ioengines: account any queued IO on the engine side
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1Table 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
118. Trace file format
129. CPU idleness profiling
1310. Verification and triggers
14
151.0 Overview and history
16------------------------
17fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
18case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
19performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
20such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
21Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
22without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
23
24A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
25of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
26way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
27memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
28reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
29simulate both of these cases, and many more.
30
312.0 How fio works
32-----------------
33The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
34writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
35any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
36is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
37sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
38and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
39bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
40
41 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
42 We may only be reading sequentially from this
43 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
44 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
45
46 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
47 a single value, or it may describe a range of
48 block sizes.
49
50 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
51
52 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
53 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
54 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
55 SG (SCSI generic sg).
56
57 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
58 depth do we want to maintain?
59
60 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
61
62 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
63
64 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
65 this workload over.
66
67The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
68there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
69job behaves.
70
71
723.0 Running fio
73---------------
74See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
75of them.
76
77Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
78(or job files) as parameters:
79
80$ fio job_file
81
82and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
83more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
84of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
85parameter described in the parameter section.
86
87If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
88parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
89to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
90(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
91mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
92also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
93--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
94Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
95until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
96similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
97job until a new [] job entry is seen.
98
99fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
100in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
101such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
102
103
1044.0 Job file format
105-------------------
106As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
107what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
108where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
109to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
110A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
111may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
112several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
113section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
114'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
115
116So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
117randomly reading from a 128MB file.
118
119; -- start job file --
120[global]
121rw=randread
122size=128m
123
124[job1]
125
126[job2]
127
128; -- end job file --
129
130As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
131described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
132makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
133line, this job would look as follows:
134
135$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
136
137
138Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
139to files.
140
141; -- start job file --
142[random-writers]
143ioengine=libaio
144iodepth=4
145rw=randwrite
146bs=32k
147direct=0
148size=64m
149numjobs=4
150
151; -- end job file --
152
153Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
154We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
155increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
156fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
157to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
158have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
159specify:
160
161$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
162
163When fio is utilized as a basis of any reasonably large test suite, it might be
164desirable to share a set of standardized settings across multiple job files.
165Instead of copy/pasting such settings, any section may pull in an external
166.fio file with 'include filename' directive, as in the following example:
167
168; -- start job file including.fio --
169[global]
170filename=/tmp/test
171filesize=1m
172include glob-include.fio
173
174[test]
175rw=randread
176bs=4k
177time_based=1
178runtime=10
179include test-include.fio
180; -- end job file including.fio --
181
182; -- start job file glob-include.fio --
183thread=1
184group_reporting=1
185; -- end job file glob-include.fio --
186
187; -- start job file test-include.fio --
188ioengine=libaio
189iodepth=4
190; -- end job file test-include.fio --
191
192Settings pulled into a section apply to that section only (except global
193section). Include directives may be nested in that any included file may
194contain further include directive(s). Include files may not contain []
195sections.
196
197
1984.1 Environment variables
199-------------------------
200
201fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
202sub-string of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
203words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
204environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
205is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
206substituted.
207
208As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
209
210$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
211
212; -- start job file --
213[random-writers]
214rw=randwrite
215size=${SIZE}
216numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
217; -- end job file --
218
219This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
220
221; -- start job file --
222[random-writers]
223rw=randwrite
224size=64m
225numjobs=4
226; -- end job file --
227
228fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
229inspiration.
230
2314.2 Reserved keywords
232---------------------
233
234Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
235internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
236
237$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
238$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
239$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
240
241These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
242automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
243is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
244perform actions like:
245
246size=8*$mb_memory
247
248and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
249machine.
250
251
2525.0 Detailed list of parameters
253-------------------------------
254
255This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
256Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
257a string. Anywhere a numeric value is required, an arithmetic expression
258may be used, provided it is surrounded by parentheses. Supported operators
259are:
260
261 addition (+)
262 subtraction (-)
263 multiplication (*)
264 division (/)
265 modulus (%)
266 exponentiation (^)
267
268For time values in expressions, units are microseconds by default. This is
269different than for time values not in expressions (not enclosed in
270parentheses). The following types are used:
271
272str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
273time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
274 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
275 minutes, and hours, and accepts 'ms' (or 'msec') for milliseconds,
276 and 'us' (or 'usec') for microseconds.
277int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
278 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
279 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
280 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
281 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
282 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
283 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
284 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
285 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
286 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
287 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
288 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
289 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
290 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
291bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
292 true and false (1 and 0).
293irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
294 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
295 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
296 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
297 int.
298float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
299
300With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
301parameters.
302
303name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
304 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
305 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
306 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
307 job.
308
309wait_for=str Specifies the name of the already defined job to wait
310 for. Single waitee name only may be specified. If set, the job
311 won't be started until all workers of the waitee job are done.
312
313 Wait_for operates on the job name basis, so there are a few
314 limitations. First, the waitee must be defined prior to the
315 waiter job (meaning no forward references). Second, if a job
316 is being referenced as a waitee, it must have a unique name
317 (no duplicate waitees).
318
319description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
320 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
321 not parsed.
322
323directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
324 in a different location than "./". See the 'filename' option
325 for escaping certain characters.
326
327filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
328 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
329 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
330 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
331 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
332 and protocol to use in the format of =host,port,protocol.
333 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
334 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
335 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
336 as the two working files, you would use
337 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are
338 accessed as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device,
339 \\.\PhysicalDrive1 for the second etc. Note: Windows and
340 FreeBSD prevent write access to areas of the disk containing
341 in-use data (e.g. filesystems).
342 If the wanted filename does need to include a colon, then
343 escape that with a '\' character. For instance, if the filename
344 is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would use
345 filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name, meaning
346 stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
347 direction set.
348
349filename_format=str
350 If sharing multiple files between jobs, it is usually necessary
351 to have fio generate the exact names that you want. By default,
352 fio will name a file based on the default file format
353 specification of jobname.jobnumber.filenumber. With this
354 option, that can be customized. Fio will recognize and replace
355 the following keywords in this string:
356
357 $jobname
358 The name of the worker thread or process.
359
360 $jobnum
361 The incremental number of the worker thread or
362 process.
363
364 $filenum
365 The incremental number of the file for that worker
366 thread or process.
367
368 To have dependent jobs share a set of files, this option can
369 be set to have fio generate filenames that are shared between
370 the two. For instance, if testfiles.$filenum is specified,
371 file number 4 for any job will be named testfiles.4. The
372 default of $jobname.$jobnum.$filenum will be used if
373 no other format specifier is given.
374
375opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
376 directory and down the file system tree.
377
378lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
379 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
380 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
381 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
382 share files. The lock modes are:
383
384 none No locking. The default.
385 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
386 excluding all others.
