Fix disk utilization for delayed jobs
[fio.git] / HOWTO
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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
25c8b9d7 118. Trace file format
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12
131.0 Overview and history
14------------------------
15fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
16case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
17performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
18such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
19Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
20without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
21
22A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
23of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
24way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
25memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
26reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
27simulate both of these cases, and many more.
28
292.0 How fio works
30-----------------
31The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
32writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
33any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
34is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
35sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
36and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
37bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
38
39 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
40 We may only be reading sequentially from this
41 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
42 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
43
44 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
45 a single value, or it may describe a range of
46 block sizes.
47
48 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
49
50 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
51 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
d0ff85df 52 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
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53 SG (SCSI generic sg).
54
6c219763 55 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
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56 depth do we want to maintain?
57
58 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
59
60 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
61
62 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
63 this workload over.
64
65The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
66there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
67job behaves.
68
69
703.0 Running fio
71---------------
72See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
73of them.
74
75Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
76(or job files) as parameters:
77
78$ fio job_file
79
80and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
81more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
82of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
83parameter described the the parameter section.
84
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85If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
86parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
87to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
88(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
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89mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
90also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
91--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
92Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
93until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
94similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
95job until a new [] job entry is seen.
b4692828 96
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97fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
98in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
6c219763 99such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
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100
101
1024.0 Job file format
103-------------------
104As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
105what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
106where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
107to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
108A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
109may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
110several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
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111section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
112'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
71bfa161 113
3c54bc46 114So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
b22989b9 115randomly reading from a 128MB file.
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116
117; -- start job file --
118[global]
119rw=randread
120size=128m
121
122[job1]
123
124[job2]
125
126; -- end job file --
127
128As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
129described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
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130makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
131line, this job would look as follows:
132
133$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
134
71bfa161 135
3c54bc46 136Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
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137to files.
138
139; -- start job file --
140[random-writers]
141ioengine=libaio
142iodepth=4
143rw=randwrite
144bs=32k
145direct=0
146size=64m
147numjobs=4
148
149; -- end job file --
150
151Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
152We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
b22989b9 153increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
71bfa161 154fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
b22989b9 155to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
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156have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
157specify:
158
159$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
71bfa161 160
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1614.1 Environment variables
162-------------------------
163
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164fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
165substring of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
166words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
167environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
168is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
169substituted.
170
171As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
172
173$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
174
175; -- start job file --
176[random-writers]
177rw=randwrite
178size=${SIZE}
179numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
180; -- end job file --
181
182This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
183
184; -- start job file --
185[random-writers]
186rw=randwrite
187size=64m
188numjobs=4
189; -- end job file --
190
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191fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
192inspiration.
193
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1944.2 Reserved keywords
195---------------------
196
197Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
198internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
199
200$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
201$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
202$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
203
204These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
205automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
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206is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
207perform actions like:
208
209size=8*$mb_memory
210
211and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
212machine.
74929ac2 213
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214
2155.0 Detailed list of parameters
216-------------------------------
217
218This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
219Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
220a string. The following types are used:
221
222str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
b09da8fa 223time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
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224 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
225 minutes, and hours.
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226int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
227 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
228 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
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229 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
230 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
b09da8fa 231 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
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232 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
233 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
234 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
235 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
236 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
237 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
238 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
239 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
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240bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
241 true and false (1 and 0).
b09da8fa 242irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
bf9a3edb 243 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
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244 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
245 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
f7fa2653 246 int.
83349190 247float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
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248
249With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
250parameters.
251
252name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
253 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
c2b1e753 254 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
6c219763 255 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
c2b1e753 256 job.
71bfa161 257
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258description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
259 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
260 not parsed.
261
3776041e 262directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
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263 in a different location than "./".
264
265filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
266 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
267 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
ed92ac0c 268 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
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269 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
270 and protocol to use in the format of =host/port/protocol.
271 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
272 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
273 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
274 as the two working files, you would use
03e20d68 275 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are accessed
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276 as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device, \\.\PhysicalDrive1
277 for the second etc. If the wanted filename does need to
278 include a colon, then escape that with a '\' character.
279 For instance, if the filename is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c",
280 then you would use filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c".
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281 '-' is a reserved name, meaning stdin or stdout. Which of the
282 two depends on the read/write direction set.
