
610 DDIR_READ does fallocate(,mode = keep_size,)
Jens Axboe0981fd72012-09-20 19:23:02 +0200611 DDIR_WRITE does fallocate(,mode = 0)
Dmitry Monakhovd54fce82012-09-20 15:37:17 +0400612 DDIR_TRIM does fallocate(,mode = punch_hole)
613
614 e4defrag IO engine that does regular EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT
615 ioctls to simulate defragment activity in
616 request to DDIR_WRITE event
Jens Axboe0981fd72012-09-20 19:23:02 +0200617
Jens Axboe8a7bd872007-02-28 11:12:25 +0100618 external Prefix to specify loading an external
619 IO engine object file. Append the engine
620 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
621 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
622
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200623iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
624 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
625 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
Jens Axboeee72ca02010-12-02 20:05:37 +0100626 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
627 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
Bruce Cran9b836562011-01-08 19:49:54 +0100628 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
Jens Axboeee72ca02010-12-02 20:05:37 +0100629 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
630 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
631 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
632 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
633 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200634
Jens Axboe49504212008-06-05 09:03:30 +0200635iodepth_batch_submit=int
Jens Axboecb5ab512007-02-26 12:57:09 +0100636iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
Jens Axboe89e820f2008-01-18 10:30:07 +0100637 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
638 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
639 bigger batches of IO at the time.
Jens Axboecb5ab512007-02-26 12:57:09 +0100640
Jens Axboe49504212008-06-05 09:03:30 +0200641iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
642 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
643 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
644 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
645 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
646 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
647 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
648 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
649
Jens Axboee916b392007-02-20 14:37:26 +0100650iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
651 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
652 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
653 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
654 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
655 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
656
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200657direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
Bruce Cran9b836562011-01-08 19:49:54 +0100658 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
Bruce Cran93bcfd22012-02-20 20:18:19 +0100659 On Windows the synchronous ioengines don't support direct io.
Jens Axboe76a43db2007-01-11 13:24:44 +0100660
661buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
662 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200663
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +0100664offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200665 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
666 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
667
Dan Ehrenberg214ac7e2012-03-15 14:44:26 +0100668offset_increment=int If this is provided, then the real offset becomes
669 the offset + offset_increment * thread_number, where the
670 thread number is a counter that starts at 0 and is incremented
671 for each job. This option is useful if there are several jobs
672 which are intended to operate on a file in parallel in disjoint
673 segments, with even spacing between the starting points.
674
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200675fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
676 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
677 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
678 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
679 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
Jens Axboe6c219762006-11-03 15:51:45 +0100680 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200681
Jens Axboee76b1da2010-03-09 20:49:54 +0100682fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
Jens Axboe5f9099e2009-06-16 22:40:26 +0200683 metadata blocks.
Bruce Cran93bcfd22012-02-20 20:18:19 +0100684 In FreeBSD and Windows there is no fdatasync(), this falls back to
Joshua Aunee72fa4d2010-02-11 00:59:18 -0700685 using fsync()
Jens Axboe5f9099e2009-06-16 22:40:26 +0200686
Jens Axboee76b1da2010-03-09 20:49:54 +0100687sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
688 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
689 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
690 can currently be one or more of:
691
692 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
693 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
694 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
695
696 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
697 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
698 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
699 This option is Linux specific.
700
Jens Axboe5036fc12008-04-15 09:20:46 +0200701overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
702 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
703 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
704 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
705 will be done.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200706
Jens Axboedbd11ea2013-01-13 17:16:46 +0100707end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when a write stage has completed.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200708
Jens Axboeebb14152007-03-13 14:42:15 +0100709fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
710 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
711 file close, not just at the end of the job.
712
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200713rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
714
715rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
716 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
717 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
Jens Axboec35dd7a2009-06-10 08:39:16 +0200718 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
719 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
720 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200721
Jens Axboe92d42d62012-11-15 15:38:32 -0700722random_distribution=str:float By default, fio will use a completely uniform
723 random distribution when asked to perform random IO. Sometimes
724 it is useful to skew the distribution in specific ways,
725 ensuring that some parts of the data is more hot than others.
726 fio includes the following distribution models:
727
728 random Uniform random distribution
729 zipf Zipf distribution
730 pareto Pareto distribution
731
732 When using a zipf or pareto distribution, an input value
733 is also needed to define the access pattern. For zipf, this
734 is the zipf theta. For pareto, it's the pareto power. Fio
735 includes a test program, genzipf, that can be used visualize
736 what the given input values will yield in terms of hit rates.
737 If you wanted to use zipf with a theta of 1.2, you would use
738 random_distribution=zipf:1.2 as the option. If a non-uniform
739 model is used, fio will disable use of the random map.
740
Jens Axboebb8895e2006-10-30 15:14:48 +0100741norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
742 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
743 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
744 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
745 some blocks may be read/written more than once. This option
Jens Axboe83472392009-02-19 21:32:12 +0100746 is mutually exclusive with verify= if and only if multiple
747 blocksizes (via bsrange=) are used, since fio only tracks
748 complete rewrites of blocks.