387 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
388 readers may access the file at the
389 same time, but writes get exclusive
390 access.
391
392readwrite=str
393rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
394
395 read Sequential reads
396 write Sequential writes
397 randwrite Random writes
398 randread Random reads
399 rw,readwrite Sequential mixed reads and writes
400 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
401 trimwrite Mixed trims and writes. Blocks will be
402 trimmed first, then written to.
403
404 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
405 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
406 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
407 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
408 done by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
409 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
410 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
411 suffix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
412 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
413 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
414 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
415 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
416
417rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
418 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
419 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
420 values are:
421
422 sequential Generate sequential offset
423 identical Generate the same offset
424
425 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
426 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
427 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
428 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
429 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
430 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
431 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
432 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
433 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
434 offset.
435
436kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
437 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
438 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
439 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
440
441unified_rw_reporting=bool Fio normally reports statistics on a per
442 data direction basis, meaning that read, write, and trim are
443 accounted and reported separately. If this option is set,
444 the fio will sum the results and report them as "mixed"
445 instead.
446
447randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
448 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
449 Defaults to true.
450
451randseed=int Seed the random number generators based on this seed value, to
452 be able to control what sequence of output is being generated.
453 If not set, the random sequence depends on the randrepeat
454 setting.
455
456fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
457 Accepted values are:
458
459 none Do not pre-allocate space
460 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
461 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
462 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
463 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
464 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
465
466 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
467 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
468 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
469
470fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
471 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
472 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
473 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
474 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
475 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
476
477fadvise_stream=int Notify the kernel what write stream ID to place these
478 writes under. Only supported on Linux. Note, this option
479 may change going forward.
480
481size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
482 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
483 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance,
484 or increased/decreased by 'io_size'). Unless specific nrfiles
485 and filesize options are given, fio will divide this size
486 between the available files specified by the job. If not set,
487 fio will use the full size of the given files or devices.
488 If the files do not exist, size must be given. It is also
489 possible to give size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If
490 size=20% is given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the
491 given files or devices.
492
493io_size=int
494io_limit=int Normally fio operates within the region set by 'size', which
495 means that the 'size' option sets both the region and size of
496 IO to be performed. Sometimes that is not what you want. With
497 this option, it is possible to define just the amount of IO
498 that fio should do. For instance, if 'size' is set to 20G and
499 'io_size' is set to 5G, fio will perform IO within the first
500 20G but exit when 5G have been done. The opposite is also
501 possible - if 'size' is set to 20G, and 'io_size' is set to
502 40G, then fio will do 40G of IO within the 0..20G region.
503
504filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
505 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
506 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
507 given, each created file is the same size.
508
509file_append=bool Perform IO after the end of the file. Normally fio will
510 operate within the size of a file. If this option is set, then
511 fio will append to the file instead. This has identical
512 behavior to setting offset to the size of a file. This option
513 is ignored on non-regular files.
514
515fill_device=bool
516fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
517 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
518 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
519 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
520 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
521 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
522 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
523 ENOSPC there.
524
525blocksize=int
526bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
527 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
528 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
529 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
530 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write,trim.
531 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, 8k blocks for
532 writes, and 8k for trims. You can terminate the list with
533 a trailing comma. bs=4k,8k, would use the default value for
534 trims.. If you only wish to set the write size, you
535 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
536 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
537
538blockalign=int
539ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
540 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
541 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
542 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
543 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
544 files, so it will turn off that option.
545
546blocksize_range=irange
547bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
548 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
549 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
550 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
551 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
552 See bs=.
553
554bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
555 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
556 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
557 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
558 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
559
560 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
561
562 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
563 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
564 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
565
566 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
567
568 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
569 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
570 option like this one:
571
572 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
573
574 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
575 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
576 up to more, it will error out.
577
578 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
579 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
580 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
581 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
582 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
583 specify:
584
585 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90:8k/10
586
587blocksize_unaligned
588bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
589 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
590 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
591
592bs_is_seq_rand If this option is set, fio will use the normal read,write
593 blocksize settings as sequential,random instead. Any random
594 read or write will use the WRITE blocksize settings, and any
595 sequential read or write will use the READ blocksize setting.
596
597zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
598 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
599
600refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
601 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
602 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
603 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
604 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
605
606scramble_buffers=bool If refill_buffers is too costly and the target is
607 using data deduplication, then setting this option will
608 slightly modify the IO buffer contents to defeat normal
609 de-dupe attempts. This is not enough to defeat more clever
610 block compression attempts, but it will stop naive dedupe of
611 blocks. Default: true.
612
613buffer_compress_percentage=int If this is set, then fio will attempt to
614 provide IO buffer content (on WRITEs) that compress to
615 the specified level. Fio does this by providing a mix of
616 random data and a fixed pattern. The fixed pattern is either
617 zeroes, or the pattern specified by buffer_pattern. If the
618 pattern option is used, it might skew the compression ratio
619 slightly. Note that this is per block size unit, for file/disk
620 wide compression level that matches this setting, you'll also
621 want to set refill_buffers.
622
623buffer_compress_chunk=int See buffer_compress_percentage. This
624 setting allows fio to manage how big the ranges of random
625 data and zeroed data is. Without this set, fio will
626 provide buffer_compress_percentage of blocksize random
627 data, followed by the remaining zeroed. With this set
628 to some chunk size smaller than the block size, fio can
629 alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO
630 buffer.
631
632buffer_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
633 pattern. If not set, the contents of io buffers is defined by
634 the other options related to buffer contents. The setting can
635 be any pattern of bytes, and can be prefixed with 0x for hex
636 values. It may also be a string, where the string must then
637 be wrapped with "", e.g.:
638
639 buffer_pattern="abcd"
640 or
641 buffer_pattern=-12
642 or
643 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface
644
645 Also you can combine everything together in any order:
646 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface"abcd"-12
647
648dedupe_percentage=int If set, fio will generate this percentage of
649 identical buffers when writing. These buffers will be
650 naturally dedupable. The contents of the buffers depend on
651 what other buffer compression settings have been set. It's
652 possible to have the individual buffers either fully
653 compressible, or not at all. This option only controls the
654 distribution of unique buffers.
655
656nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
657
658openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
659 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
660 simultaneous opens.
661
662file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
663 service next. The following types are defined:
664
665 random Just choose a file at random.
666
667 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
668 is the default.
669
670 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
671 the next. Multiple files can still be
672 open depending on 'openfiles'.
673
674 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
675 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
676 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
677 have been issued.
678
679ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
680 types are defined:
681
682 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
683 used to position the io location.
684
685 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
686
687 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
688
689 psyncv Basic preadv(2) or pwritev(2) IO.