71bfa161 283
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284opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
285 directory and down the file system tree.
286
3776041e 287lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
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288 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
289 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
290 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
291 share files. The lock modes are:
292
293 none No locking. The default.
294 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
295 excluding all others.
296 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
297 readers may access the file at the
298 same time, but writes get exclusive
299 access.
300
301 The option may be post-fixed with a lock batch number. If
302 set, then each thread/process may do that amount of IOs to
bf9a3edb 303 the file before giving up the lock. Since lock acquisition is
4d4e80f2 304 expensive, batching the lock/unlocks will speed up IO.
29c1349f 305
d3aad8f2 306readwrite=str
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307rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
308
309 read Sequential reads
310 write Sequential writes
311 randwrite Random writes
312 randread Random reads
313 rw Sequential mixed reads and writes
314 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
315
316 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
317 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
211097b2 318 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
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319 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
320 one by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
321 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
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322 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
323 postfix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
324 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
325 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
326 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
327 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
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328
329rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
330 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
331 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
332 values are:
333
334 sequential Generate sequential offset
335 identical Generate the same offset
336
337 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
338 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
339 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
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340 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
341 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
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342 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
343 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
344 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
345 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
346 offset.
71bfa161 347
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348kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
349 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
350 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
351 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
352
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353randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
354 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
355
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356use_os_rand=bool Fio can either use the random generator supplied by the OS
357 to generator random offsets, or it can use it's own internal
358 generator (based on Tausworthe). Default is to use the
359 internal generator, which is often of better quality and
360 faster.
361
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362fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
363 Accepted values are:
364
365 none Do not pre-allocate space
366 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
367 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
368 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
369 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
370 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
371
372 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
373 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
374 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
7bc8c2cf 375
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376fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
377 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
378 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
379 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
380 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
381 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
382
f7fa2653 383size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
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384 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
385 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance).
3776041e 386 Unless specific nrfiles and filesize options are given,
7616cafe 387 fio will divide this size between the available files
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388 specified by the job. If not set, fio will use the full
389 size of the given files or devices. If the the files
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390 do not exist, size must be given. It is also possible to
391 give size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If size=20%
392 is given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the given
393 files or devices.
71bfa161 394
f7fa2653 395filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
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396 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
397 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
398 given, each created file is the same size.
399
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400fill_device=bool
401fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
aa31f1f1 402 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
3ce9dcaf 403 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
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404 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
405 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
406 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
407 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
408 ENOSPC there.
aa31f1f1 409
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410blocksize=int
411bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
412 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
413 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
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414 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
415 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write.
416 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, and 8k blocks
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417 for writes. If you only wish to set the write size, you
418 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
419 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
a00735e6 420
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421blockalign=int
422ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
423 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
424 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
425 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
426 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
427 files, so it will turn off that option.
428
d3aad8f2 429blocksize_range=irange
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430bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
431 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
432 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
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433 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
434 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
435 See bs=.
a00735e6 436
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437bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
438 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
439 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
440 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
441 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
442
443 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
444
445 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
446 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
447 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
448
449 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
450
451 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
452 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
453 option like this one:
454
455 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
456
457 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
458 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
459 up to more, it will error out.
460
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461 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
462 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
463 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
464 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
465 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
466 specify:
467
468 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90,8k/10
469
d3aad8f2 470blocksize_unaligned
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471bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
472 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
473 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
71bfa161 474
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475zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
476 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
477
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478refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
479 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
480 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
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481 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
482 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
5973cafb 483
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484nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
485
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486openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
487 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
488 simultaneous opens.
489
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490file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
491 service next. The following types are defined:
492
493 random Just choose a file at random.
494
495 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
496 is the default.
497
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498 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
499 the next. Multiple files can still be
500 open depending on 'openfiles'.
501
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502 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
503 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
504 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
505 have been issued.
506
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507ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
508 types are defined:
509
510 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
511 used to position the io location.