Jens Axboebb8895e2006-10-30 15:14:48 +0100749
Jens Axboe0408c202011-08-08 09:07:28 +0200750softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
751 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
752 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
753 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
Jens Axboe2b386d22008-03-26 10:32:57 +0100754 disabled by default.
755
Jens Axboee8b19612012-12-05 10:28:08 +0100756random_generator=str Fio supports the following engines for generating
757 IO offsets for random IO:
758
759 tausworthe Strong 2^88 cycle random number generator
760 lfsr Linear feedback shift register generator
761
762 Tausworthe is a strong random number generator, but it
763 requires tracking on the side if we want to ensure that
764 blocks are only read or written once. LFSR guarantees
765 that we never generate the same offset twice, and it's
766 also less computationally expensive. It's not a true
767 random generator, however, though for IO purposes it's
768 typically good enough. LFSR only works with single
769 block sizes, not with workloads that use multiple block
770 sizes. If used with such a workload, fio may read or write
771 some blocks multiple times.
772
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200773nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
774
775prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
776 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
777 See man ionice(1).
778
779prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
780
781thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
782 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
Jens Axboe48097d52007-02-17 06:30:44 +0100783 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
784 thinktime_spin.
785
786thinktime_spin=int
787 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
788 doing something with the data received, before falling back
789 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
790 thinktime.
Jens Axboe9c1f7432007-01-03 20:43:19 +0100791
792thinktime_blocks
793 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
794 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
795 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
796 after every block.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200797
Jens Axboe581e7142009-06-09 12:47:16 +0200798rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
Jens Axboeb09da8f2009-07-17 23:16:17 +0200799 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
Jens Axboe581e7142009-06-09 12:47:16 +0200800 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
801 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
802 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
803 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
804 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
805 limit reads.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200806
807ratemin=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
Jens Axboe4e991c22007-03-15 11:41:11 +0100808 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
Jens Axboe581e7142009-06-09 12:47:16 +0200809 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
810 read vs write separation.
Jens Axboe4e991c22007-03-15 11:41:11 +0100811
812rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
813 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
814 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
Jens Axboe581e7142009-06-09 12:47:16 +0200815 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
816 as rate is used for read vs write seperation.
Jens Axboe4e991c22007-03-15 11:41:11 +0100817
818rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
Jens Axboe581e7142009-06-09 12:47:16 +0200819 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
820 write seperation.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200821
Jens Axboe15501532012-10-24 16:37:45 +0200822max_latency=int If set, fio will exit the job if it exceeds this maximum
823 latency. It will exit with an ETIME error.
824
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200825ratecycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'ratemin' over this number
Jens Axboe6c219762006-11-03 15:51:45 +0100826 of milliseconds.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200827
828cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
Jens Axboea08bc172007-06-13 21:00:46 +0200829 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
830 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
831 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
Jens Axboe7dbb6eb2007-05-22 09:13:31 +0200832 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
Jens Axboeb0ea08c2008-12-05 12:57:11 +0100833 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
834 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
835 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
836 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200837
Jens Axboed2e268b2007-06-15 10:33:49 +0200838cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
839 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
Jens Axboe62a72732008-12-08 11:37:01 +0100840 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
841 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
842 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
Jens Axboed2e268b2007-06-15 10:33:49 +0200843
Yufei Rend0b937e2012-10-19 23:11:52 -0400844numa_cpu_nodes=str Set this job running on spcified NUMA nodes' CPUs. The
845 arguments allow comma delimited list of cpu numbers,
846 A-B ranges, or 'all'. Note, to enable numa options support,
Jens Axboe67bf9822013-01-10 11:23:19 +0100847 fio must be built on a system with libnuma-dev(el) installed.
Yufei Rend0b937e2012-10-19 23:11:52 -0400848
849numa_mem_policy=str Set this job's memory policy and corresponding NUMA
850 nodes. Format of the argements:
851 <mode>[:<nodelist>]
852 `mode' is one of the following memory policy:
853 default, prefer, bind, interleave, local
854 For `default' and `local' memory policy, no node is
855 needed to be specified.
856 For `prefer', only one node is allowed.
857 For `bind' and `interleave', it allow comma delimited
858 list of numbers, A-B ranges, or 'all'.
859
Jens Axboee417fd62008-09-11 09:27:15 +0200860startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200861 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
862 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
863 time.
864
Jens Axboee417fd62008-09-11 09:27:15 +0200865runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200866 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
867 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
868 cap the total runtime to a given time.
869
Jens Axboecf4464c2007-04-17 20:14:42 +0200870time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
Jens Axboebf9a3ed2008-06-05 11:53:08 +0200871 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
Jens Axboecf4464c2007-04-17 20:14:42 +0200872 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
873 as many times as the runtime allows.