690
691 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
692 may only support queued behaviour with
693 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
694 This engine defines engine specific options.
695
696 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
697
698 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
699
700 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
701
702 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
703 to/from using memcpy(3).
704
705 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
706 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
707 space to the kernel.
708
709 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
710 regular read/write async.
711
712 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
713 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
714 the target is an sg character device
715 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
716 io.
717
718 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
719 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
720 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
721
722 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
723 Depending on the protocol used, the hostname,
724 port, listen and filename options are used to
725 specify what sort of connection to make, while
726 the protocol option determines which protocol
727 will be used.
728 This engine defines engine specific options.
729
730 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
731 map data and send/receive.
732 This engine defines engine specific options.
733
734 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
735 cycles according to the cpuload= and
736 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
737 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
738 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
739 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
740 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
741 CPU at the desired rate.
742
743 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
744 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
745 to async IO. See
746
747 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
748
749 for more info on GUASI.
750
751 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
752 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
753 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
754 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
755
756 falloc IO engine that does regular fallocate to
757 simulate data transfer as fio ioengine.
758 DDIR_READ does fallocate(,mode = keep_size,)
759 DDIR_WRITE does fallocate(,mode = 0)
760 DDIR_TRIM does fallocate(,mode = punch_hole)
761
762 e4defrag IO engine that does regular EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT
763 ioctls to simulate defragment activity in
764 request to DDIR_WRITE event
765
766 rbd IO engine supporting direct access to Ceph
767 Rados Block Devices (RBD) via librbd without
768 the need to use the kernel rbd driver. This
769 ioengine defines engine specific options.
770
771 gfapi Using Glusterfs libgfapi sync interface to
772 direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
773 options.
774
775 gfapi_async Using Glusterfs libgfapi async interface
776 to direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
777 having to go through FUSE. This ioengine
778 defines engine specific options.
779
780 libhdfs Read and write through Hadoop (HDFS).
781 This engine interprets offsets a little
782 differently. In HDFS, files once created
783 cannot be modified. So random writes are not
784 possible. To imitate this, libhdfs engine
785 creates bunch of small files, and engine will
786 pick a file out of those files based on the
787 offset enerated by fio backend. Each jobs uses
788 it's own connection to HDFS.
789
790 mtd Read, write and erase an MTD character device
791 (e.g., /dev/mtd0). Discards are treated as
792 erases. Depending on the underlying device
793 type, the I/O may have to go in a certain
794 pattern, e.g., on NAND, writing sequentially
795 to erase blocks and discarding before
796 overwriting. The writetrim mode works well
797 for this constraint.
798
799 external Prefix to specify loading an external
800 IO engine object file. Append the engine
801 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
802 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
803
804iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
805 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
806 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
807 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
808 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
809 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
810 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
811 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
812 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
813 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
814 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
815
816iodepth_batch_submit=int
817iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
818 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
819 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
820 bigger batches of IO at the time. If it is set to 0 the iodepth
821 value will be used.
822
823iodepth_batch_complete_min=int
824iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
825 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
826 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
827 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
828 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
829 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
830 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
831 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
832
833iodepth_batch_complete_max=int This defines maximum pieces of IO to
834 retrieve at once. This variable should be used along with
835 iodepth_batch_complete_min=int variable, specifying the range
836 of min and max amount of IO which should be retrieved. By default
837 it is equal to iodepth_batch_complete_min value.
838
839 Example #1:
840
841 iodepth_batch_complete_min=1
842 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
843
844 which means that we will retrieve at leat 1 IO and up to the
845 whole submitted queue depth. If none of IO has been completed
846 yet, we will wait.
847
848 Example #2:
849
850 iodepth_batch_complete_min=0
851 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
852
853 which means that we can retrieve up to the whole submitted
854 queue depth, but if none of IO has been completed yet, we will
855 NOT wait and immediately exit the system call. In this example
856 we simply do polling.
857
858iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
859 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
860 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
861 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
862 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
863 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
864
865io_submit_mode=str This option controls how fio submits the IO to
866 the IO engine. The default is 'inline', which means that the
867 fio job threads submit and reap IO directly. If set to
868 'offload', the job threads will offload IO submission to a
869 dedicated pool of IO threads. This requires some coordination
870 and thus has a bit of extra overhead, especially for lower
871 queue depth IO where it can increase latencies. The benefit
872 is that fio can manage submission rates independently of
873 the device completion rates. This avoids skewed latency
874 reporting if IO gets back up on the device side (the
875 coordinated omission problem).
876
877direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
878 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
879 On Windows the synchronous ioengines don't support direct io.
880
881atomic=bool If value is true, attempt to use atomic direct IO. Atomic
882 writes are guaranteed to be stable once acknowledged by
883 the operating system. Only Linux supports O_ATOMIC right
884 now.
885
886buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
887 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
888
889offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
890 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
891 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
892
893offset_increment=int If this is provided, then the real offset becomes
894 offset + offset_increment * thread_number, where the thread
895 number is a counter that starts at 0 and is incremented for
896 each sub-job (i.e. when numjobs option is specified). This
897 option is useful if there are several jobs which are intended
898 to operate on a file in parallel disjoint segments, with
899 even spacing between the starting points.
900
901number_ios=int Fio will normally perform IOs until it has exhausted the size
902 of the region set by size=, or if it exhaust the allocated
903 time (or hits an error condition). With this setting, the
904 range/size can be set independently of the number of IOs to
905 perform. When fio reaches this number, it will exit normally
906 and report status. Note that this does not extend the amount
907 of IO that will be done, it will only stop fio if this
908 condition is met before other end-of-job criteria.
909
910fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
911 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
912 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
913 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
914 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
915 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
916
917fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
918 metadata blocks.
919 In FreeBSD and Windows there is no fdatasync(), this falls back
920 to using fsync()
921
922sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
923 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
924 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
925 can currently be one or more of:
926
927 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
928 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
929 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
930
931 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
932 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
933 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
934 This option is Linux specific.
935
936overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
937 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
938 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
939 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
940 will be done.
941
942end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when a write stage has completed.
943
944fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
945 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
946 file close, not just at the end of the job.
947
948rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
949
950rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
951 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
952 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
953 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
954 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
955 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
956
957random_distribution=str:float By default, fio will use a completely uniform
958 random distribution when asked to perform random IO. Sometimes
959 it is useful to skew the distribution in specific ways,
960 ensuring that some parts of the data is more hot than others.
961 fio includes the following distribution models:
962
963 random Uniform random distribution
964 zipf Zipf distribution
965 pareto Pareto distribution
966
967 When using a zipf or pareto distribution, an input value
968 is also needed to define the access pattern. For zipf, this
969 is the zipf theta. For pareto, it's the pareto power. Fio
970 includes a test program, genzipf, that can be used visualize
971 what the given input values will yield in terms of hit rates.