512
a31041ea 513 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
514
e05af9e5 515 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
1d2af02a 516
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517 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
518 may only support queued behaviour with
519 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
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520 This engine also has a sub-option,
521 userspace_reap. To set it, use
522 ioengine=libaio:userspace_reap. Normally, with
523 the libaio engine in use, fio will use the
524 io_getevents system call to reap newly returned
525 events. With this flag turned on, the AIO ring
526 will be read directly from user-space to reap
527 events. The reaping mode is only enabled when
528 polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
529 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
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530
531 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
532
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533 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
534
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535 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
536
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537 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
538 to/from using memcpy(3).
539
540 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
541 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
542 space to the kernel.
543
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544 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
545 regular read/write async.
546
71bfa161 547 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
6c219763 548 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
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549 the target is an sg character device
550 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
551 io.
552
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553 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
554 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
555 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
556
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557 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
558 'filename' must be set appropriately to
414c2a3e 559 filename=host/port/protocol regardless of send
ed92ac0c 560 or receive, if the latter only the port
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561 argument is used. 'host' may be an IP address
562 or hostname, port is the port number to be used,
563 and protocol may be 'udp' or 'tcp'. If no
564 protocol is given, TCP is used.
ed92ac0c 565
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566 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
567 map data and send/receive.
568
53aec0a4 569 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
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570 cycles according to the cpuload= and
571 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
572 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
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573 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
574 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
575 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
576 CPU at the desired rate.
ba0fbe10 577
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578 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
579 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
580 to async IO. See
581
582 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
583
584 for more info on GUASI.
585
21b8aee8 586 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
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587 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
588 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
589 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
21b8aee8 590
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591 external Prefix to specify loading an external
592 IO engine object file. Append the engine
593 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
594 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
595
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596iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
597 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
598 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
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599 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
600 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
9b836561 601 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
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602 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
603 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
604 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
605 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
606 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
71bfa161 607
4950421a 608iodepth_batch_submit=int
cb5ab512 609iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
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610 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
611 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
612 bigger batches of IO at the time.
cb5ab512 613
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614iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
615 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
616 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
617 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
618 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
619 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
620 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
621 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
622
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623iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
624 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
625 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
626 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
627 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
628 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
629
71bfa161 630direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
9b836561 631 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
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632
633buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
634 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
71bfa161 635
f7fa2653 636offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
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637 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
638 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
639
640fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
641 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
642 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
643 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
644 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
6c219763 645 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
71bfa161 646
e76b1da4 647fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
5f9099ea 648 metadata blocks.
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649 In FreeBSD there is no fdatasync(), this falls back to
650 using fsync()
5f9099ea 651
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652sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
653 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
654 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
655 can currently be one or more of:
656
657 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
658 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
659 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
660
661 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
662 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
663 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
664 This option is Linux specific.
665
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666overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
667 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
668 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
669 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
670 will be done.
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671
672end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when the job exits.
673
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674fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
675 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
676 file close, not just at the end of the job.
677
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678rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
679
680rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
681 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
682 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
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683 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
684 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
685 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
71bfa161 686
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687norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
688 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
689 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
690 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
691 some blocks may be read/written more than once. This option
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692 is mutually exclusive with verify= if and only if multiple
693 blocksizes (via bsrange=) are used, since fio only tracks
694 complete rewrites of blocks.
bb8895e0 695
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696softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
697 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
698 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
699 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
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700 disabled by default.
701
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702nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
703
704prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
705 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
706 See man ionice(1).
707
708prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
709
710thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
711 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
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712 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
713 thinktime_spin.
714
715thinktime_spin=int
716 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
717 doing something with the data received, before falling back
718 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
719 thinktime.
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720
721thinktime_blocks
722 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
723 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
724 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
725 after every block.
71bfa161 726
581e7141 727rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
b09da8fa 728 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
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729 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
730 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
731 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
732 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
733 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
734 limit reads.
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735
736ratemin=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
4e991c23 737 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
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738 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
739 read vs write separation.
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740
741rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
742 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
743 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
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744 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
745 as rate is used for read vs write seperation.
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746
747rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
581e7141
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748 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
749 write seperation.
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750
751ratecycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'ratemin' over this number
6c219763 752 of milliseconds.
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753
754cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
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755 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
756 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
757 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
7dbb6eba 758 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
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759 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
760 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
761 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
762 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
71bfa161 763
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764cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
765 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
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766 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
767 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
768 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
d2e268b0 769
e417fd66 770startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
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771 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
772 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
773 time.
774
e417fd66 775runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
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776 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
777 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
778 cap the total runtime to a given time.
779
cf4464ca 780time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
bf9a3edb 781 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
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782 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
783 as many times as the runtime allows.
784
e417fd66 785ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
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786 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
787 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
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788 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
789 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
790 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
791 or runtime is specified.
721938ae 792
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793invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
794 to starting io. Defaults to true.
795
796sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
797 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
798
d3aad8f2 799iomem=str
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800mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
801 The allowed values are:
802
803 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
804
805 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
806 through shmget(2).
807
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808 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
809
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810 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
811 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
812 a filename is given after the option. The
813 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
71bfa161 814
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815 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
816 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
817 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
818
71bfa161 819 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
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820 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
821 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
822 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
823 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
b22989b9 824 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
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825 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
826 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
827 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
828 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
829 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
830 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
56bb17f2 831 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
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832
833 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
834 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
835 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
71bfa161 836
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837iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
838 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
839 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
840 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
841 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
842 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
843 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
844 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
845
f7fa2653 846hugepage-size=int
56bb17f2 847 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
b22989b9 848 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
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849 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
850 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
851 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
56bb17f2 852
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853exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
854 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
855 desired action.
856
857bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
6c219763 858 is specified in milliseconds.
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859
860create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
861 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
862 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
863 used and even the number of processors in the system.
864
865create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
866 default.
867
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868create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
869 when it's time to do IO to that file.
870
afad68f7 871pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
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872 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
873 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
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874 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
875 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
876 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
877 IO.
afad68f7 878
e545a6ce 879unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
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880 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
881 set again and again.
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882
883loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
884 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
885 to 1.
886
68e1f29a 887do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
e84c73a8
SL
888 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
889
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890verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
891 after each iteration of the job. The allowed values are:
892
893 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
894 it in the header of each block.
895
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896 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
897 area and store it in the header of each
898 block.
899
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900 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
901 it in the header of each block.
902
3845591f 903 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
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JA
904 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
905 back to regular software crc32c, if not
906 supported by the system.
3845591f 907
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JA
908 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
909 it in the header of each block.
910
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JA
911 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
912 it in the header of each block.
913
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JA
914 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
915 it in the header of each block.
916
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JA
917 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
918
919 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
920
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JA
921 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
922
7437ee87
SL
923 meta Write extra information about each io
924 (timestamp, block number etc.). The block
996093bb 925 number is verified. See also verify_pattern.
7437ee87 926
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JA
927 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
928 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
929 else.
930
6c219763 931 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
71bfa161 932 system to make sure that the written data is also
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JA
933 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
934 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
935 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
936 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
937 newly written data.
71bfa161 938
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JA
939verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
940 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
941 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
942 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
943 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
944 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
945 significant.
3f9f4e26 946
f7fa2653 947verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
546a9142
SL
948 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
949 verifying.
950
f7fa2653 951verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
3f9f4e26
SL
952 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
953 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
954 evenly.
90059d65 955
0e92f873 956verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
e28218f3
SL
957 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
958 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
959 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
960 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
0e92f873
RR
961 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
962 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
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JA
963 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
964 with verify=meta.
e28218f3 965
68e1f29a 966verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
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967 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
968 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
969 failure.
e8462bd8 970
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971verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
972 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
973 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
974 corruption occurred. On by default.
975
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976verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
977 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
978 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
979 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
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980 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
981 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
982 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
983 IO in flight while verifies are running.
e8462bd8
JA
984
985verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
986 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
987 format used.
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988
989verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
990 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
991 other words, everything is written then everything is read
992 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
993 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
994 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
995 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
996 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
f42195a3
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997 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
998
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999 will verify the previously written blocks before continuing
1000 to write new ones.
1001
1002verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1003 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1004 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
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1005 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1006 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1007 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1008 blocks will be verified more than once.
160b966d 1009
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1010stonewall
1011wait_for_previous Wait for preceeding jobs in the job file to exit, before
71bfa161 1012 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
b3d62a75
JA
1013 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1014 a new reporting group.
1015
1016new_group Start a new reporting group. If this option isn't given,
1017 jobs in a file will be part of the same reporting group
bf9a3edb 1018 unless separated by a stone wall (or if it's a group
b3d62a75 1019 by itself, with the numjobs option).