874
Jens Axboee417fd62008-09-11 09:27:15 +0200875ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
Jens Axboe721938a2008-09-10 09:46:16 +0200876 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
877 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
Jens Axboeb29ee5b2008-09-11 10:17:26 +0200878 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
879 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
880 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
881 or runtime is specified.
Jens Axboe721938a2008-09-10 09:46:16 +0200882
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200883invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
884 to starting io. Defaults to true.
885
886sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
887 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
888
Jens Axboed3aad8f2007-03-15 14:12:05 +0100889iomem=str
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200890mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
891 The allowed values are:
892
893 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
894
895 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
896 through shmget(2).
897
Jens Axboe74b025b2006-12-19 15:18:14 +0100898 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
899
Jens Axboe313cb202006-12-21 09:50:00 +0100900 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
901 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
902 a filename is given after the option. The
903 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200904
Jens Axboed0bdaf42006-12-20 14:40:44 +0100905 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
906 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
907 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
908
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200909 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
Jens Axboe5394ae52006-12-20 20:15:41 +0100910 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
911 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
912 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
913 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
Jens Axboeb22989b2009-07-17 22:29:23 +0200914 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
Jens Axboe5394ae52006-12-20 20:15:41 +0100915 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
916 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
917 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
918 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
919 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
920 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
Jens Axboe56bb17f2006-12-20 20:27:36 +0100921 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
Jens Axboe5394ae52006-12-20 20:15:41 +0100922
923 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
924 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
925 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200926
Jens Axboed529ee12009-07-01 10:33:03 +0200927iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
928 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
929 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
930 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
931 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
932 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
933 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
934 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
935
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +0100936hugepage-size=int
Jens Axboe56bb17f2006-12-20 20:27:36 +0100937 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
Jens Axboeb22989b2009-07-17 22:29:23 +0200938 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
Jens Axboec51074e2006-12-20 20:28:33 +0100939 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
940 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
941 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
Jens Axboe56bb17f2006-12-20 20:27:36 +0100942
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200943exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
944 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
945 desired action.
946
947bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
Jens Axboe6c219762006-11-03 15:51:45 +0100948 is specified in milliseconds.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200949
Jens Axboec8eeb9d2011-10-05 14:02:22 +0200950iopsavgtime=int Average the calculated IOPS over the given time. Value
951 is specified in milliseconds.
952
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200953create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
954 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
955 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
956 used and even the number of processors in the system.
957
958create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
959 default.
960
Jens Axboe814452b2009-03-04 12:53:13 +0100961create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
962 when it's time to do IO to that file.
963
Jens Axboe25460cf2012-05-02 13:58:02 +0200964create_only=bool If true, fio will only run the setup phase of the job.
965 If files need to be laid out or updated on disk, only
966 that will be done. The actual job contents are not
967 executed.
968
Zhang, Yanminafad68f2009-05-20 11:30:55 +0200969pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
Jens Axboe34f1c042009-06-02 14:19:25 +0200970 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
971 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
Jens Axboe9c0d2242009-07-01 12:26:28 +0200972 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
973 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
974 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
975 IO.
Zhang, Yanminafad68f2009-05-20 11:30:55 +0200976
Jens Axboee545a6c2007-01-14 00:00:29 +0100977unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
Jens Axboebf9a3ed2008-06-05 11:53:08 +0200978 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
979 set again and again.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200980
981loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
982 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
983 to 1.
984
Jens Axboe68e1f292007-08-10 10:32:14 +0200985do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
Shawn Lewise84c73a2007-08-02 22:19:32 +0200986 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
987
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +0200988verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
989 after each iteration of the job. The allowed values are:
990
991 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
992 it in the header of each block.
993
Jens Axboe17dc34d2007-07-27 15:36:02 +0200994 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
995 area and store it in the header of each
996 block.
997
Jens Axboebac39e02008-06-11 20:46:19 +0200998 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
999 it in the header of each block.
1000
Jens Axboe38455912008-08-04 15:35:26 +02001001 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
Jens Axboe0539d752010-06-21 15:22:56 +02001002 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
1003 back to regular software crc32c, if not
1004 supported by the system.
Jens Axboe38455912008-08-04 15:35:26 +02001005
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001006 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
1007 it in the header of each block.
1008
Jens Axboe969f7ed2007-07-27 09:07:17 +02001009 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
1010 it in the header of each block.
1011
Jens Axboe17dc34d2007-07-27 15:36:02 +02001012 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
1013 it in the header of each block.
1014
Jens Axboecd14cc12007-07-30 10:59:33 +02001015 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
1016
1017 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
1018
Jens Axboe7c353ce2009-08-09 22:40:33 +02001019 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
1020
Shawn Lewis7437ee82007-08-02 21:05:58 +02001021 meta Write extra information about each io
1022 (timestamp, block number etc.). The block
Jens Axboe996093b2010-06-24 08:37:13 +02001023 number is verified. See also verify_pattern.
Shawn Lewis7437ee82007-08-02 21:05:58 +02001024
Jens Axboe36690c92007-03-26 10:23:34 +02001025 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
1026 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
1027 else.