972 If you wanted to use zipf with a theta of 1.2, you would use
973 random_distribution=zipf:1.2 as the option. If a non-uniform
974 model is used, fio will disable use of the random map.
975
976percentage_random=int For a random workload, set how big a percentage should
977 be random. This defaults to 100%, in which case the workload
978 is fully random. It can be set from anywhere from 0 to 100.
979 Setting it to 0 would make the workload fully sequential. Any
980 setting in between will result in a random mix of sequential
981 and random IO, at the given percentages. It is possible to
982 set different values for reads, writes, and trim. To do so,
983 simply use a comma separated list. See blocksize.
984
985norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
986 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
987 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
988 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
989 some blocks may be read/written more than once. If this option
990 is used with verify= and multiple blocksizes (via bsrange=),
991 only intact blocks are verified, i.e., partially-overwritten
992 blocks are ignored.
993
994softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
995 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
996 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
997 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
998 disabled by default.
999
1000random_generator=str Fio supports the following engines for generating
1001 IO offsets for random IO:
1002
1003 tausworthe Strong 2^88 cycle random number generator
1004 lfsr Linear feedback shift register generator
1005 tausworthe64 Strong 64-bit 2^258 cycle random number
1006 generator
1007
1008 Tausworthe is a strong random number generator, but it
1009 requires tracking on the side if we want to ensure that
1010 blocks are only read or written once. LFSR guarantees
1011 that we never generate the same offset twice, and it's
1012 also less computationally expensive. It's not a true
1013 random generator, however, though for IO purposes it's
1014 typically good enough. LFSR only works with single
1015 block sizes, not with workloads that use multiple block
1016 sizes. If used with such a workload, fio may read or write
1017 some blocks multiple times. The default value is tausworthe,
1018 unless the required space exceeds 2^32 blocks. If it does,
1019 then tausworthe64 is selected automatically.
1020
1021nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
1022
1023prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
1024 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
1025 See man ionice(1).
1026
1027prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
1028
1029thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
1030 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
1031 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
1032 thinktime_spin.
1033
1034thinktime_spin=int
1035 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
1036 doing something with the data received, before falling back
1037 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
1038 thinktime.
1039
1040thinktime_blocks=int
1041 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
1042 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
1043 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
1044 after every block. This effectively makes any queue depth
1045 setting redundant, since no more than 1 IO will be queued
1046 before we have to complete it and do our thinktime. In
1047 other words, this setting effectively caps the queue depth
1048 if the latter is larger.
1049
1050rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
1051 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
1052 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
1053 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
1054 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
1055 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
1056 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
1057 limit reads.
1058
1059rate_min=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
1060 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
1061 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
1062 read vs write separation.
1063
1064rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
1065 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
1066 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
1067 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
1068 as rate is used for read vs write separation.
1069
1070rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
1071 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
1072 write separation.
1073
1074rate_process=str This option controls how fio manages rated IO
1075 submissions. The default is 'linear', which submits IO in a
1076 linear fashion with fixed delays between IOs that gets
1077 adjusted based on IO completion rates. If this is set to
1078 'poisson', fio will submit IO based on a more real world
1079 random request flow, known as the Poisson process
1080 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_process). The lambda
1081 will be 10^6 / IOPS for the given workload.
1082
1083latency_target=int If set, fio will attempt to find the max performance
1084 point that the given workload will run at while maintaining a
1085 latency below this target. The values is given in microseconds.
1086 See latency_window and latency_percentile
1087
1088latency_window=int Used with latency_target to specify the sample window
1089 that the job is run at varying queue depths to test the
1090 performance. The value is given in microseconds.
1091
1092latency_percentile=float The percentage of IOs that must fall within the
1093 criteria specified by latency_target and latency_window. If not
1094 set, this defaults to 100.0, meaning that all IOs must be equal
1095 or below to the value set by latency_target.
1096
1097max_latency=int If set, fio will exit the job if it exceeds this maximum
1098 latency. It will exit with an ETIME error.
1099
1100rate_cycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'rate_min' over this number
1101 of milliseconds.
1102
1103cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
1104 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
1105 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
1106 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
1107 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
1108 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
1109 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
1110 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
1111 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
1112
1113cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
1114 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
1115 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
1116 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
1117 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
1118
1119cpus_allowed_policy=str Set the policy of how fio distributes the CPUs
1120 specified by cpus_allowed or cpumask. Two policies are
1121 supported:
1122
1123 shared All jobs will share the CPU set specified.
1124 split Each job will get a unique CPU from the CPU set.
1125
1126 'shared' is the default behaviour, if the option isn't
1127 specified. If split is specified, then fio will will assign
1128 one cpu per job. If not enough CPUs are given for the jobs
1129 listed, then fio will roundrobin the CPUs in the set.
1130
1131numa_cpu_nodes=str Set this job running on spcified NUMA nodes' CPUs. The
1132 arguments allow comma delimited list of cpu numbers,
1133 A-B ranges, or 'all'. Note, to enable numa options support,
1134 fio must be built on a system with libnuma-dev(el) installed.
1135
1136numa_mem_policy=str Set this job's memory policy and corresponding NUMA
1137 nodes. Format of the argements:
1138 <mode>[:<nodelist>]
1139 `mode' is one of the following memory policy:
1140 default, prefer, bind, interleave, local
1141 For `default' and `local' memory policy, no node is
1142 needed to be specified.
1143 For `prefer', only one node is allowed.
1144 For `bind' and `interleave', it allow comma delimited
1145 list of numbers, A-B ranges, or 'all'.
1146
1147startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
1148 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
1149 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
1150 time.
1151
1152runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
1153 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
1154 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
1155 cap the total runtime to a given time.
1156
1157time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
1158 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
1159 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
1160 as many times as the runtime allows.
1161
1162ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
1163 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
1164 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
1165 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
1166 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
1167 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
1168 or runtime is specified.
1169
1170invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
1171 to starting io. Defaults to true.
1172
1173sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
1174 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
1175
1176iomem=str
1177mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
1178 The allowed values are:
1179
1180 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
1181
1182 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
1183 through shmget(2).
1184
1185 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
1186
1187 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
1188 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
1189 a filename is given after the option. The
1190 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
1191
1192 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
1193 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
1194 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
1195
1196 mmapshared Same as mmap, but use a MMAP_SHARED
1197 mapping.
1198
1199 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
1200 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
1201 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
1202 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
1203 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
1204 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
1205 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
1206 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
1207 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
1208 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
1209 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
1210 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
1211 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
1212
1213 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
1214 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
1215 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
1216
1217iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
1218 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
1219 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
1220 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
1221 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
1222 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
1223 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
1224 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
1225
1226hugepage-size=int
1227 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
1228 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
1229 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
1230 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
1231 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
1232
1233exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
1234 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
1235 desired action.
1236
1237exitall_on_error When one job finishes in error, terminate the rest. The
1238 default is to wait for each job to finish.
1239
1240bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
1241 is specified in milliseconds.
1242
1243iopsavgtime=int Average the calculated IOPS over the given time. Value
1244 is specified in milliseconds.
1245
1246create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
1247 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
1248 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
1249 used and even the number of processors in the system.
1250
1251create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
1252 default.
1253
1254create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
1255 when it's time to do IO to that file.
1256
1257create_only=bool If true, fio will only run the setup phase of the job.
1258 If files need to be laid out or updated on disk, only
1259 that will be done. The actual job contents are not
1260 executed.
1261
1262allow_file_create=bool If true, fio is permitted to create files as part
1263 of its workload. This is the default behavior. If this
1264 option is false, then fio will error out if the files it
1265 needs to use don't already exist. Default: true.
1266
1267allow_mounted_write=bool If this isn't set, fio will abort jobs that
1268 are destructive (eg that write) to what appears to be a
1269 mounted device or partition. This should help catch creating
1270 inadvertently destructive tests, not realizing that the test
1271 will destroy data on the mounted file system. Default: false.
1272
1273pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
1274 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
1275 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
1276 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
1277 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
1278 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
1279 IO.
1280
1281unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
1282 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
1283 set again and again.
1284
1285loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
1286 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
1287 to 1.
1288
1289verify_only Do not perform specified workload---only verify data still
1290 matches previous invocation of this workload. This option
1291 allows one to check data multiple times at a later date
1292 without overwriting it. This option makes sense only for
1293 workloads that write data, and does not support workloads
1294 with the time_based option set.
1295
1296do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
1297 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
1298
1299verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
1300 after each iteration of the job. Each verification method also implies
1301 verification of special header, which is written to the beginning of
1302 each block. This header also includes meta information, like offset
1303 of the block, block number, timestamp when block was written, etc.
1304 verify=str can be combined with verify_pattern=str option.
1305 The allowed values are:
1306
1307 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
1308 it in the header of each block.
1309
1310 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
1311 area and store it in the header of each
1312 block.
1313
1314 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
1315 it in the header of each block.
1316
1317 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
1318 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
1319 back to regular software crc32c, if not
1320 supported by the system.
1321
1322 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
1323 it in the header of each block.
1324
1325 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
1326 it in the header of each block.
1327
1328 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
1329 it in the header of each block.
1330
1331 xxhash Use xxhash as the checksum function. Generally
1332 the fastest software checksum that fio
1333 supports.
1334
1335 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
1336
1337 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
1338
1339 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
1340
1341 meta This option is deprecated, since now meta information is
1342 included in generic verification header and meta verification
1343 happens by default. For detailed information see the description
1344 of the verify=str setting. This option is kept because of
1345 compatibility's sake with old configurations. Do not use it.
1346
1347 pattern Verify a strict pattern. Normally fio includes
1348 a header with some basic information and
1349 checksumming, but if this option is set, only
1350 the specific pattern set with 'verify_pattern'
1351 is verified.
1352
1353 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
1354 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
1355 else.
1356
1357 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
1358 system to make sure that the written data is also
1359 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
1360 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
1361 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
1362 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
1363 newly written data.
1364
1365verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
1366 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
1367 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
1368 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
1369 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
1370 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
1371 significant.
1372
1373verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
1374 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
1375 verifying.
1376
1377verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
1378 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
1379 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
1380 evenly.
1381
1382verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
1383 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
1384 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
1385 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
1386 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
1387 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
1388 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
1389 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
1390 with verify=str. Also, verify_pattern supports %o format,
1391 which means that for each block offset will be written and
1392 then verifyied back, e.g.:
1393
1394 verify_pattern=%o
1395
1396 Or use combination of everything:
1397 verify_pattern=0xff%o"abcd"-12
1398
1399verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
1400 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
1401 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
1402 failure.
1403
1404verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
1405 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
1406 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
1407 corruption occurred. Off by default.
1408
1409verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
1410 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
1411 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
1412 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
1413 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
1414 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
1415 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
1416 IO in flight while verifies are running.
1417
1418verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
1419 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
1420 format used.
1421
1422verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
1423 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
1424 other words, everything is written then everything is read
1425 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
1426 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
1427 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
1428 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
1429 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
1430 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
1431
1432verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1433 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1434 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
1435 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1436 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1437 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1438 blocks will be verified more than once.
1439
1440verify_state_save=bool When a job exits during the write phase of a verify
1441 workload, save its current state. This allows fio to replay
1442 up until that point, if the verify state is loaded for the
1443 verify read phase. The format of the filename is, roughly,
1444 <type>-<jobname>-<jobindex>-verify.state. <type> is "local"
1445 for a local run, "sock" for a client/server socket connection,
1446 and "ip" (192.168.0.1, for instance) for a networked
1447 client/server connection.
1448
1449verify_state_load=bool If a verify termination trigger was used, fio stores
1450 the current write state of each thread. This can be used at
1451 verification time so that fio knows how far it should verify.
1452 Without this information, fio will run a full verification
1453 pass, according to the settings in the job file used.
1454
1455stonewall
1456wait_for_previous Wait for preceding jobs in the job file to exit, before
1457 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
1458 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1459 a new reporting group.
1460
1461new_group Start a new reporting group. See: group_reporting.
1462
1463numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1464 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
1465 the same thing. Each thread is reported separately; to see
1466 statistics for all clones as a whole, use group_reporting in
1467 conjunction with new_group.
1468
1469group_reporting It may sometimes be interesting to display statistics for
1470 groups of jobs as a whole instead of for each individual job.
1471 This is especially true if 'numjobs' is used; looking at
1472 individual thread/process output quickly becomes unwieldy.
1473 To see the final report per-group instead of per-job, use
1474 'group_reporting'. Jobs in a file will be part of the same
1475 reporting group, unless if separated by a stonewall, or by
1476 using 'new_group'.
1477
1478thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1479 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1480 instead.
1481
1482zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
1483
1484zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
1485 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1486 io on zones of a file.
1487
1488write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
1489 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1490 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
1491
1492read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
1493 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
1494 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1495 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1496 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1497 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1498 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
1499 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
1500
1501replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
1502 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1503 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1504 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1505 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1506 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1507 given device, but different timings.
1508
1509replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1510 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1511 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
1512 undesirable because on a different machine those major/minor
1513 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1514 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1515 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1516 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1517 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1518 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1519 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1520 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1521 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1522 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1523 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1524 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1525
1526replay_align=int Force alignment of IO offsets and lengths in a trace
1527 to this power of 2 value.
1528
1529replay_scale=int Scale sector offsets down by this factor when
1530 replaying traces.
1531
1532per_job_logs=bool If set, this generates bw/clat/iops log with per
1533 file private filenames. If not set, jobs with identical names
1534 will share the log filename. Default: true.
1535
1536write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
1537 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
1538 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1539 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
1540 graphs. See write_lat_log for behaviour of given
1541 filename. For this option, the suffix is _bw.x.log, where
1542 x is the index of the job (1..N, where N is the number of
1543 jobs). If 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not
1544 include the job index.
1545
1546write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
1547 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1548 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1549 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1550 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
1551
1552 write_lat_log=foo
1553
1554 The actual log names will be foo_slat.x.log, foo_clat.x.log,
1555 and foo_lat.x.log, where x is the index of the job (1..N,
1556 where N is the number of jobs). This helps fio_generate_plot
1557 fine the logs automatically. If 'per_job_logs' is false, then
1558 the filename will not include the job index.
1559
1560
1561write_iops_log=str Same as write_bw_log, but writes IOPS. If no filename is
1562 given with this option, the default filename of
1563 "jobname_type.x.log" is used,where x is the index of the job
1564 (1..N, where N is the number of jobs). Even if the filename
1565 is given, fio will still append the type of log. If
1566 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not include
1567 the job index.
1568
1569log_avg_msec=int By default, fio will log an entry in the iops, latency,
1570 or bw log for every IO that completes. When writing to the
1571 disk log, that can quickly grow to a very large size. Setting
1572 this option makes fio average the each log entry over the
1573 specified period of time, reducing the resolution of the log.
1574 See log_max as well. Defaults to 0, logging all entries.
1575
1576log_max=bool If log_avg_msec is set, fio logs the average over that window.
1577 If you instead want to log the maximum value, set this option
1578 to 1. Defaults to 0, meaning that averaged values are logged.
1579.
1580log_offset=int If this is set, the iolog options will include the byte
1581 offset for the IO entry as well as the other data values.
1582
1583log_compression=int If this is set, fio will compress the IO logs as
1584 it goes, to keep the memory footprint lower. When a log
1585 reaches the specified size, that chunk is removed and
1586 compressed in the background. Given that IO logs are
1587 fairly highly compressible, this yields a nice memory
1588 savings for longer runs. The downside is that the
1589 compression will consume some background CPU cycles, so
1590 it may impact the run. This, however, is also true if
1591 the logging ends up consuming most of the system memory.
1592 So pick your poison. The IO logs are saved normally at the
1593 end of a run, by decompressing the chunks and storing them
1594 in the specified log file. This feature depends on the
1595 availability of zlib.
1596
1597log_compression_cpus=str Define the set of CPUs that are allowed to
1598 handle online log compression for the IO jobs. This can
1599 provide better isolation between performance sensitive jobs,
1600 and background compression work.
1601
1602log_store_compressed=bool If set, fio will store the log files in a
1603 compressed format. They can be decompressed with fio, using
1604 the --inflate-log command line parameter. The files will be
1605 stored with a .fz suffix.
1606
1607block_error_percentiles=bool If set, record errors in trim block-sized
1608 units from writes and trims and output a histogram of
1609 how many trims it took to get to errors, and what kind
1610 of error was encountered.
1611
1612lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
1613 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1614 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
1615 The amount specified is per worker.
1616
1617exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
1618 through system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1619 jobname.prerun.txt.
1620
1621exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
1622 though system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1623 jobname.postrun.txt.
1624
1625ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1626 io scheduler before running.
1627
1628disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1629 supports it. Defaults to on.
1630
1631disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
1632 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1633 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1634 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1635 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1636 disable_bw as well.
1637
1638disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1639 disable_lat.
1640
1641disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
1642 disable_slat.
1643
1644disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
1645 disable_lat.
1646
1647clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1648 completion latencies.
1649
1650percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
1651 for completion latencies and the block error histogram.
1652 Each number is a floating number in the range (0,100],
1653 and the maximum length of the list is 20. Use ':'
1654 to separate the numbers, and list the numbers in ascending
1655 order. For example, --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause
1656 fio to report the values of completion latency below which
1657 99.5% and 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
1658
1659clocksource=str Use the given clocksource as the base of timing. The
1660 supported options are:
1661
1662 gettimeofday gettimeofday(2)
1663
1664 clock_gettime clock_gettime(2)
1665
1666 cpu Internal CPU clock source
1667
1668 cpu is the preferred clocksource if it is reliable, as it
1669 is very fast (and fio is heavy on time calls). Fio will
1670 automatically use this clocksource if it's supported and
1671 considered reliable on the system it is running on, unless
1672 another clocksource is specifically set. For x86/x86-64 CPUs,
1673 this means supporting TSC Invariant.
1674
1675gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1676 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1677 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1678 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1679 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1680 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1681
1682gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1683 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1684 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1685 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1686 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1687 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1688 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1689 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1690 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1691 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1692 jobs.
1693
1694continue_on_error=str Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
1695 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1696 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1697 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1698 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1699 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1700 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1701 run.
1702
1703 The allowed values are:
1704
1705 none Exit on any IO or verify errors.
1706
1707 read Continue on read errors, exit on all others.
1708
1709 write Continue on write errors, exit on all others.
1710
1711 io Continue on any IO error, exit on all others.
1712
1713 verify Continue on verify errors, exit on all others.
1714
1715 all Continue on all errors.
1716
1717 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'.
1718
1719 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'all'.
1720
1721ignore_error=str Sometimes you want to ignore some errors during test
1722 in that case you can specify error list for each error type.
1723 ignore_error=READ_ERR_LIST,WRITE_ERR_LIST,VERIFY_ERR_LIST
1724 errors for given error type is separated with ':'. Error
1725 may be symbol ('ENOSPC', 'ENOMEM') or integer.
1726 Example:
1727 ignore_error=EAGAIN,ENOSPC:122
1728 This option will ignore EAGAIN from READ, and ENOSPC and
1729 122(EDQUOT) from WRITE.
1730
1731error_dump=bool If set dump every error even if it is non fatal, true
1732 by default. If disabled only fatal error will be dumped
1733
1734cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1735 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1736 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1737 mounted, you can do so with:
1738
1739 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1740
1741cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1742 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1743 are in the range of 100..1000.
1744
1745cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1746 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1747 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1748 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1749 files after job completion. Default: false
1750
1751uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1752 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1753
1754gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1755
1756flow_id=int The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a
1757 global flow. See flow.
1758
1759flow=int Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then
1760 there is a 'flow counter' which is used to regulate the
1761 proportion of activity between two or more jobs. fio attempts
1762 to keep this flow counter near zero. The 'flow' parameter
1763 stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the flow
1764 counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if
1765 one job has flow=8 and another job has flow=-1, then there
1766 will be a roughly 1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
1767
1768flow_watermark=int The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow
1769 counter is allowed to reach before the job must wait for a
1770 lower value of the counter.
1771
1772flow_sleep=int The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow
1773 watermark has been exceeded before retrying operations
1774
1775In addition, there are some parameters which are only valid when a specific
1776ioengine is in use. These are used identically to normal parameters, with the
1777caveat that when used on the command line, they must come after the ioengine
1778that defines them is selected.
1779
1780[libaio] userspace_reap Normally, with the libaio engine in use, fio will use
1781 the io_getevents system call to reap newly returned events.
1782 With this flag turned on, the AIO ring will be read directly
1783 from user-space to reap events. The reaping mode is only
1784 enabled when polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
1785 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
1786
1787[cpu] cpuload=int Attempt to use the specified percentage of CPU cycles.
1788
1789[cpu] cpuchunks=int Split the load into cycles of the given time. In
1790 microseconds.
1791
1792[cpu] exit_on_io_done=bool Detect when IO threads are done, then exit.
1793
1794[netsplice] hostname=str
1795[net] hostname=str The host name or IP address to use for TCP or UDP based IO.
1796 If the job is a TCP listener or UDP reader, the hostname is not
1797 used and must be omitted unless it is a valid UDP multicast
1798 address.
1799[libhdfs] namenode=str The host name or IP address of a HDFS cluster namenode to contact.
1800
1801[netsplice] port=int
1802[net] port=int The TCP or UDP port to bind to or connect to. If this is used
1803with numjobs to spawn multiple instances of the same job type, then this will
1804be the starting port number since fio will use a range of ports.
1805[libhdfs] port=int the listening port of the HFDS cluster namenode.
1806
1807[netsplice] interface=str
1808[net] interface=str The IP address of the network interface used to send or
1809 receive UDP multicast
1810
1811[netsplice] ttl=int
1812[net] ttl=int Time-to-live value for outgoing UDP multicast packets.
1813 Default: 1
1814
1815[netsplice] nodelay=bool
1816[net] nodelay=bool Set TCP_NODELAY on TCP connections.
1817
1818[netsplice] protocol=str
1819[netsplice] proto=str
1820[net] protocol=str
1821[net] proto=str The network protocol to use. Accepted values are:
1822
1823 tcp Transmission control protocol
1824 tcpv6 Transmission control protocol V6
1825 udp User datagram protocol
1826 udpv6 User datagram protocol V6
1827 unix UNIX domain socket
1828
1829 When the protocol is TCP or UDP, the port must also be given,
1830 as well as the hostname if the job is a TCP listener or UDP
1831 reader. For unix sockets, the normal filename option should be
1832 used and the port is invalid.
1833
1834[net] listen For TCP network connections, tell fio to listen for incoming
1835 connections rather than initiating an outgoing connection. The
1836 hostname must be omitted if this option is used.
1837
1838[net] pingpong Normaly a network writer will just continue writing data, and
1839 a network reader will just consume packages. If pingpong=1
1840 is set, a writer will send its normal payload to the reader,
1841 then wait for the reader to send the same payload back. This
1842 allows fio to measure network latencies. The submission
1843 and completion latencies then measure local time spent
1844 sending or receiving, and the completion latency measures
1845 how long it took for the other end to receive and send back.
1846 For UDP multicast traffic pingpong=1 should only be set for a
1847 single reader when multiple readers are listening to the same
1848 address.
1849
1850[net] window_size Set the desired socket buffer size for the connection.
1851
1852[net] mss Set the TCP maximum segment size (TCP_MAXSEG).
1853
1854[e4defrag] donorname=str
1855 File will be used as a block donor(swap extents between files)
1856[e4defrag] inplace=int
1857 Configure donor file blocks allocation strategy
1858 0(default): Preallocate donor's file on init
1859 1 : allocate space immidietly inside defragment event,
1860 and free right after event
1861
1862[mtd] skip_bad=bool Skip operations against known bad blocks.
1863
1864[libhdfs] hdfsdirectory libhdfs will create chunk in this HDFS directory
1865[libhdfs] chunck_size the size of the chunck to use for each file.
1866
1867
18686.0 Interpreting the output
1869---------------------------
1870
1871fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1872status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1873
1874Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
1875
1876The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1877each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1878
1879Idle Run
1880---- ---
1881P Thread setup, but not started.
1882C Thread created.
1883I Thread initialized, waiting or generating necessary data.
1884 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
1885 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1886 r Running, doing random reads.
1887 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1888 w Running, doing random writes.
1889 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1890 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1891 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
1892 f Running, finishing up (writing IO logs, etc)
1893 V Running, doing verification of written data.
1894E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
1895_ Thread reaped, or
1896X Thread reaped, exited with an error.
1897K Thread reaped, exited due to signal.
1898
1899Fio will condense the thread string as not to take up more space on the
1900command line as is needed. For instance, if you have 10 readers and 10
1901writers running, the output would look like this:
1902
1903Jobs: 20 (f=20): [R(10),W(10)] [4.0% done] [2103MB/0KB/0KB /s] [538K/0/0 iops] [eta 57m:36s]
1904
1905Fio will still maintain the ordering, though. So the above means that jobs
19061..10 are readers, and 11..20 are writers.
1907
1908The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
1909currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1910listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1911and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
1912the following groups (if any). Note that the string is displayed in order,
1913so it's possible to tell which of the jobs are currently doing what. The
1914first character is the first job defined in the job file, and so forth.
1915
1916When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1917each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1918direction, the output looks like:
1919
1920Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
1921 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
1922 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1923 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
1924 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
1925 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
1926 IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
1927 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1928 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1929 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
1930 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1931 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
1932
1933The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1934thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1935they denote:
1936
1937io= Number of megabytes io performed
1938bw= Average bandwidth rate
1939iops= Average IOs performed per second
1940runt= The runtime of that thread
1941 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
1942 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
1943 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
1944 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
1945 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
1946 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
1947 above, milliseconds is the best scale. Note: in --minimal mode
1948 latencies are always expressed in microseconds.
1949 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
1950 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
1951 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
1952 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
1953 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
1954 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
1955 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
1956 this thread received in this group. This last value is
1957 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
1958 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
1959cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
1960 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
1961 system and user time, and finally the number of major
1962 and minor page faults.
1963IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
1964 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
1965 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
1966 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
1967 range from 16 to 31.
1968IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
1969 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
1970 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
1971 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
1972IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
1973IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
1974 of them were short.
1975IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
1976 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
1977 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
1978 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
1979 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
1980 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
1981
1982After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
1983will look like this:
1984
1985Run status group 0 (all jobs):
1986 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
1987 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
1988
1989For each data direction, it prints:
1990
1991io= Number of megabytes io performed.
1992aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
1993minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1994maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1995mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
1996maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
1997
1998And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
1999
2000Disk stats (read/write):
2001 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
2002
2003Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
2004numbers denote:
2005
2006ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
2007merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
2008ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
2009io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
2010util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
2011 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
2012
2013It is also possible to get fio to dump the current output while it is
2014running, without terminating the job. To do that, send fio the USR1 signal.
2015You can also get regularly timed dumps by using the --status-interval
2016parameter, or by creating a file in /tmp named fio-dump-status. If fio
2017sees this file, it will unlink it and dump the current output status.
2018
2019
20207.0 Terse output
2021----------------
2022
2023For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
2024of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
2025The format is one long line of values, such as:
2026
20272;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%
2028A description of this job goes here.
2029
2030The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
2031
2032To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
2033value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
2034be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
2035signify that change.
2036
2037Split up, the format is as follows:
2038
2039 terse version, fio version, jobname, groupid, error
2040 READ status:
2041 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
2042 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2043 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2044 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
2045 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2046 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
2047 WRITE status:
2048 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
2049 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2050 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev(usec)
2051 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
2052 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2053 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
2054 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
2055 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
2056 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
2057 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
2058 Disk utilization: Disk name, Read ios, write ios,
2059 Read merges, write merges,
2060 Read ticks, write ticks,
2061 Time spent in queue, disk utilization percentage
2062 Additional Info (dependent on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
2063
2064 Additional Info (dependent on description being set): Text description
2065
2066Completion latency percentiles can be a grouping of up to 20 sets, so
2067for the terse output fio writes all of them. Each field will look like this:
2068
2069 1.00%=6112
2070
2071which is the Xth percentile, and the usec latency associated with it.
2072
2073For disk utilization, all disks used by fio are shown. So for each disk
2074there will be a disk utilization section.
2075
2076
20778.0 Trace file format
2078---------------------
2079There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
2080is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
2081below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
2082
2083In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
2084
2085
20868.1 Trace file format v1
2087------------------------
2088Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
2089
2090rw, offset, length
2091
2092where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
2093
2094This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
2095
2096
20978.2 Trace file format v2
2098------------------------
2099The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
2100It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
2101possible file actions.
2102
2103The first line of the trace file has to be:
2104
2105fio version 2 iolog
2106
2107Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
2108
2109The file management format:
2110
2111filename action
2112
2113The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
2114
2115add Add the given filename to the trace
2116open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
2117 been added with the add action before.
2118close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
2119 opened before.
2120
2121
2122The file io action format:
2123
2124filename action offset length
2125
2126The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
2127before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
2128bytes. The action can be one of these:
2129
2130wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
2131 The time is relative to the previous wait statement.
2132read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2133write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2134sync fsync() the file
2135datasync fdatasync() the file
2136trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes
2137
2138
21399.0 CPU idleness profiling
2140--------------------------
2141In some cases, we want to understand CPU overhead in a test. For example,
2142we test patches for the specific goodness of whether they reduce CPU usage.
2143fio implements a balloon approach to create a thread per CPU that runs at
2144idle priority, meaning that it only runs when nobody else needs the cpu.
2145By measuring the amount of work completed by the thread, idleness of each
2146CPU can be derived accordingly.
2147
2148An unit work is defined as touching a full page of unsigned characters. Mean
2149and standard deviation of time to complete an unit work is reported in "unit
2150work" section. Options can be chosen to report detailed percpu idleness or
2151overall system idleness by aggregating percpu stats.
2152
2153
215410.0 Verification and triggers
2155------------------------------
2156Fio is usually run in one of two ways, when data verification is done. The
2157first is a normal write job of some sort with verify enabled. When the
2158write phase has completed, fio switches to reads and verifies everything
2159it wrote. The second model is running just the write phase, and then later
2160on running the same job (but with reads instead of writes) to repeat the
2161same IO patterns and verify the contents. Both of these methods depend
2162on the write phase being completed, as fio otherwise has no idea how much
2163data was written.
2164
2165With verification triggers, fio supports dumping the current write state
2166to local files. Then a subsequent read verify workload can load this state
2167and know exactly where to stop. This is useful for testing cases where
2168power is cut to a server in a managed fashion, for instance.
2169
2170A verification trigger consists of two things:
2171
21721) Storing the write state of each job
21732) Executing a trigger command
2174
2175The write state is relatively small, on the order of hundreds of bytes
2176to single kilobytes. It contains information on the number of completions
2177done, the last X completions, etc.
2178
2179A trigger is invoked either through creation ('touch') of a specified
2180file in the system, or through a timeout setting. If fio is run with
2181--trigger-file=/tmp/trigger-file, then it will continually check for
2182the existence of /tmp/trigger-file. When it sees this file, it will
2183fire off the trigger (thus saving state, and executing the trigger
2184command).
2185
2186For client/server runs, there's both a local and remote trigger. If
2187fio is running as a server backend, it will send the job states back
2188to the client for safe storage, then execute the remote trigger, if
2189specified. If a local trigger is specified, the server will still send
2190back the write state, but the client will then execute the trigger.
2191
219210.1 Verification trigger example
2193---------------------------------
2194Lets say we want to run a powercut test on the remote machine 'server'.
2195Our write workload is in write-test.fio. We want to cut power to 'server'
2196at some point during the run, and we'll run this test from the safety
2197or our local machine, 'localbox'. On the server, we'll start the fio
2198backend normally:
2199
2200server# fio --server
2201
2202and on the client, we'll fire off the workload:
2203
2204localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger-remote="bash -c \"echo b > /proc/sysrq-triger\""
2205
2206We set /tmp/my-trigger as the trigger file, and we tell fio to execute
2207
2208echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger
2209
2210on the server once it has received the trigger and sent us the write
2211state. This will work, but it's not _really_ cutting power to the server,
2212it's merely abruptly rebooting it. If we have a remote way of cutting
2213power to the server through IPMI or similar, we could do that through
2214a local trigger command instead. Lets assume we have a script that does
2215IPMI reboot of a given hostname, ipmi-reboot. On localbox, we could
2216then have run fio with a local trigger instead:
2217
2218localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger="ipmi-reboot server"
2219
2220For this case, fio would wait for the server to send us the write state,
2221then execute 'ipmi-reboot server' when that happened.
2222
222310.2 Loading verify state
2224-------------------------
2225To load store write state, read verification job file must contain
2226the verify_state_load option. If that is set, fio will load the previously
2227stored state. For a local fio run this is done by loading the files directly,
2228and on a client/server run, the server backend will ask the client to send
2229the files over and load them from there.