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1020
1021numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1022 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
fa28c85a
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1023 the same thing. We regard that grouping of jobs as a
1024 specific group.
1025
1026group_reporting If 'numjobs' is set, it may be interesting to display
1027 statistics for the group as a whole instead of for each
1028 individual job. This is especially true of 'numjobs' is
1029 large, looking at individual thread/process output quickly
1030 becomes unwieldy. If 'group_reporting' is specified, fio
1031 will show the final report per-group instead of per-job.
71bfa161
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1032
1033thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1034 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1035 instead.
1036
f7fa2653 1037zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
71bfa161 1038
f7fa2653 1039zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
71bfa161
JA
1040 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1041 io on zones of a file.
1042
076efc7c 1043write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
5b42a488
SH
1044 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1045 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
71bfa161 1046
076efc7c 1047read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
71bfa161 1048 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
6df8adaa
JA
1049 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1050 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1051 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1052 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1053 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
ea3e51c3 1054 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
64bbb865
DN
1055
1056replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
62776229
JA
1057 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1058 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1059 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1060 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1061 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1062 given device, but different timings.
71bfa161 1063
d1c46c04
DN
1064replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1065 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1066 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
1067 undesireable because on a different machine those major/minor
1068 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1069 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1070 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1071 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1072 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1073 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1074 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1075 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1076 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1077 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1078 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1079 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1080
e3cedca7 1081write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
71bfa161 1082 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
e0da9bc2
JA
1083 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1084 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
e3cedca7
JA
1085 graphs. See write_log_log for behaviour of given
1086 filename. For this option, the postfix is _bw.log.
71bfa161 1087
e3cedca7 1088write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
02af0988
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1089 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1090 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1091 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1092 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
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1093
1094 write_lat_log=foo
1095
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1096 The actual log names will be foo_slat.log, foo_slat.log,
1097 and foo_lat.log. This helps fio_generate_plot fine the logs
1098 automatically.
71bfa161 1099
f7fa2653 1100lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
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1101 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1102 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
1103
1104exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
1105 through system(3).
1106
1107exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
1108 though system(3).
1109
1110ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1111 io scheduler before running.
1112
1113cpuload=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, attempt to use the specified
1114 percentage of CPU cycles.
1115
1116cpuchunks=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, split the load into
26eca2db 1117 cycles of the given time. In microseconds.
71bfa161 1118
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1119disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1120 supports it. Defaults to on.
1121
02af0988 1122disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
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1123 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1124 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1125 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1126 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1127 disable_bw as well.
1128
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JA
1129disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1130 disable_lat.
1131
9520ebb9 1132disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
02af0988 1133 disable_slat.
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JA
1134
1135disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
02af0988 1136 disable_lat.
9520ebb9 1137
83349190
YH
1138clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1139 completion latencies.
1140
1141percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
1142 for completion latencies. Each number is a floating
1143 number in the range (0,100], and the maximum length of
1144 the list is 20. Use ':' to separate the numbers, and
1145 list the numbers in ascending order. For example,
1146 --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause fio to report
1147 the values of completion latency below which 99.5% and
1148 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
1149
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JA
1150gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1151 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1152 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1153 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1154 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1155 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1156
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1157gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1158 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1159 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1160 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1161 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1162 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1163 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1164 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1165 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1166 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1167 jobs.
a696fa2a 1168
f2bba182
RR
1169continue_on_error=bool Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
1170 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1171 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1172 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1173 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1174 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1175 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1176 run.
be4ecfdf 1177
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1178cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1179 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1180 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1181 mounted, you can do so with:
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JA
1182
1183 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1184
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1185cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1186 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1187 are in the range of 100..1000.
71bfa161 1188
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VG
1189cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1190 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1191 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1192 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1193 files after job completion. Default: false
1194
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1195uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1196 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1197
1198gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1199
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12006.0 Interpreting the output
1201---------------------------
1202
1203fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1204status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1205
73c8b082 1206Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
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1207
1208The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1209each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1210
1211Idle Run
1212---- ---
1213P Thread setup, but not started.
1214C Thread created.
1215I Thread initialized, waiting.
b0f65863 1216 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
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1217 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1218 r Running, doing random reads.
1219 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1220 w Running, doing random writes.
1221 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1222 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1223 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
fc6bd43c 1224 V Running, doing verification of written data.
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1225E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
1226_ Thread reaped.
1227
1228The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
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1229currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1230listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1231and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
1232the following groups (if any).
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1233
1234When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1235each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1236direction, the output looks like:
1237
1238Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
35649e58 1239 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
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JA
1240 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1241 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
b22989b9 1242 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
e7823a94 1243 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
71619dc2 1244 IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
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1245 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1246 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
30061b97 1247 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
8abdce66
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1248 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1249 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
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1250
1251The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1252thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1253they denote:
1254
1255io= Number of megabytes io performed
1256bw= Average bandwidth rate
35649e58 1257iops= Average IOs performed per second
71bfa161 1258runt= The runtime of that thread
72fbda2a 1259 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
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1260 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
1261 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
8a35c71e 1262 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
bf9a3edb 1263 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
8a35c71e 1264 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
bf9a3edb 1265 above, milliseconds is the best scale.
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1266 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
1267 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
1268 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
1269 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
1270 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
1271 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
1272 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
1273 this thread received in this group. This last value is
1274 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
1275 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
1276cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
e7823a94
JA
1277 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
1278 system and user time, and finally the number of major
1279 and minor page faults.
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JA
1280IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
1281 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
1282 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
1283 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
1284 range from 16 to 31.
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1285IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
1286 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
1287 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
1288 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
1289IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
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JA
1290IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
1291 of them were short.
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1292IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
1293 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
1294 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
1295 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
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1296 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
1297 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
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1298
1299After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
1300will look like this:
1301
1302Run status group 0 (all jobs):
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1303 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
1304 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
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1305
1306For each data direction, it prints:
1307
1308io= Number of megabytes io performed.
1309aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
1310minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1311maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1312mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
1313maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
1314
1315And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
1316
1317Disk stats (read/write):
1318 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
1319
1320Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
1321numbers denote:
1322
1323ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
1324merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
1325ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
1326io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
1327util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
1328 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
1329
1330
13317.0 Terse output
1332----------------
1333
1334For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
6af019c9 1335of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
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1336The format is one long line of values, such as:
1337
562c2d2f
DN
13382;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%
1339A description of this job goes here.
1340
1341The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
71bfa161 1342
525c2bfa
JA
1343To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
1344value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
1345be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
1346signify that change.
6820cb3b 1347
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1348Split up, the format is as follows:
1349
525c2bfa 1350 version, jobname, groupid, error
71bfa161 1351 READ status:
b22989b9 1352 KB IO, bandwidth (KB/sec), runtime (msec)
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1353 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation
1354 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation
525c2bfa 1355 Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation
6c219763 1356 Bw: min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
71bfa161 1357 WRITE status:
b22989b9 1358 KB IO, bandwidth (KB/sec), runtime (msec)
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JA
1359 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation
1360 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation
525c2bfa 1361 Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation
6c219763 1362 Bw: min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
046ee302 1363 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
2270890c 1364 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
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DN
1365 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
1366 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
1367 Additional Info (dependant on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
1368
f42195a3 1369 Additional Info (dependant on description being set): Text description
25c8b9d7
PD
1370
1371
13728.0 Trace file format
1373---------------------
1374There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
1375is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
1376below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
1377
1378In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
1379
1380
13818.1 Trace file format v1
1382------------------------
1383Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
1384
1385rw, offset, length
1386
1387where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
1388
1389This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
1390
1391
13928.2 Trace file format v2
1393------------------------
1394The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
1395It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
1396possible file actions.
1397
1398The first line of the trace file has to be:
1399
1400fio version 2 iolog
1401
1402Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
1403
1404The file management format:
1405
1406filename action
1407
1408The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
1409
1410add Add the given filename to the trace
1411open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
1412 been added with the add action before.
1413close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
1414 opened before.
1415
1416
1417The file io action format:
1418
1419filename action offset length
1420
1421The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
1422before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
1423bytes. The action can be one of these:
1424
1425wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
1426read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
1427write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
1428sync fsync() the file
1429datasync fdatasync() the file
1430trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes