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71bfa161 JA |
1 | Table of contents |
2 | ----------------- | |
3 | ||
4 | 1. Overview | |
5 | 2. How fio works | |
6 | 3. Running fio | |
7 | 4. Job file format | |
8 | 5. Detailed list of parameters | |
9 | 6. Normal output | |
10 | 7. Terse output | |
11 | ||
12 | ||
13 | 1.0 Overview and history | |
14 | ------------------------ | |
15 | fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test | |
16 | case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for | |
17 | performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing | |
18 | such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often. | |
19 | Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload | |
20 | without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again. | |
21 | ||
22 | A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number | |
23 | of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own | |
24 | way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of | |
25 | memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing | |
26 | reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to | |
27 | simulate both of these cases, and many more. | |
28 | ||
29 | 2.0 How fio works | |
30 | ----------------- | |
31 | The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is | |
32 | writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain | |
33 | any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file | |
34 | is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job | |
35 | sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file | |
36 | and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to | |
37 | bottom, 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 | |
52 | could be using splice, async io, or even | |
53 | SG (SCSI generic sg). | |
54 | ||
55 | IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queueing | |
56 | 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. | |
64 | ||
65 | The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition | |
66 | there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this | |
67 | job behaves. | |
68 | ||
69 | ||
70 | 3.0 Running fio | |
71 | --------------- | |
72 | See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few | |
73 | of them. | |
74 | ||
75 | Running 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 | ||
80 | and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give | |
81 | more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running | |
82 | of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall' | |
83 | parameter described the the parameter section. | |
84 | ||
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85 | If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the |
86 | parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical | |
87 | to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters | |
88 | (see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the | |
89 | mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. | |
90 | ||
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91 | fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified |
92 | in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted, | |
93 | such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and descreasing the nice value. | |
94 | ||
95 | ||
96 | 4.0 Job file format | |
97 | ------------------- | |
98 | As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing | |
99 | what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file, | |
100 | where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free | |
101 | to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning. | |
102 | A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job | |
103 | may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have | |
104 | several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global | |
105 | section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';', the | |
106 | entire line is discarded as a comment. | |
107 | ||
108 | So lets look at a really simple job file that define to threads, each | |
109 | randomly reading from a 128MiB file. | |
110 | ||
111 | ; -- start job file -- | |
112 | [global] | |
113 | rw=randread | |
114 | size=128m | |
115 | ||
116 | [job1] | |
117 | ||
118 | [job2] | |
119 | ||
120 | ; -- end job file -- | |
121 | ||
122 | As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the | |
123 | described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio | |
124 | makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. | |
125 | ||
126 | Lets look at an example that have a number of processes writing randomly | |
127 | to files. | |
128 | ||
129 | ; -- start job file -- | |
130 | [random-writers] | |
131 | ioengine=libaio | |
132 | iodepth=4 | |
133 | rw=randwrite | |
134 | bs=32k | |
135 | direct=0 | |
136 | size=64m | |
137 | numjobs=4 | |
138 | ||
139 | ; -- end job file -- | |
140 | ||
141 | Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway. | |
142 | We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also | |
143 | increased the buffer size used to 32KiB and define numjobs to 4 to | |
144 | fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing | |
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145 | to their own 64MiB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could |
146 | have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would | |
147 | specify: | |
148 | ||
149 | $ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4 | |
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150 | |
151 | fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for | |
152 | inspiration. | |
153 | ||
154 | ||
155 | 5.0 Detailed list of parameters | |
156 | ------------------------------- | |
157 | ||
158 | This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job. | |
159 | Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or | |
160 | a string. The following types are used: | |
161 | ||
162 | str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters. | |
163 | int Integer. A whole number value, may be negative. | |
164 | siint SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a postfix | |
165 | describing the base of the number. Accepted postfixes are k/m/g, | |
166 | meaning kilo, mega, and giga. So if you want to specifiy 4096, | |
167 | you could either write out '4096' or just give 4k. The postfixes | |
168 | signify base 2 values, so 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on. | |
169 | bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for | |
170 | true and false (1 and 0). | |
171 | irange Integer range with postfix. Allows value range to be given, such | |
172 | as 1024-4096. Also see siint. | |
173 | ||
174 | With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job | |
175 | parameters. | |
176 | ||
177 | name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the | |
178 | name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job | |
179 | name is used. | |
180 | ||
181 | directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to places files | |
182 | in a different location than "./". | |
183 | ||
184 | filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name, | |
185 | thread number, and file number. If you want to share | |
186 | files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify | |
187 | a filename for each of them to override the default. | |
188 | ||
189 | rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are: | |
190 | ||
191 | read Sequential reads | |
192 | write Sequential writes | |
193 | randwrite Random writes | |
194 | randread Random reads | |
195 | rw Sequential mixed reads and writes | |
196 | randrw Random mixed reads and writes | |
197 | ||
198 | For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50. | |
199 | For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit, | |
200 | since the speed may be different. | |
201 | ||
202 | size=siint The total size of file io for this job. This may describe | |
203 | the size of the single file the job uses, or it may be | |
204 | divided between the number of files in the job. If the | |
205 | file already exists, the file size will be adjusted to this | |
206 | size if larger than the current file size. If this parameter | |
207 | is not given and the file exists, the file size will be used. | |
208 | ||
209 | bs=siint The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. | |
210 | ||
211 | bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range | |
212 | and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued | |
213 | io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value | |
214 | given. | |
215 | ||
216 | nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1. | |
217 | ||
218 | ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following | |
219 | types are defined: | |
220 | ||
221 | sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is | |
222 | used to position the io location. | |
223 | ||
224 | libaio Linux native asynchronous io. | |
225 | ||
226 | posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io. | |
227 | ||
228 | mmap File is memory mapped and data copied | |
229 | to/from using memcpy(3). | |
230 | ||
231 | splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and | |
232 | vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user | |
233 | space to the kernel. | |
234 | ||
235 | sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be | |
236 | syncrhonous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if | |
237 | the target is an sg character device | |
238 | we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous | |
239 | io. | |
240 | ||
241 | iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against | |
242 | the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this | |
243 | job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher | |
244 | concurrency. | |
245 | ||
246 | direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually | |
247 | O_DIRECT. Defaults to true. | |
248 | ||
249 | offset=siint Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before | |
250 | the given offset will not be touched. This effectively | |
251 | caps the file size at real_size - offset. | |
252 | ||
253 | fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data | |
254 | for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give | |
255 | 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32 | |
256 | writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may | |
257 | not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which | |
258 | syncronizes the disk cache anyway. | |
259 | ||
260 | overwrite=bool If writing to a file, setup the file first and do overwrites. | |
261 | ||
262 | end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when the job exits. | |
263 | ||
264 | rwmixcycle=int Value in miliseconds describing how often to switch between | |
265 | reads and writes for a mixed workload. The default is | |
266 | 500 msecs. | |
267 | ||
268 | rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads. | |
269 | ||
270 | rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both | |
271 | rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add | |
272 | up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override | |
273 | the first. | |
274 | ||
275 | nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2). | |
276 | ||
277 | prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to | |
278 | a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest. | |
279 | See man ionice(1). | |
280 | ||
281 | prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1). | |
282 | ||
283 | thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before | |
284 | issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being | |
285 | done by an application. | |
286 | ||
287 | rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job to this number of KiB/sec. | |
288 | ||
289 | ratemin=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this | |
290 | bandwidth. | |
291 | ||
292 | ratecycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'ratemin' over this number | |
293 | of miliseconds. | |
294 | ||
295 | cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a | |
296 | bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. See man | |
297 | sched_setaffinity(2). | |
298 | ||
299 | startdelay=int Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio | |
300 | has started. Only useful if the job file contains several | |
301 | jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain | |
302 | time. | |
303 | ||
304 | timeout=int Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number | |
305 | of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long | |
306 | a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to | |
307 | cap the total runtime to a given time. | |
308 | ||
309 | invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior | |
310 | to starting io. Defaults to true. | |
311 | ||
312 | sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the | |
313 | io engines, this means using O_SYNC. | |
314 | ||
315 | mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer. | |
316 | The allowed values are: | |
317 | ||
318 | malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers. | |
319 | ||
320 | shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated | |
321 | through shmget(2). | |
322 | ||
323 | mmap Use anonymous memory maps as the buffers. | |
324 | Allocated through mmap(2). | |
325 | ||
326 | The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed | |
327 | bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. | |
328 | ||
329 | exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is | |
330 | to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the | |
331 | desired action. | |
332 | ||
333 | bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value | |
334 | is specified in miliseconds. | |
335 | ||
336 | create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs. | |
337 | This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data | |
338 | files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem | |
339 | used and even the number of processors in the system. | |
340 | ||
341 | create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the | |
342 | default. | |
343 | ||
344 | unlink Unlink the job files when done. fio defaults to doing this, | |
345 | if it created the file itself. | |
346 | ||
347 | loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used | |
348 | to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults | |
349 | to 1. | |
350 | ||
351 | verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents | |
352 | after each iteration of the job. The allowed values are: | |
353 | ||
354 | md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store | |
355 | it in the header of each block. | |
356 | ||
357 | crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store | |
358 | it in the header of each block. | |
359 | ||
360 | This option can be used for repeated burnin tests of a | |
361 | system to make sure that the written data is also | |
362 | correctly read back. | |
363 | ||
364 | stonewall Wait for preceeding jobs in the job file to exit, before | |
365 | starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization | |
366 | points in the job file. | |
367 | ||
368 | numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be | |
369 | used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing | |
370 | the same thing. | |
371 | ||
372 | thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is | |
373 | given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads | |
374 | instead. | |
375 | ||
376 | zonesize=siint Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip. | |
377 | ||
378 | zoneskip=siint Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has | |
379 | been read. The two zone options can be used to only do | |
380 | io on zones of a file. | |
381 | ||
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382 | write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See |
383 | read_iolog. | |
71bfa161 | 384 | |
076efc7c | 385 | read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the |
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386 | io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a |
387 | workload and replay it sometime later. | |
388 | ||
389 | write_bw_log If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job | |
390 | file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the | |
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391 | jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots |
392 | script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice | |
393 | graphs. | |
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394 | |
395 | write_lat_log Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io | |
396 | completion latencies instead. | |
397 | ||
398 | lockmem=siint Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can | |
399 | potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting | |
400 | with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory. | |
401 | ||
402 | exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified | |
403 | through system(3). | |
404 | ||
405 | exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified | |
406 | though system(3). | |
407 | ||
408 | ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified | |
409 | io scheduler before running. | |
410 | ||
411 | cpuload=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, attempt to use the specified | |
412 | percentage of CPU cycles. | |
413 | ||
414 | cpuchunks=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, split the load into | |
415 | cycles of the given time. In miliseconds. | |
416 | ||
417 | ||
418 | 6.0 Interpreting the output | |
419 | --------------------------- | |
420 | ||
421 | fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the | |
422 | status of the jobs created. An example of that would be: | |
423 | ||
424 | Threads running: 1: [_r] [24.79% done] [eta 00h:01m:31s] | |
425 | ||
426 | The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of | |
427 | each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are: | |
428 | ||
429 | Idle Run | |
430 | ---- --- | |
431 | P Thread setup, but not started. | |
432 | C Thread created. | |
433 | I Thread initialized, waiting. | |
434 | R Running, doing sequential reads. | |
435 | r Running, doing random reads. | |
436 | W Running, doing sequential writes. | |
437 | w Running, doing random writes. | |
438 | M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes. | |
439 | m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes. | |
440 | F Running, currently waiting for fsync() | |
441 | V Running, doing verification of written data. | |
442 | E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet. | |
443 | _ Thread reaped. | |
444 | ||
445 | The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads | |
446 | currently running and doing io, and the estimated completion percentage | |
447 | and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime | |
448 | of the following groups (if any). | |
449 | ||
450 | When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for | |
451 | each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data | |
452 | direction, the output looks like: | |
453 | ||
454 | Client1 (g=0): err= 0: | |
455 | write: io= 32MiB, bw= 666KiB/s, runt= 50320msec | |
456 | slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, dev= 1.92 | |
457 | clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, dev=86.82 | |
458 | bw (KiB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, dev=681.68 | |
459 | cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969 | |
460 | ||
461 | The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that | |
462 | thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed, | |
463 | they denote: | |
464 | ||
465 | io= Number of megabytes io performed | |
466 | bw= Average bandwidth rate | |
467 | runt= The runtime of that thread | |
468 | slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, dev being the | |
469 | standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit | |
470 | the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion | |
471 | latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. | |
472 | clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the | |
473 | time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For | |
474 | sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0, | |
475 | as the time from submit to complete is basically just | |
476 | CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation). | |
477 | bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes | |
478 | an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth | |
479 | this thread received in this group. This last value is | |
480 | only really useful if the threads in this group are on the | |
481 | same disk, since they are then competing for disk access. | |
482 | cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number | |
483 | of context switches this thread went through. | |
484 | ||
485 | After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They | |
486 | will look like this: | |
487 | ||
488 | Run status group 0 (all jobs): | |
489 | READ: io=64MiB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec | |
490 | WRITE: io=64MiB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec | |
491 | ||
492 | For each data direction, it prints: | |
493 | ||
494 | io= Number of megabytes io performed. | |
495 | aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group. | |
496 | minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw. | |
497 | maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw. | |
498 | mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group. | |
499 | maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group. | |
500 | ||
501 | And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this: | |
502 | ||
503 | Disk stats (read/write): | |
504 | sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00% | |
505 | ||
506 | Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The | |
507 | numbers denote: | |
508 | ||
509 | ios= Number of ios performed by all groups. | |
510 | merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler. | |
511 | ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy. | |
512 | io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue. | |
513 | util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk | |
514 | busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time. | |
515 | ||
516 | ||
517 | 7.0 Terse output | |
518 | ---------------- | |
519 | ||
520 | For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs | |
521 | of the results, fio can output the results in a comma seperated format. | |
522 | The format is one long line of values, such as: | |
523 | ||
524 | client1,0,0,936,331,2894,0,0,0.000000,0.000000,1,170,22.115385,34.290410,16,714,84.252874%,366.500000,566.417819,3496,1237,2894,0,0,0.000000,0.000000,0,246,6.671625,21.436952,0,2534,55.465300%,1406.600000,2008.044216,0.000000%,0.431928%,1109 | |
525 | ||
526 | Split up, the format is as follows: | |
527 | ||
528 | jobname, groupid, error | |
529 | READ status: | |
530 | KiB IO, bandwidth (KiB/sec), runtime (msec) | |
531 | Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation | |
532 | Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation | |
533 | Bw: min, max, aggreate percentage of total, mean, deviation | |
534 | WRITE status: | |
535 | KiB IO, bandwidth (KiB/sec), runtime (msec) | |
536 | Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation | |
537 | Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation | |
538 | Bw: min, max, aggreate percentage of total, mean, deviation | |
539 | CPU usage: user, system, context switches | |
540 |