1028
Jens Axboe6c219762006-11-03 15:51:45 +01001029 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001030 system to make sure that the written data is also
Jens Axboeb892dc02009-09-05 20:37:35 +02001031 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
1032 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
1033 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
1034 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
1035 newly written data.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001036
Jens Axboe160b9662007-03-27 10:59:49 +02001037verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
1038 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
1039 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
1040 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
1041 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
1042 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
1043 significant.
Shawn Lewis3f9f4e22007-07-28 21:10:37 +02001044
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +01001045verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
Shawn Lewis546a9142007-07-28 21:11:37 +02001046 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
1047 verifying.
1048
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +01001049verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
Shawn Lewis3f9f4e22007-07-28 21:10:37 +02001050 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
1051 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
1052 evenly.
Jens Axboe90059d62007-07-30 09:33:12 +02001053
Radha Ramachandran0e92f872009-10-27 20:14:27 +01001054verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
Shawn Lewise28218f2008-01-16 11:01:33 +01001055 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
1056 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
1057 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
1058 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
Radha Ramachandran0e92f872009-10-27 20:14:27 +01001059 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
1060 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
Jens Axboe996093b2010-06-24 08:37:13 +02001061 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
1062 with verify=meta.
Shawn Lewise28218f2008-01-16 11:01:33 +01001063
Jens Axboe68e1f292007-08-10 10:32:14 +02001064verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
Jens Axboea12a3b42007-08-09 10:20:54 +02001065 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
1066 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
1067 failure.
Jens Axboee8462bd2009-07-06 12:59:04 +02001068
Jens Axboeb463e932011-01-12 09:03:23 +01001069verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
1070 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
1071 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
Jens Axboeef71e312011-10-25 22:43:36 +02001072 corruption occurred. Off by default.
Jens Axboeb463e932011-01-12 09:03:23 +01001073
Jens Axboee8462bd2009-07-06 12:59:04 +02001074verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
1075 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
1076 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
1077 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
Jens Axboec85c3242009-07-06 14:12:57 +02001078 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
1079 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
1080 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
1081 IO in flight while verifies are running.
Jens Axboee8462bd2009-07-06 12:59:04 +02001082
1083verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
1084 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
1085 format used.
Jens Axboe6f874182010-06-21 12:53:26 +02001086
1087verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
1088 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
1089 other words, everything is written then everything is read
1090 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
1091 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
1092 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
1093 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
1094 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
Jens Axboef42195a2010-10-26 08:10:58 -06001095 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
1096
Jens Axboe6f874182010-06-21 12:53:26 +02001097 will verify the previously written blocks before continuing
1098 to write new ones.
1099
1100verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1101 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1102 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
Jens Axboef42195a2010-10-26 08:10:58 -06001103 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1104 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1105 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1106 blocks will be verified more than once.
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001107
Jens Axboed3923652011-08-03 12:38:39 +02001108stonewall
1109wait_for_previous Wait for preceeding jobs in the job file to exit, before
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001110 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
Jens Axboeb3d62a72007-03-20 14:23:26 +01001111 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1112 a new reporting group.
1113
Akash Vermaabcab6a2012-10-04 15:58:28 -07001114new_group Start a new reporting group. See: group_reporting.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001115
1116numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1117 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
Akash Vermaabcab6a2012-10-04 15:58:28 -07001118 the same thing. Each thread is reported separately; to see
1119 statistics for all clones as a whole, use group_reporting in
1120 conjunction with new_group.
Jens Axboefa28c852007-03-06 15:40:49 +01001121
Akash Vermaabcab6a2012-10-04 15:58:28 -07001122group_reporting It may sometimes be interesting to display statistics for
Jens Axboe04b2f792012-10-10 09:09:59 -06001123 groups of jobs as a whole instead of for each individual job.
1124 This is especially true if 'numjobs' is used; looking at
1125 individual thread/process output quickly becomes unwieldy.
1126 To see the final report per-group instead of per-job, use
1127 'group_reporting'. Jobs in a file will be part of the same
1128 reporting group, unless if separated by a stonewall, or by
1129 using 'new_group'.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001130
1131thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1132 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1133 instead.
1134
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +01001135zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001136
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +01001137zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001138 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1139 io on zones of a file.
1140
Jens Axboe076efc72006-10-27 11:24:25 +02001141write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
Stefan Hajnoczi5b42a482011-01-08 20:28:41 +01001142 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1143 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001144
Jens Axboe076efc72006-10-27 11:24:25 +02001145read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001146 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
Jens Axboe6df8ada2007-05-15 13:23:19 +02001147 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1148 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1149 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1150 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1151 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
Jens Axboeea3e51c2010-05-17 19:51:45 +02001152 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001153
David Nellans64bbb862010-08-24 22:13:30 +02001154replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
Jens Axboe62776222010-09-02 15:30:16 +02001155 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1156 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1157 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1158 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1159 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1160 given device, but different timings.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001161
David Nellansd1c46c02010-08-31 21:20:47 +02001162replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1163 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1164 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
1165 undesireable because on a different machine those major/minor
1166 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1167 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1168 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1169 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1170 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1171 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1172 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1173 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1174 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1175 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1176 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1177 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1178
Jens Axboee3cedca2008-11-19 19:57:52 +01001179write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001180 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
Jens Axboee0da9bc2006-10-25 13:08:57 +02001181 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1182 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
Lucian Adrian Grijincuddb754d2012-04-05 18:18:35 -06001183 graphs. See write_lat_log for behaviour of given
1184 filename. For this option, the suffix is _bw.log.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001185
Jens Axboee3cedca2008-11-19 19:57:52 +01001186write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
Jens Axboe02af0982010-06-24 09:59:34 +02001187 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1188 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1189 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1190 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
Jens Axboee3cedca2008-11-19 19:57:52 +01001191
1192 write_lat_log=foo
1193
Jens Axboe02af0982010-06-24 09:59:34 +02001194 The actual log names will be foo_slat.log, foo_slat.log,
1195 and foo_lat.log. This helps fio_generate_plot fine the logs
1196 automatically.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001197
Jens Axboec8eeb9d2011-10-05 14:02:22 +02001198write_bw_log=str If given, write an IOPS log of the jobs in this job
1199 file. See write_bw_log.
1200
Jens Axboeb8bc8cb2011-12-01 09:04:31 +01001201write_iops_log=str Same as write_bw_log, but writes IOPS. If no filename is
1202 given with this option, the default filename of
1203 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1204 fio will still append the type of log.
1205
1206log_avg_msec=int By default, fio will log an entry in the iops, latency,
1207 or bw log for every IO that completes. When writing to the
1208 disk log, that can quickly grow to a very large size. Setting
1209 this option makes fio average the each log entry over the
1210 specified period of time, reducing the resolution of the log.
1211 Defaults to 0.
1212
Jens Axboef7fa2652009-03-09 14:20:20 +01001213lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001214 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1215 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
1216
1217exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
1218 through system(3).
1219
1220exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
1221 though system(3).
1222
1223ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1224 io scheduler before running.
1225
1226cpuload=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, attempt to use the specified
1227 percentage of CPU cycles.
1228
1229cpuchunks=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, split the load into
Randy Dunlap26eca2d2009-05-13 07:50:38 +02001230 cycles of the given time. In microseconds.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001231
Jens Axboe0a839f32007-04-26 09:02:34 +02001232disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1233 supports it. Defaults to on.
1234
Jens Axboe02af0982010-06-24 09:59:34 +02001235disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
Jens Axboe9520ebb2008-10-16 21:03:27 +02001236 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1237 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1238 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1239 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1240 disable_bw as well.
1241
Jens Axboe02af0982010-06-24 09:59:34 +02001242disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1243 disable_lat.
1244
Jens Axboe9520ebb2008-10-16 21:03:27 +02001245disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
Jens Axboe02af0982010-06-24 09:59:34 +02001246 disable_slat.
Jens Axboe9520ebb2008-10-16 21:03:27 +02001247
1248disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
Jens Axboe02af0982010-06-24 09:59:34 +02001249 disable_lat.
Jens Axboe9520ebb2008-10-16 21:03:27 +02001250
Yu-ju Hong83349192011-08-13 00:53:44 +02001251clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1252 completion latencies.
1253
1254percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
1255 for completion latencies. Each number is a floating
1256 number in the range (0,100], and the maximum length of
1257 the list is 20. Use ':' to separate the numbers, and
1258 list the numbers in ascending order. For example,
1259 --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause fio to report
1260 the values of completion latency below which 99.5% and
1261 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
1262
Jens Axboe23893642012-12-17 14:44:08 +01001263clocksource=str Use the given clocksource as the base of timing. The
1264 supported options are:
1265
1266 gettimeofday gettimeofday(2)
1267
1268 clock_gettime clock_gettime(2)
1269
1270 cpu Internal CPU clock source
1271
1272 cpu is the preferred clocksource if it is reliable, as it
1273 is very fast (and fio is heavy on time calls). Fio will
1274 automatically use this clocksource if it's supported and
1275 considered reliable on the system it is running on, unless
1276 another clocksource is specifically set. For x86/x86-64 CPUs,
1277 this means supporting TSC Invariant.
1278
Jens Axboe993bf482008-11-14 13:04:53 +01001279gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1280 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1281 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1282 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1283 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1284 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1285
Jens Axboebe4ecfd2008-12-08 14:10:52 +01001286gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1287 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1288 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1289 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1290 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1291 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1292 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1293 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1294 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1295 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1296 jobs.
Jens Axboea696fa22009-12-04 10:05:02 +01001297
Steven Lang06842022011-11-17 09:45:17 +01001298continue_on_error=str Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
Radha Ramachandranf2bba182009-06-15 08:40:16 +02001299 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1300 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1301 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1302 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1303 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1304 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1305 run.
Jens Axboebe4ecfd2008-12-08 14:10:52 +01001306
Steven Lang06842022011-11-17 09:45:17 +01001307 The allowed values are:
1308
1309 none Exit on any IO or verify errors.
1310
1311 read Continue on read errors, exit on all others.
1312
1313 write Continue on write errors, exit on all others.
1314
1315 io Continue on any IO error, exit on all others.
1316
1317 verify Continue on verify errors, exit on all others.
1318
1319 all Continue on all errors.
1320
1321 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'.
1322
1323 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'all'.
1324
Dmitry Monakhov8b28bd42012-09-23 15:46:09 +04001325ignore_error=str Sometimes you want to ignore some errors during test
1326 in that case you can specify error list for each error type.
1327 ignore_error=READ_ERR_LIST,WRITE_ERR_LIST,VERIFY_ERR_LIST
1328 errors for given error type is separated with ':'. Error
1329 may be symbol ('ENOSPC', 'ENOMEM') or integer.
1330 Example:
1331 ignore_error=EAGAIN,ENOSPC:122
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001332 This option will ignore EAGAIN from READ, and ENOSPC and
1333 122(EDQUOT) from WRITE.
Dmitry Monakhov8b28bd42012-09-23 15:46:09 +04001334
1335error_dump=bool If set dump every error even if it is non fatal, true
1336 by default. If disabled only fatal error will be dumped
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001337
Jens Axboe6adb38a2009-12-07 08:01:26 +01001338cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1339 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1340 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1341 mounted, you can do so with:
Jens Axboea696fa22009-12-04 10:05:02 +01001342
1343 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1344
Jens Axboea696fa22009-12-04 10:05:02 +01001345cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1346 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1347 are in the range of 100..1000.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001348
Vivek Goyal7de87092010-03-31 22:55:15 +02001349cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1350 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1351 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1352 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1353 files after job completion. Default: false
1354
Jens Axboee0b0d892009-12-08 10:10:14 +01001355uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1356 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1357
1358gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1359
Dan Ehrenberg9e684a42012-02-20 11:05:14 +01001360flow_id=int The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a
1361 global flow. See flow.
1362
1363flow=int Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then
1364 there is a 'flow counter' which is used to regulate the
1365 proportion of activity between two or more jobs. fio attempts
1366 to keep this flow counter near zero. The 'flow' parameter
1367 stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the flow
1368 counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if
1369 one job has flow=8 and another job has flow=-1, then there
1370 will be a roughly 1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
1371
1372flow_watermark=int The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow
1373 counter is allowed to reach before the job must wait for a
1374 lower value of the counter.
1375
1376flow_sleep=int The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow
1377 watermark has been exceeded before retrying operations
1378
Steven Langde890a12011-11-09 14:03:34 +01001379In addition, there are some parameters which are only valid when a specific
1380ioengine is in use. These are used identically to normal parameters, with the
1381caveat that when used on the command line, they must come after the ioengine
1382that defines them is selected.
1383
1384[libaio] userspace_reap Normally, with the libaio engine in use, fio will use
1385 the io_getevents system call to reap newly returned events.
1386 With this flag turned on, the AIO ring will be read directly
1387 from user-space to reap events. The reaping mode is only
1388 enabled when polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
1389 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
1390
1391[netsplice] hostname=str
1392[net] hostname=str The host name or IP address to use for TCP or UDP based IO.
1393 If the job is a TCP listener or UDP reader, the hostname is not
1394 used and must be omitted.
1395
1396[netsplice] port=int
1397[net] port=int The TCP or UDP port to bind to or connect to.
1398
1399[netsplice] protocol=str
1400[netsplice] proto=str
1401[net] protocol=str
1402[net] proto=str The network protocol to use. Accepted values are:
1403
1404 tcp Transmission control protocol
Bruce Cranf5cc3d02012-10-10 08:17:44 -06001405 udp User datagram protocol
Steven Langde890a12011-11-09 14:03:34 +01001406 unix UNIX domain socket
1407
1408 When the protocol is TCP or UDP, the port must also be given,
1409 as well as the hostname if the job is a TCP listener or UDP
1410 reader. For unix sockets, the normal filename option should be
1411 used and the port is invalid.
1412
1413[net] listen For TCP network connections, tell fio to listen for incoming
1414 connections rather than initiating an outgoing connection. The
1415 hostname must be omitted if this option is used.
Jens Axboe7aeb1e92012-12-06 20:53:57 +01001416[net] pingpong Normal a network writer will just continue writing data, and
1417 a network reader will just consume packages. If pingpong=1
1418 is set, a writer will send its normal payload to the reader,
1419 then wait for the reader to send the same payload back. This
1420 allows fio to measure network latencies. The submission
1421 and completion latencies then measure local time spent
1422 sending or receiving, and the completion latency measures
1423 how long it took for the other end to receive and send back.
1424
Dmitry Monakhovd54fce82012-09-20 15:37:17 +04001425[e4defrag] donorname=str
1426 File will be used as a block donor(swap extents between files)
1427[e4defrag] inplace=int
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001428 Configure donor file blocks allocation strategy
Dmitry Monakhovd54fce82012-09-20 15:37:17 +04001429 0(default): Preallocate donor's file on init
1430 1 : allocate space immidietly inside defragment event,
1431 and free right after event
1432
Steven Langde890a12011-11-09 14:03:34 +01001433
1434
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +020014356.0 Interpreting the output
1436---------------------------
1437
1438fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1439status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1440
Jens Axboe73c8b082007-01-11 19:25:52 +01001441Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001442
1443The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1444each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1445
1446Idle Run
1447---- ---
1448P Thread setup, but not started.
1449C Thread created.
Jens Axboe9c6f6312012-11-07 09:15:45 +01001450I Thread initialized, waiting or generating necessary data.
Jens Axboeb0f65862009-05-20 11:52:15 +02001451 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001452 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1453 r Running, doing random reads.
1454 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1455 w Running, doing random writes.
1456 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1457 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1458 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
Jens Axboefc6bd432009-04-29 09:52:10 +02001459 V Running, doing verification of written data.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001460E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
Jens Axboe4f7e57a2012-03-30 21:21:20 +02001461_ Thread reaped, or
1462X Thread reaped, exited with an error.
Jens Axboea5e371a2012-04-02 09:47:09 -07001463K Thread reaped, exited due to signal.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001464
1465The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
Jens Axboec9f60302007-07-20 12:43:05 +02001466currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1467listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1468and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
Jens Axboe4f7e57a2012-03-30 21:21:20 +02001469the following groups (if any). Note that the string is displayed in order,
1470so it's possible to tell which of the jobs are currently doing what. The
1471first character is the first job defined in the job file, and so forth.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001472
1473When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1474each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1475direction, the output looks like:
1476
1477Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
Paul Dubs35649e52011-07-21 16:04:52 +02001478 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
Jens Axboe6104ddb2007-01-11 14:24:29 +01001479 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1480 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
Jens Axboeb22989b2009-07-17 22:29:23 +02001481 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
Jens Axboee7823a92007-09-07 20:33:33 +02001482 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
Jens Axboe71619dc2007-01-13 23:56:33 +01001483 IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
Jens Axboe838bc702008-05-22 13:08:23 +02001484 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1485 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
Jens Axboe30061b92007-04-17 13:31:34 +02001486 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
Jens Axboe8abdce62007-02-21 10:22:55 +01001487 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1488 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001489
1490The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1491thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1492they denote:
1493
1494io= Number of megabytes io performed
1495bw= Average bandwidth rate
Paul Dubs35649e52011-07-21 16:04:52 +02001496iops= Average IOs performed per second
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001497runt= The runtime of that thread
Jens Axboe72fbda22007-03-20 10:02:06 +01001498 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001499 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
1500 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
Jens Axboe8a35c712007-06-19 09:53:31 +02001501 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
Jens Axboebf9a3ed2008-06-05 11:53:08 +02001502 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
Jens Axboe8a35c712007-06-19 09:53:31 +02001503 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
Lucian Adrian Grijincu0d237712012-04-03 14:42:48 -06001504 above, milliseconds is the best scale. Note: in --minimal mode
1505 latencies are always expressed in microseconds.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001506 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
1507 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
1508 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
1509 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
1510 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
1511 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
1512 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
1513 this thread received in this group. This last value is
1514 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
1515 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
1516cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
Jens Axboee7823a92007-09-07 20:33:33 +02001517 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
1518 system and user time, and finally the number of major
1519 and minor page faults.
Jens Axboe71619dc2007-01-13 23:56:33 +01001520IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
1521 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
1522 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
1523 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
1524 range from 16 to 31.
Jens Axboe838bc702008-05-22 13:08:23 +02001525IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
1526 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
1527 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
1528 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
1529IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
Jens Axboe30061b92007-04-17 13:31:34 +02001530IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
1531 of them were short.
Jens Axboeec118302007-02-17 04:38:20 +01001532IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
1533 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
1534 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
1535 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
Jens Axboe8abdce62007-02-21 10:22:55 +01001536 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
1537 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001538
1539After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
1540will look like this:
1541
1542Run status group 0 (all jobs):
Jens Axboeb22989b2009-07-17 22:29:23 +02001543 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
1544 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001545
1546For each data direction, it prints:
1547
1548io= Number of megabytes io performed.
1549aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
1550minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1551maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1552mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
1553maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
1554
1555And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
1556
1557Disk stats (read/write):
1558 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
1559
1560Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
1561numbers denote:
1562
1563ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
1564merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
1565ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
1566io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
1567util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
1568 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
1569
Jens Axboe8423bd12012-04-12 09:18:38 +02001570It is also possible to get fio to dump the current output while it is
1571running, without terminating the job. To do that, send fio the USR1 signal.
1572
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001573
15747.0 Terse output
1575----------------
1576
1577For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
Jens Axboe6af019c2007-03-06 19:50:58 +01001578of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001579The format is one long line of values, such as:
1580
David Nellans562c2d22010-09-23 08:38:17 +020015812;card0;0;0;7139336;121836;60004;1;10109;27.932460;116.933948;220;126861;3495.446807;1085.368601;226;126864;3523.635629;1089.012448;24063;99944;50.275485%;59818.274627;5540.657370;7155060;122104;60004;1;8338;29.086342;117.839068;388;128077;5032.488518;1234.785715;391;128085;5061.839412;1236.909129;23436;100928;50.287926%;59964.832030;5644.844189;14.595833%;19.394167%;123706;0;7313;0.1%;0.1%;0.1%;0.1%;0.1%;0.1%;100.0%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.01%;0.02%;0.05%;0.16%;6.04%;40.40%;52.68%;0.64%;0.01%;0.00%;0.01%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%;0.00%
1582A description of this job goes here.
1583
1584The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001585
Jens Axboe525c2bf2010-06-30 15:22:21 +02001586To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
1587value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
1588be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
1589signify that change.
Jens Axboe6820cb32008-09-27 12:33:53 +02001590
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001591Split up, the format is as follows:
1592
Jens Axboe5e726d02011-10-14 08:08:10 +02001593 terse version, fio version, jobname, groupid, error
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001594 READ status:
Jens Axboe312b4af2011-10-13 13:11:42 +02001595 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
Jens Axboede196b82012-04-02 07:03:26 -07001596 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1597 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
Jens Axboe1db92cb2011-10-13 13:43:36 +02001598 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
Jens Axboede196b82012-04-02 07:03:26 -07001599 Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
Lucian Adrian Grijincu0d237712012-04-03 14:42:48 -06001600 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
Jens Axboe71bfa162006-10-25 11:08:19 +02001601 WRITE status:
Jens Axboe312b4af2011-10-13 13:11:42 +02001602 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
Jens Axboede196b82012-04-02 07:03:26 -07001603 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1604 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
Jens Axboe1db92cb2011-10-13 13:43:36 +02001605 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
Jens Axboede196b82012-04-02 07:03:26 -07001606 Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
Lucian Adrian Grijincu0d237712012-04-03 14:42:48 -06001607 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
Shawn Lewis046ee302007-11-21 09:38:34 +01001608 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
Jens Axboe22708902007-03-06 17:05:32 +01001609 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
David Nellans562c2d22010-09-23 08:38:17 +02001610 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
1611 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
Jens Axboef2f788d2011-10-13 14:03:52 +02001612 Disk utilization: Disk name, Read ios, write ios,
1613 Read merges, write merges,
1614 Read ticks, write ticks,
Jens Axboe3d7cd9b2011-10-18 08:31:01 +02001615 Time spent in queue, disk utilization percentage
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001616 Additional Info (dependant on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
1617
Jens Axboef42195a2010-10-26 08:10:58 -06001618 Additional Info (dependant on description being set): Text description
Paul Dubs25c8b9d2011-07-21 17:26:02 +02001619
Jens Axboe1db92cb2011-10-13 13:43:36 +02001620Completion latency percentiles can be a grouping of up to 20 sets, so
1621for the terse output fio writes all of them. Each field will look like this:
1622
1623 1.00%=6112
1624
1625which is the Xth percentile, and the usec latency associated with it.
1626
Jens Axboef2f788d2011-10-13 14:03:52 +02001627For disk utilization, all disks used by fio are shown. So for each disk
1628there will be a disk utilization section.
1629
Paul Dubs25c8b9d2011-07-21 17:26:02 +02001630
16318.0 Trace file format
1632---------------------
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001633There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
Paul Dubs25c8b9d2011-07-21 17:26:02 +02001634is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
1635below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
1636
1637In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
1638
1639
16408.1 Trace file format v1
1641------------------------
1642Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
1643
1644rw, offset, length
1645
1646where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
1647
1648This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
1649
1650
16518.2 Trace file format v2
1652------------------------
1653The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
1654It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
1655possible file actions.
1656
1657The first line of the trace file has to be:
1658
1659fio version 2 iolog
1660
1661Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
1662
1663The file management format:
1664
1665filename action
1666
1667The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
1668
1669add Add the given filename to the trace
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001670open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
Paul Dubs25c8b9d2011-07-21 17:26:02 +02001671 been added with the add action before.
1672close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
1673 opened before.
1674
1675
1676The file io action format:
1677
1678filename action offset length
1679
1680The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
Bruce Cran66c098b2012-11-27 12:16:07 +00001681before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
Paul Dubs25c8b9d2011-07-21 17:26:02 +02001682bytes. The action can be one of these:
1683
1684wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
1685read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
1686write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
1687sync fsync() the file
1688datasync fdatasync() the file
1689trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes