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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
43f09da1 129. CPU idleness profiling
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13
141.0 Overview and history
15------------------------
16fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
17case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
18performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
19such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
20Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
21without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
22
23A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
24of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
25way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
26memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
27reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
28simulate both of these cases, and many more.
29
302.0 How fio works
31-----------------
32The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
33writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
34any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
35is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
36sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
37and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
38bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
39
40 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
41 We may only be reading sequentially from this
42 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
43 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
44
45 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
46 a single value, or it may describe a range of
47 block sizes.
48
49 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
50
51 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
52 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
d0ff85df 53 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
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54 SG (SCSI generic sg).
55
6c219763 56 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
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57 depth do we want to maintain?
58
59 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
60
61 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
62
63 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
64 this workload over.
66c098b8 65
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66The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
67there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
68job behaves.
69
70
713.0 Running fio
72---------------
73See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
74of them.
75
76Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
77(or job files) as parameters:
78
79$ fio job_file
80
81and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
82more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
83of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
550b1db6 84parameter described in the parameter section.
71bfa161 85
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86If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
87parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
88to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
89(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
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90mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
91also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
92--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
93Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
94until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
95similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
96job until a new [] job entry is seen.
b4692828 97
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98fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
99in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
6c219763 100such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
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101
102
1034.0 Job file format
104-------------------
105As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
106what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
107where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
108to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
109A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
110may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
111several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
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112section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
113'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
71bfa161 114
3c54bc46 115So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
b22989b9 116randomly reading from a 128MB file.
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117
118; -- start job file --
119[global]
120rw=randread
121size=128m
122
123[job1]
124
125[job2]
126
127; -- end job file --
128
129As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
130described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
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131makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
132line, this job would look as follows:
133
134$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
135
71bfa161 136
3c54bc46 137Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
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138to files.
139
140; -- start job file --
141[random-writers]
142ioengine=libaio
143iodepth=4
144rw=randwrite
145bs=32k
146direct=0
147size=64m
148numjobs=4
149
150; -- end job file --
151
152Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
153We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
b22989b9 154increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
71bfa161 155fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
b22989b9 156to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
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157have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
158specify:
159
160$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
71bfa161 161
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162When fio is utilized as a basis of any reasonably large test suite, it might be
163desirable to share a set of standardized settings across multiple job files.
164Instead of copy/pasting such settings, any section may pull in an external
165.fio file with 'include filename' directive, as in the following example:
166
167; -- start job file including.fio --
168[global]
169filename=/tmp/test
170filesize=1m
171include glob-include.fio
172
173[test]
174rw=randread
175bs=4k
176time_based=1
177runtime=10
178include test-include.fio
179; -- end job file including.fio --
180
181; -- start job file glob-include.fio --
182thread=1
183group_reporting=1
184; -- end job file glob-include.fio --
185
186; -- start job file test-include.fio --
187ioengine=libaio
188iodepth=4
189; -- end job file test-include.fio --
190
191Settings pulled into a section apply to that section only (except global
192section). Include directives may be nested in that any included file may
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193contain further include directive(s). Include files may not contain []
194sections.
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195
196
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1974.1 Environment variables
198-------------------------
199
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200fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
201substring of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
202words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
203environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
204is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
205substituted.
206
207As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
208
209$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
210
211; -- start job file --
212[random-writers]
213rw=randwrite
214size=${SIZE}
215numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
216; -- end job file --
217
218This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
219
220; -- start job file --
221[random-writers]
222rw=randwrite
223size=64m
224numjobs=4
225; -- end job file --
226
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227fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
228inspiration.
229
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2304.2 Reserved keywords
231---------------------
232
233Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
234internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
235
236$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
237$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
238$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
239
240These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
241automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
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242is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
243perform actions like:
244
245size=8*$mb_memory
246
247and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
248machine.
74929ac2 249
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250
2515.0 Detailed list of parameters
252-------------------------------
253
254This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
255Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
256a string. The following types are used:
257
258str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
b09da8fa 259time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
e417fd66 260 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
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261 minutes, and hours, and accepts 'ms' (or 'msec') for milliseconds,
262 and 'us' (or 'usec') for microseconds.
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263int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
264 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
265 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
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266 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
267 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
b09da8fa 268 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
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269 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
270 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
271 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
272 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
273 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
274 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
275 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
276 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
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277bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
278 true and false (1 and 0).
b09da8fa 279irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
bf9a3edb 280 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
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281 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
282 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
f7fa2653 283 int.
83349190 284float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
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285
286With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
287parameters.
288
289name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
290 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
c2b1e753 291 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
6c219763 292 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
c2b1e753 293 job.
71bfa161 294
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295description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
296 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
297 not parsed.
298
3776041e 299directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
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300 in a different location than "./". See the 'filename' option
301 for escaping certain characters.
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302
303filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
304 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
305 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
ed92ac0c 306 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
414c2a3e 307 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
0fd666bf 308 and protocol to use in the format of =host,port,protocol.
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309 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
310 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
311 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
312 as the two working files, you would use
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313 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are
314 accessed as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device,
315 \\.\PhysicalDrive1 for the second etc. Note: Windows and
316 FreeBSD prevent write access to areas of the disk containing
317 in-use data (e.g. filesystems).
318 If the wanted filename does need to include a colon, then
319 escape that with a '\' character. For instance, if the filename
320 is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would use
321 filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name, meaning
322 stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
323 direction set.
71bfa161 324
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325filename_format=str
326 If sharing multiple files between jobs, it is usually necessary
327 to have fio generate the exact names that you want. By default,
328 fio will name a file based on the default file format
329 specification of jobname.jobnumber.filenumber. With this
330 option, that can be customized. Fio will recognize and replace
331 the following keywords in this string:
332
333 $jobname
334 The name of the worker thread or process.
335
336 $jobnum
337 The incremental number of the worker thread or
338 process.
339
340 $filenum
341 The incremental number of the file for that worker
342 thread or process.
343
344 To have dependent jobs share a set of files, this option can
345 be set to have fio generate filenames that are shared between
346 the two. For instance, if testfiles.$filenum is specified,
347 file number 4 for any job will be named testfiles.4. The
348 default of $jobname.$jobnum.$filenum will be used if
349 no other format specifier is given.
350
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351opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
352 directory and down the file system tree.
353
3776041e 354lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
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355 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
356 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
357 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
358 share files. The lock modes are:
359
360 none No locking. The default.
361 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
362 excluding all others.
363 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
364 readers may access the file at the
365 same time, but writes get exclusive
366 access.
367
d3aad8f2 368readwrite=str
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369rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
370
371 read Sequential reads
372 write Sequential writes
373 randwrite Random writes
374 randread Random reads
10b023db 375 rw,readwrite Sequential mixed reads and writes
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376 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
377
378 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
379 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
211097b2 380 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
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381 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
382 one by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
383 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
059b0802 384 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
ddb754db 385 suffix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
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386 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
387 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
388 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
389 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
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390
391rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
392 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
393 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
394 values are:
395
396 sequential Generate sequential offset
397 identical Generate the same offset
398
399 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
400 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
401 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
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402 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
403 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
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404 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
405 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
406 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
407 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
408 offset.
71bfa161 409
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410kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
411 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
412 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
413 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
414
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415unified_rw_reporting=bool Fio normally reports statistics on a per
416 data direction basis, meaning that read, write, and trim are
417 accounted and reported separately. If this option is set,
418 the fio will sum the results and report them as "mixed"
419 instead.
420
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421randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
422 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
423
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424randseed=int Seed the random number generators based on this seed value, to
425 be able to control what sequence of output is being generated.
426 If not set, the random sequence depends on the randrepeat
427 setting.
428
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429use_os_rand=bool Fio can either use the random generator supplied by the OS
430 to generator random offsets, or it can use it's own internal
431 generator (based on Tausworthe). Default is to use the
432 internal generator, which is often of better quality and
433 faster.
434
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435fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
436 Accepted values are:
437
438 none Do not pre-allocate space
439 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
440 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
441 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
442 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
443 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
444
445 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
446 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
447 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
7bc8c2cf 448
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449fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
450 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
451 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
452 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
453 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
454 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
455
f7fa2653 456size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
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457 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
458 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance).
3776041e 459 Unless specific nrfiles and filesize options are given,
7616cafe 460 fio will divide this size between the available files
d6667268 461 specified by the job. If not set, fio will use the full
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462 size of the given files or devices. If the files do not
463 exist, size must be given. It is also possible to give
464 size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If size=20% is
465 given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the given
7bb59102 466 files or devices.
71bfa161 467
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468io_limit=int Normally fio operates within the region set by 'size', which
469 means that the 'size' option sets both the region and size of
470 IO to be performed. Sometimes that is not what you want. With
471 this option, it is possible to define just the amount of IO
472 that fio should do. For instance, if 'size' is set to 20G and
473 'io_limit' is set to 5G, fio will perform IO within the first
474 20G but exit when 5G have been done.
475
f7fa2653 476filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
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477 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
478 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
479 given, each created file is the same size.
480
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481file_append=bool Perform IO after the end of the file. Normally fio will
482 operate within the size of a file. If this option is set, then
483 fio will append to the file instead. This has identical
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484 behavior to setting offset to the size of a file. This option
485 is ignored on non-regular files.
bedc9dc2 486
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487fill_device=bool
488fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
aa31f1f1 489 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
de98bd30 490 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
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491 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
492 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
493 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
494 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
495 ENOSPC there.
aa31f1f1 496
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497blocksize=int
498bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
499 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
500 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
f90eff5a 501 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
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502 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write,trim.
503 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, 8k blocks for
504 writes, and 8k for trims. You can terminate the list with
505 a trailing comma. bs=4k,8k, would use the default value for
506 trims.. If you only wish to set the write size, you
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507 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
508 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
a00735e6 509
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510blockalign=int
511ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
512 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
513 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
514 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
515 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
516 files, so it will turn off that option.
517
d3aad8f2 518blocksize_range=irange
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519bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
520 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
521 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
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522 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
523 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
524 See bs=.
a00735e6 525
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526bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
527 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
528 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
529 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
530 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
531
532 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
533
534 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
535 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
536 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
537
538 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
539
540 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
541 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
542 option like this one:
543
544 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
545
546 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
547 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
548 up to more, it will error out.
549
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550 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
551 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
552 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
553 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
554 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
555 specify:
556
557 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90,8k/10
558
d3aad8f2 559blocksize_unaligned
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560bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
561 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
562 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
71bfa161 563
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564bs_is_seq_rand If this option is set, fio will use the normal read,write
565 blocksize settings as sequential,random instead. Any random
566 read or write will use the WRITE blocksize settings, and any
567 sequential read or write will use the READ blocksize setting.
568
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569zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
570 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
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571 The resulting IO buffers will not be completely zeroed,
572 unless scramble_buffers is also turned off.
e9459e5a 573
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574refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
575 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
576 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
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577 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
578 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
5973cafb 579
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580scramble_buffers=bool If refill_buffers is too costly and the target is
581 using data deduplication, then setting this option will
582 slightly modify the IO buffer contents to defeat normal
583 de-dupe attempts. This is not enough to defeat more clever
584 block compression attempts, but it will stop naive dedupe of
585 blocks. Default: true.
586
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587buffer_compress_percentage=int If this is set, then fio will attempt to
588 provide IO buffer content (on WRITEs) that compress to
589 the specified level. Fio does this by providing a mix of
590 random data and zeroes. Note that this is per block size
591 unit, for file/disk wide compression level that matches
592 this setting, you'll also want to set refill_buffers.
593
594buffer_compress_chunk=int See buffer_compress_percentage. This
595 setting allows fio to manage how big the ranges of random
596 data and zeroed data is. Without this set, fio will
597 provide buffer_compress_percentage of blocksize random
598 data, followed by the remaining zeroed. With this set
599 to some chunk size smaller than the block size, fio can
600 alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO
601 buffer.
602
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603buffer_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
604 pattern. If not set, the contents of io buffers is defined by
605 the other options related to buffer contents. The setting can
606 be any pattern of bytes, and can be prefixed with 0x for hex
607 values. It may also be a string, where the string must then
608 be wrapped with "".
609
610dedupe_percentage=int If set, fio will generate this percentage of
611 identical buffers when writing. These buffers will be
612 naturally dedupable. The contents of the buffers depend on
613 what other buffer compression settings have been set. It's
614 possible to have the individual buffers either fully
615 compressible, or not at all. This option only controls the
616 distribution of unique buffers.
ce35b1ec 617
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618nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
619
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620openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
621 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
622 simultaneous opens.
623
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624file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
625 service next. The following types are defined:
626
627 random Just choose a file at random.
628
629 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
630 is the default.
631
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632 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
633 the next. Multiple files can still be
634 open depending on 'openfiles'.
635
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636 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
637 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
638 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
639 have been issued.
640
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641ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
642 types are defined:
643
644 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
645 used to position the io location.
646
a31041ea 647 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
648
e05af9e5 649 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
1d2af02a 650
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651 psyncv Basic preadv(2) or pwritev(2) IO.
652
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653 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
654 may only support queued behaviour with
655 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
de890a1e 656 This engine defines engine specific options.
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657
658 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
659
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660 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
661
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662 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
663
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664 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
665 to/from using memcpy(3).
666
667 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
668 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
669 space to the kernel.
670
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671 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
672 regular read/write async.
673
71bfa161 674 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
6c219763 675 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
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676 the target is an sg character device
677 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
678 io.
679
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680 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
681 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
682 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
683
ed92ac0c 684 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
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685 Depending on the protocol used, the hostname,
686 port, listen and filename options are used to
687 specify what sort of connection to make, while
688 the protocol option determines which protocol
689 will be used.
690 This engine defines engine specific options.
ed92ac0c 691
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692 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
693 map data and send/receive.
de890a1e 694 This engine defines engine specific options.
9cce02e8 695
53aec0a4 696 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
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697 cycles according to the cpuload= and
698 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
699 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
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700 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
701 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
702 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
703 CPU at the desired rate.
ba0fbe10 704
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705 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
706 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
707 to async IO. See
708
709 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
710
711 for more info on GUASI.
712
21b8aee8 713 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
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714 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
715 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
716 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
21b8aee8 717
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718 falloc IO engine that does regular fallocate to
719 simulate data transfer as fio ioengine.
720 DDIR_READ does fallocate(,mode = keep_size,)
721 DDIR_WRITE does fallocate(,mode = 0)
722 DDIR_TRIM does fallocate(,mode = punch_hole)
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723
724 e4defrag IO engine that does regular EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT
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725 ioctls to simulate defragment activity in
726 request to DDIR_WRITE event
727
728 rbd IO engine supporting direct access to Ceph
729 Rados Block Devices (RBD) via librbd without
730 the need to use the kernel rbd driver. This
731 ioengine defines engine specific options.
732
733 gfapi Using Glusterfs libgfapi sync interface to
734 direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
735 options.
736
737 gfapi_async Using Glusterfs libgfapi async interface
738 to direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
739 having to go through FUSE. This ioengine
740 defines engine specific options.
0981fd71 741
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742 libhdfs Read and write through Hadoop (HDFS).
743 The 'filename' option is used to specify host,
744 port of the hdfs name-node to connect. This
745 engine interprets offsets a little
746 differently. In HDFS, files once created
747 cannot be modified. So random writes are not
748 possible. To imitate this, libhdfs engine
749 expects bunch of small files to be created
750 over HDFS, and engine will randomly pick a
751 file out of those files based on the offset
752 generated by fio backend. (see the example
753 job file to create such files, use rw=write
754 option). Please note, you might want to set
755 necessary environment variables to work with
756 hdfs/libhdfs properly.
1b10477b 757
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758 external Prefix to specify loading an external
759 IO engine object file. Append the engine
760 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
761 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
762
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763iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
764 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
765 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
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766 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
767 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
9b836561 768 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
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769 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
770 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
771 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
772 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
773 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
71bfa161 774
4950421a 775iodepth_batch_submit=int
cb5ab512 776iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
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777 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
778 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
779 bigger batches of IO at the time.
cb5ab512 780
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781iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
782 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
783 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
784 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
785 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
786 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
787 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
788 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
789
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790iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
791 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
792 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
793 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
794 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
795 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
796
71bfa161 797direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
9b836561 798 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
93bcfd20 799 On Windows the synchronous ioengines don't support direct io.
76a43db4 800
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801atomic=bool If value is true, attempt to use atomic direct IO. Atomic
802 writes are guaranteed to be stable once acknowledged by
803 the operating system. Only Linux supports O_ATOMIC right
804 now.
805
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806buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
807 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
71bfa161 808
f7fa2653 809offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
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810 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
811 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
812
214ac7e0 813offset_increment=int If this is provided, then the real offset becomes
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814 offset + offset_increment * thread_number, where the thread
815 number is a counter that starts at 0 and is incremented for
816 each sub-job (i.e. when numjobs option is specified). This
817 option is useful if there are several jobs which are intended
818 to operate on a file in parallel disjoint segments, with
819 even spacing between the starting points.
214ac7e0 820
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821number_ios=int Fio will normally perform IOs until it has exhausted the size
822 of the region set by size=, or if it exhaust the allocated
823 time (or hits an error condition). With this setting, the
824 range/size can be set independently of the number of IOs to
825 perform. When fio reaches this number, it will exit normally
826 and report status.
827
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828fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
829 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
830 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
831 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
832 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
6c219763 833 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
71bfa161 834
e76b1da4 835fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
5f9099ea 836 metadata blocks.
93bcfd20 837 In FreeBSD and Windows there is no fdatasync(), this falls back to
e72fa4d4 838 using fsync()
5f9099ea 839
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840sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
841 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
842 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
843 can currently be one or more of:
844
845 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
846 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
847 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
848
849 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
850 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
851 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
852 This option is Linux specific.
853
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854overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
855 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
856 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
857 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
858 will be done.
71bfa161 859
dbd11ead 860end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when a write stage has completed.
71bfa161 861
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862fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
863 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
864 file close, not just at the end of the job.
865
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866rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
867
868rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
869 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
870 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
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JA
871 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
872 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
873 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
71bfa161 874
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875random_distribution=str:float By default, fio will use a completely uniform
876 random distribution when asked to perform random IO. Sometimes
877 it is useful to skew the distribution in specific ways,
878 ensuring that some parts of the data is more hot than others.
879 fio includes the following distribution models:
880
881 random Uniform random distribution
882 zipf Zipf distribution
883 pareto Pareto distribution
884
885 When using a zipf or pareto distribution, an input value
886 is also needed to define the access pattern. For zipf, this
887 is the zipf theta. For pareto, it's the pareto power. Fio
888 includes a test program, genzipf, that can be used visualize
889 what the given input values will yield in terms of hit rates.
890 If you wanted to use zipf with a theta of 1.2, you would use
891 random_distribution=zipf:1.2 as the option. If a non-uniform
892 model is used, fio will disable use of the random map.
893
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894percentage_random=int For a random workload, set how big a percentage should
895 be random. This defaults to 100%, in which case the workload
896 is fully random. It can be set from anywhere from 0 to 100.
897 Setting it to 0 would make the workload fully sequential. Any
898 setting in between will result in a random mix of sequential
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899 and random IO, at the given percentages. It is possible to
900 set different values for reads, writes, and trim. To do so,
901 simply use a comma separated list. See blocksize.
211c9b89 902
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903norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
904 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
905 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
906 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
907 some blocks may be read/written more than once. This option
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908 is mutually exclusive with verify= if and only if multiple
909 blocksizes (via bsrange=) are used, since fio only tracks
910 complete rewrites of blocks.
bb8895e0 911
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912softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
913 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
914 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
915 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
2b386d25
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916 disabled by default.
917
e8b1961d
JA
918random_generator=str Fio supports the following engines for generating
919 IO offsets for random IO:
920
921 tausworthe Strong 2^88 cycle random number generator
922 lfsr Linear feedback shift register generator
923
924 Tausworthe is a strong random number generator, but it
925 requires tracking on the side if we want to ensure that
926 blocks are only read or written once. LFSR guarantees
927 that we never generate the same offset twice, and it's
928 also less computationally expensive. It's not a true
929 random generator, however, though for IO purposes it's
930 typically good enough. LFSR only works with single
931 block sizes, not with workloads that use multiple block
932 sizes. If used with such a workload, fio may read or write
933 some blocks multiple times.
43f09da1 934
71bfa161
JA
935nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
936
937prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
938 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
939 See man ionice(1).
940
941prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
942
943thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
944 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
48097d5c
JA
945 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
946 thinktime_spin.
947
948thinktime_spin=int
949 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
950 doing something with the data received, before falling back
951 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
952 thinktime.
9c1f7434 953
4d01ece6 954thinktime_blocks=int
9c1f7434
JA
955 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
956 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
957 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
4d01ece6
JA
958 after every block. This effectively makes any queue depth
959 setting redundant, since no more than 1 IO will be queued
960 before we have to complete it and do our thinktime. In
961 other words, this setting effectively caps the queue depth
962 if the latter is larger.
71bfa161 963
581e7141 964rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
b09da8fa 965 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
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966 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
967 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
968 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
969 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
970 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
971 limit reads.
71bfa161
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972
973ratemin=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
4e991c23 974 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
581e7141
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975 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
976 read vs write separation.
4e991c23
JA
977
978rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
979 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
980 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
581e7141 981 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
de8f6de9 982 as rate is used for read vs write separation.
4e991c23
JA
983
984rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
581e7141 985 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
de8f6de9 986 write separation.
71bfa161 987
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988latency_target=int If set, fio will attempt to find the max performance
989 point that the given workload will run at while maintaining a
990 latency below this target. The values is given in microseconds.
991 See latency_window and latency_percentile
992
993latency_window=int Used with latency_target to specify the sample window
994 that the job is run at varying queue depths to test the
995 performance. The value is given in microseconds.
996
997latency_percentile=float The percentage of IOs that must fall within the
998 criteria specified by latency_target and latency_window. If not
999 set, this defaults to 100.0, meaning that all IOs must be equal
1000 or below to the value set by latency_target.
1001
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1002max_latency=int If set, fio will exit the job if it exceeds this maximum
1003 latency. It will exit with an ETIME error.
1004
71bfa161 1005ratecycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'ratemin' over this number
6c219763 1006 of milliseconds.
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1007
1008cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
a08bc17f
JA
1009 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
1010 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
1011 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
7dbb6eba 1012 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
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1013 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
1014 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
1015 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
1016 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
71bfa161 1017
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1018cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
1019 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
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JA
1020 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
1021 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
1022 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
d2e268b0 1023
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1024cpus_allowed_policy=str Set the policy of how fio distributes the CPUs
1025 specified by cpus_allowed or cpumask. Two policies are
1026 supported:
1027
1028 shared All jobs will share the CPU set specified.
1029 split Each job will get a unique CPU from the CPU set.
1030
1031 'shared' is the default behaviour, if the option isn't
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JA
1032 specified. If split is specified, then fio will will assign
1033 one cpu per job. If not enough CPUs are given for the jobs
1034 listed, then fio will roundrobin the CPUs in the set.
c2acfbac 1035
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1036numa_cpu_nodes=str Set this job running on spcified NUMA nodes' CPUs. The
1037 arguments allow comma delimited list of cpu numbers,
1038 A-B ranges, or 'all'. Note, to enable numa options support,
67bf9823 1039 fio must be built on a system with libnuma-dev(el) installed.
d0b937ed
YR
1040
1041numa_mem_policy=str Set this job's memory policy and corresponding NUMA
1042 nodes. Format of the argements:
1043 <mode>[:<nodelist>]
1044 `mode' is one of the following memory policy:
1045 default, prefer, bind, interleave, local
1046 For `default' and `local' memory policy, no node is
1047 needed to be specified.
1048 For `prefer', only one node is allowed.
1049 For `bind' and `interleave', it allow comma delimited
1050 list of numbers, A-B ranges, or 'all'.
1051
e417fd66 1052startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
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1053 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
1054 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
1055 time.
1056
e417fd66 1057runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
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JA
1058 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
1059 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
1060 cap the total runtime to a given time.
1061
cf4464ca 1062time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
bf9a3edb 1063 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
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JA
1064 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
1065 as many times as the runtime allows.
1066
e417fd66 1067ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
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JA
1068 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
1069 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
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JA
1070 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
1071 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
1072 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
1073 or runtime is specified.
721938ae 1074
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1075invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
1076 to starting io. Defaults to true.
1077
1078sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
1079 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
1080
d3aad8f2 1081iomem=str
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1082mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
1083 The allowed values are:
1084
1085 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
1086
1087 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
1088 through shmget(2).
1089
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1090 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
1091
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1092 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
1093 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
1094 a filename is given after the option. The
1095 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
71bfa161 1096
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JA
1097 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
1098 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
1099 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
1100
71bfa161 1101 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
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JA
1102 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
1103 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
1104 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
1105 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
b22989b9 1106 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
5394ae5f
JA
1107 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
1108 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
1109 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
1110 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
1111 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
1112 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
56bb17f2 1113 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
5394ae5f
JA
1114
1115 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
1116 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
1117 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
71bfa161 1118
d529ee19
JA
1119iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
1120 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
1121 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
1122 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
1123 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
1124 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
1125 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
1126 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
1127
f7fa2653 1128hugepage-size=int
56bb17f2 1129 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
b22989b9 1130 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
c51074e7
JA
1131 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
1132 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
1133 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
56bb17f2 1134
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JA
1135exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
1136 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
1137 desired action.
1138
1139bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
6c219763 1140 is specified in milliseconds.
71bfa161 1141
c8eeb9df
JA
1142iopsavgtime=int Average the calculated IOPS over the given time. Value
1143 is specified in milliseconds.
1144
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JA
1145create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
1146 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
1147 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
1148 used and even the number of processors in the system.
1149
1150create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
1151 default.
1152
814452bd
JA
1153create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
1154 when it's time to do IO to that file.
1155
25460cf6
JA
1156create_only=bool If true, fio will only run the setup phase of the job.
1157 If files need to be laid out or updated on disk, only
1158 that will be done. The actual job contents are not
1159 executed.
1160
afad68f7 1161pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
34f1c044
JA
1162 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
1163 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
9c0d2241
JA
1164 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
1165 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
1166 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
1167 IO.
afad68f7 1168
e545a6ce 1169unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
bf9a3edb
JA
1170 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
1171 set again and again.
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JA
1172
1173loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
1174 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
1175 to 1.
1176
62167762
JC
1177verify_only Do not perform specified workload---only verify data still
1178 matches previous invocation of this workload. This option
1179 allows one to check data multiple times at a later date
1180 without overwriting it. This option makes sense only for
1181 workloads that write data, and does not support workloads
1182 with the time_based option set.
1183
68e1f29a 1184do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
e84c73a8
SL
1185 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
1186
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JA
1187verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
1188 after each iteration of the job. The allowed values are:
1189
1190 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
1191 it in the header of each block.
1192
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JA
1193 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
1194 area and store it in the header of each
1195 block.
1196
bac39e0e
JA
1197 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
1198 it in the header of each block.
1199
3845591f 1200 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
0539d758
JA
1201 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
1202 back to regular software crc32c, if not
1203 supported by the system.
3845591f 1204
71bfa161
JA
1205 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
1206 it in the header of each block.
1207
969f7ed3
JA
1208 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
1209 it in the header of each block.
1210
17dc34df
JA
1211 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
1212 it in the header of each block.
1213
844ea602
JA
1214 xxhash Use xxhash as the checksum function. Generally
1215 the fastest software checksum that fio
1216 supports.
1217
cd14cc10
JA
1218 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
1219
1220 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
1221
7c353ceb
JA
1222 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
1223
7437ee87
SL
1224 meta Write extra information about each io
1225 (timestamp, block number etc.). The block
62167762
JC
1226 number is verified. The io sequence number is
1227 verified for workloads that write data.
1228 See also verify_pattern.
7437ee87 1229
36690c9b
JA
1230 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
1231 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
1232 else.
1233
6c219763 1234 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
71bfa161 1235 system to make sure that the written data is also
b892dc08
JA
1236 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
1237 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
1238 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
1239 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
1240 newly written data.
71bfa161 1241
160b966d
JA
1242verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
1243 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
1244 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
1245 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
1246 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
1247 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
1248 significant.
3f9f4e26 1249
f7fa2653 1250verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
546a9142
SL
1251 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
1252 verifying.
1253
f7fa2653 1254verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
3f9f4e26
SL
1255 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
1256 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
1257 evenly.
90059d65 1258
0e92f873 1259verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
e28218f3
SL
1260 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
1261 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
1262 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
1263 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
0e92f873
RR
1264 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
1265 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
996093bb
JA
1266 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
1267 with verify=meta.
e28218f3 1268
68e1f29a 1269verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
a12a3b4d
JA
1270 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
1271 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
1272 failure.
e8462bd8 1273
b463e936
JA
1274verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
1275 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
1276 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
ef71e317 1277 corruption occurred. Off by default.
b463e936 1278
e8462bd8
JA
1279verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
1280 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
1281 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
1282 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
c85c324c
JA
1283 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
1284 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
1285 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
1286 IO in flight while verifies are running.
e8462bd8
JA
1287
1288verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
1289 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
1290 format used.
6f87418f
JA
1291
1292verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
1293 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
1294 other words, everything is written then everything is read
1295 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
1296 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
1297 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
1298 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
1299 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
f42195a3
JA
1300 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
1301
6f87418f
JA
1302verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1303 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1304 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
f42195a3
JA
1305 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1306 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1307 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1308 blocks will be verified more than once.
66c098b8 1309
d392365e 1310stonewall
de8f6de9 1311wait_for_previous Wait for preceding jobs in the job file to exit, before
71bfa161 1312 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
b3d62a75
JA
1313 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1314 a new reporting group.
1315
abcab6af 1316new_group Start a new reporting group. See: group_reporting.
71bfa161
JA
1317
1318numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1319 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
abcab6af
AV
1320 the same thing. Each thread is reported separately; to see
1321 statistics for all clones as a whole, use group_reporting in
1322 conjunction with new_group.
1323
1324group_reporting It may sometimes be interesting to display statistics for
04b2f799
JA
1325 groups of jobs as a whole instead of for each individual job.
1326 This is especially true if 'numjobs' is used; looking at
1327 individual thread/process output quickly becomes unwieldy.
1328 To see the final report per-group instead of per-job, use
1329 'group_reporting'. Jobs in a file will be part of the same
1330 reporting group, unless if separated by a stonewall, or by
1331 using 'new_group'.
71bfa161
JA
1332
1333thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1334 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1335 instead.
1336
f7fa2653 1337zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
71bfa161 1338
f7fa2653 1339zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
71bfa161
JA
1340 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1341 io on zones of a file.
1342
076efc7c 1343write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
5b42a488
SH
1344 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1345 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
71bfa161 1346
076efc7c 1347read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
71bfa161 1348 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
6df8adaa
JA
1349 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1350 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1351 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1352 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1353 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
ea3e51c3 1354 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
66c098b8 1355
64bbb865 1356replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
62776229
JA
1357 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1358 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1359 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1360 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1361 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1362 given device, but different timings.
71bfa161 1363
d1c46c04
DN
1364replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1365 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1366 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
de8f6de9 1367 undesirable because on a different machine those major/minor
d1c46c04
DN
1368 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1369 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1370 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1371 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1372 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1373 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1374 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1375 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1376 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1377 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1378 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1379 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1380
e3cedca7 1381write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
71bfa161 1382 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
e0da9bc2
JA
1383 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1384 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
ddb754db 1385 graphs. See write_lat_log for behaviour of given
8ad3b3dd
JA
1386 filename. For this option, the suffix is _bw.x.log, where
1387 x is the index of the job (1..N, where N is the number of
1388 jobs).
71bfa161 1389
e3cedca7 1390write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
02af0988
JA
1391 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1392 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1393 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1394 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
e3cedca7
JA
1395
1396 write_lat_log=foo
1397
8ad3b3dd
JA
1398 The actual log names will be foo_slat.x.log, foo_clat.x.log,
1399 and foo_lat.x.log, where x is the index of the job (1..N,
1400 where N is the number of jobs). This helps fio_generate_plot
1401 fine the logs automatically.
71bfa161 1402
b8bc8cba
JA
1403write_iops_log=str Same as write_bw_log, but writes IOPS. If no filename is
1404 given with this option, the default filename of
8ad3b3dd
JA
1405 "jobname_type.x.log" is used,where x is the index of the job
1406 (1..N, where N is the number of jobs). Even if the filename
1407 is given, fio will still append the type of log.
b8bc8cba
JA
1408
1409log_avg_msec=int By default, fio will log an entry in the iops, latency,
1410 or bw log for every IO that completes. When writing to the
1411 disk log, that can quickly grow to a very large size. Setting
1412 this option makes fio average the each log entry over the
1413 specified period of time, reducing the resolution of the log.
1414 Defaults to 0.
1415
ae588852
JA
1416log_offset=int If this is set, the iolog options will include the byte
1417 offset for the IO entry as well as the other data values.
1418
aee2ab67
JA
1419log_compression=int If this is set, fio will compress the IO logs as
1420 it goes, to keep the memory footprint lower. When a log
1421 reaches the specified size, that chunk is removed and
1422 compressed in the background. Given that IO logs are
1423 fairly highly compressible, this yields a nice memory
1424 savings for longer runs. The downside is that the
1425 compression will consume some background CPU cycles, so
1426 it may impact the run. This, however, is also true if
1427 the logging ends up consuming most of the system memory.
1428 So pick your poison. The IO logs are saved normally at the
1429 end of a run, by decompressing the chunks and storing them
1430 in the specified log file. This feature depends on the
1431 availability of zlib.
1432
b26317c9
JA
1433log_store_compressed=bool If set, and log_compression is also set,
1434 fio will store the log files in a compressed format. They
1435 can be decompressed with fio, using the --inflate-log
1436 command line parameter. The files will be stored with a
1437 .fz suffix.
1438
f7fa2653 1439lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
71bfa161
JA
1440 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1441 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
81c6b6cd 1442 The amount specified is per worker.
71bfa161
JA
1443
1444exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1445 through system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1446 jobname.prerun.txt.
71bfa161
JA
1447
1448exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1449 though system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1450 jobname.postrun.txt.
71bfa161
JA
1451
1452ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1453 io scheduler before running.
1454
0a839f30
JA
1455disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1456 supports it. Defaults to on.
1457
02af0988 1458disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
9520ebb9
JA
1459 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1460 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1461 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1462 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1463 disable_bw as well.
1464
02af0988
JA
1465disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1466 disable_lat.
1467
9520ebb9 1468disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
02af0988 1469 disable_slat.
9520ebb9
JA
1470
1471disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
02af0988 1472 disable_lat.
9520ebb9 1473
83349190
YH
1474clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1475 completion latencies.
1476
1477percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
1478 for completion latencies. Each number is a floating
1479 number in the range (0,100], and the maximum length of
1480 the list is 20. Use ':' to separate the numbers, and
1481 list the numbers in ascending order. For example,
1482 --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause fio to report
1483 the values of completion latency below which 99.5% and
1484 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
1485
23893646
JA
1486clocksource=str Use the given clocksource as the base of timing. The
1487 supported options are:
1488
1489 gettimeofday gettimeofday(2)
1490
1491 clock_gettime clock_gettime(2)
1492
1493 cpu Internal CPU clock source
1494
1495 cpu is the preferred clocksource if it is reliable, as it
1496 is very fast (and fio is heavy on time calls). Fio will
1497 automatically use this clocksource if it's supported and
1498 considered reliable on the system it is running on, unless
1499 another clocksource is specifically set. For x86/x86-64 CPUs,
1500 this means supporting TSC Invariant.
1501
993bf48b
JA
1502gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1503 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1504 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1505 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1506 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1507 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1508
be4ecfdf
JA
1509gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1510 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1511 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1512 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1513 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1514 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1515 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1516 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1517 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1518 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1519 jobs.
a696fa2a 1520
06842027 1521continue_on_error=str Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
f2bba182
RR
1522 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1523 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1524 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1525 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1526 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1527 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1528 run.
be4ecfdf 1529
06842027
SL
1530 The allowed values are:
1531
1532 none Exit on any IO or verify errors.
1533
1534 read Continue on read errors, exit on all others.
1535
1536 write Continue on write errors, exit on all others.
1537
1538 io Continue on any IO error, exit on all others.
1539
1540 verify Continue on verify errors, exit on all others.
1541
1542 all Continue on all errors.
1543
1544 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'.
1545
1546 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'all'.
1547
8b28bd41
DM
1548ignore_error=str Sometimes you want to ignore some errors during test
1549 in that case you can specify error list for each error type.
1550 ignore_error=READ_ERR_LIST,WRITE_ERR_LIST,VERIFY_ERR_LIST
1551 errors for given error type is separated with ':'. Error
1552 may be symbol ('ENOSPC', 'ENOMEM') or integer.
1553 Example:
1554 ignore_error=EAGAIN,ENOSPC:122
66c098b8
BC
1555 This option will ignore EAGAIN from READ, and ENOSPC and
1556 122(EDQUOT) from WRITE.
8b28bd41
DM
1557
1558error_dump=bool If set dump every error even if it is non fatal, true
1559 by default. If disabled only fatal error will be dumped
66c098b8 1560
6adb38a1
JA
1561cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1562 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1563 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1564 mounted, you can do so with:
a696fa2a
JA
1565
1566 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1567
a696fa2a
JA
1568cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1569 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1570 are in the range of 100..1000.
71bfa161 1571
7de87099
VG
1572cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1573 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1574 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1575 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1576 files after job completion. Default: false
1577
e0b0d892
JA
1578uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1579 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1580
1581gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1582
9e684a49
DE
1583flow_id=int The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a
1584 global flow. See flow.
1585
1586flow=int Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then
1587 there is a 'flow counter' which is used to regulate the
1588 proportion of activity between two or more jobs. fio attempts
1589 to keep this flow counter near zero. The 'flow' parameter
1590 stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the flow
1591 counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if
1592 one job has flow=8 and another job has flow=-1, then there
1593 will be a roughly 1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
1594
1595flow_watermark=int The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow
1596 counter is allowed to reach before the job must wait for a
1597 lower value of the counter.
1598
1599flow_sleep=int The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow
1600 watermark has been exceeded before retrying operations
1601
de890a1e
SL
1602In addition, there are some parameters which are only valid when a specific
1603ioengine is in use. These are used identically to normal parameters, with the
1604caveat that when used on the command line, they must come after the ioengine
1605that defines them is selected.
1606
1607[libaio] userspace_reap Normally, with the libaio engine in use, fio will use
1608 the io_getevents system call to reap newly returned events.
1609 With this flag turned on, the AIO ring will be read directly
1610 from user-space to reap events. The reaping mode is only
1611 enabled when polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
1612 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
1613
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JA
1614[cpu] cpuload=int Attempt to use the specified percentage of CPU cycles.
1615
1616[cpu] cpuchunks=int Split the load into cycles of the given time. In
1617 microseconds.
1618
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JA
1619[cpu] exit_on_io_done=bool Detect when IO threads are done, then exit.
1620
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SL
1621[netsplice] hostname=str
1622[net] hostname=str The host name or IP address to use for TCP or UDP based IO.
1623 If the job is a TCP listener or UDP reader, the hostname is not
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SB
1624 used and must be omitted unless it is a valid UDP multicast
1625 address.
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SL
1626
1627[netsplice] port=int
1628[net] port=int The TCP or UDP port to bind to or connect to.
1629
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SB
1630[netsplice] interface=str
1631[net] interface=str The IP address of the network interface used to send or
1632 receive UDP multicast
1633
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SB
1634[netsplice] ttl=int
1635[net] ttl=int Time-to-live value for outgoing UDP multicast packets.
1636 Default: 1
1637
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JA
1638[netsplice] nodelay=bool
1639[net] nodelay=bool Set TCP_NODELAY on TCP connections.
1640
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SL
1641[netsplice] protocol=str
1642[netsplice] proto=str
1643[net] protocol=str
1644[net] proto=str The network protocol to use. Accepted values are:
1645
1646 tcp Transmission control protocol
49ccb8c1 1647 tcpv6 Transmission control protocol V6
f5cc3d0e 1648 udp User datagram protocol
49ccb8c1 1649 udpv6 User datagram protocol V6
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SL
1650 unix UNIX domain socket
1651
1652 When the protocol is TCP or UDP, the port must also be given,
1653 as well as the hostname if the job is a TCP listener or UDP
1654 reader. For unix sockets, the normal filename option should be
1655 used and the port is invalid.
1656
1657[net] listen For TCP network connections, tell fio to listen for incoming
1658 connections rather than initiating an outgoing connection. The
1659 hostname must be omitted if this option is used.
b511c9aa 1660[net] pingpong Normaly a network writer will just continue writing data, and
7aeb1e94
JA
1661 a network reader will just consume packages. If pingpong=1
1662 is set, a writer will send its normal payload to the reader,
1663 then wait for the reader to send the same payload back. This
1664 allows fio to measure network latencies. The submission
1665 and completion latencies then measure local time spent
1666 sending or receiving, and the completion latency measures
1667 how long it took for the other end to receive and send back.
b511c9aa
SB
1668 For UDP multicast traffic pingpong=1 should only be set for a
1669 single reader when multiple readers are listening to the same
1670 address.
7aeb1e94 1671
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DM
1672[e4defrag] donorname=str
1673 File will be used as a block donor(swap extents between files)
1674[e4defrag] inplace=int
66c098b8 1675 Configure donor file blocks allocation strategy
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DM
1676 0(default): Preallocate donor's file on init
1677 1 : allocate space immidietly inside defragment event,
1678 and free right after event
1679
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SL
1680
1681
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JA
16826.0 Interpreting the output
1683---------------------------
1684
1685fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1686status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1687
73c8b082 1688Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
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JA
1689
1690The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1691each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1692
1693Idle Run
1694---- ---
1695P Thread setup, but not started.
1696C Thread created.
9c6f6316 1697I Thread initialized, waiting or generating necessary data.
b0f65863 1698 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
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JA
1699 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1700 r Running, doing random reads.
1701 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1702 w Running, doing random writes.
1703 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1704 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1705 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
3d434057 1706 f Running, finishing up (writing IO logs, etc)
fc6bd43c 1707 V Running, doing verification of written data.
71bfa161 1708E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
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JA
1709_ Thread reaped, or
1710X Thread reaped, exited with an error.
a5e371a6 1711K Thread reaped, exited due to signal.
71bfa161 1712
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JA
1713Fio will condense the thread string as not to take up more space on the
1714command line as is needed. For instance, if you have 10 readers and 10
1715writers running, the output would look like this:
1716
1717Jobs: 20 (f=20): [R(10),W(10)] [4.0% done] [2103MB/0KB/0KB /s] [538K/0/0 iops] [eta 57m:36s]
1718
1719Fio will still maintain the ordering, though. So the above means that jobs
17201..10 are readers, and 11..20 are writers.
1721
71bfa161 1722The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
c9f60304
JA
1723currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1724listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1725and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
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JA
1726the following groups (if any). Note that the string is displayed in order,
1727so it's possible to tell which of the jobs are currently doing what. The
1728first character is the first job defined in the job file, and so forth.
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1729
1730When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1731each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1732direction, the output looks like:
1733
1734Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
35649e58 1735 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
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JA
1736 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1737 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
b22989b9 1738 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
e7823a94 1739 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
71619dc2 1740 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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JA
1741 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1742 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
30061b97 1743 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
8abdce66
JA
1744 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1745 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
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JA
1746
1747The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1748thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1749they denote:
1750
1751io= Number of megabytes io performed
1752bw= Average bandwidth rate
35649e58 1753iops= Average IOs performed per second
71bfa161 1754runt= The runtime of that thread
72fbda2a 1755 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
71bfa161
JA
1756 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
1757 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
8a35c71e 1758 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
bf9a3edb 1759 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
8a35c71e 1760 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
0d237712
LAG
1761 above, milliseconds is the best scale. Note: in --minimal mode
1762 latencies are always expressed in microseconds.
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JA
1763 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
1764 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
1765 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
1766 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
1767 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
1768 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
1769 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
1770 this thread received in this group. This last value is
1771 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
1772 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
1773cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
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JA
1774 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
1775 system and user time, and finally the number of major
1776 and minor page faults.
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JA
1777IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
1778 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
1779 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
1780 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
1781 range from 16 to 31.
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JA
1782IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
1783 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
1784 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
1785 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
1786IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
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JA
1787IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
1788 of them were short.
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JA
1789IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
1790 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
1791 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
1792 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
8abdce66
JA
1793 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
1794 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
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1795
1796After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
1797will look like this:
1798
1799Run status group 0 (all jobs):
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JA
1800 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
1801 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
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1802
1803For each data direction, it prints:
1804
1805io= Number of megabytes io performed.
1806aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
1807minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1808maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1809mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
1810maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
1811
1812And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
1813
1814Disk stats (read/write):
1815 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
1816
1817Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
1818numbers denote:
1819
1820ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
1821merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
1822ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
1823io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
1824util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
1825 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
1826
8423bd11
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1827It is also possible to get fio to dump the current output while it is
1828running, without terminating the job. To do that, send fio the USR1 signal.
06464907
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1829You can also get regularly timed dumps by using the --status-interval
1830parameter, or by creating a file in /tmp named fio-dump-status. If fio
1831sees this file, it will unlink it and dump the current output status.
8423bd11 1832
71bfa161
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1833
18347.0 Terse output
1835----------------
1836
1837For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
6af019c9 1838of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
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JA
1839The format is one long line of values, such as:
1840
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DN
18412;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%
1842A description of this job goes here.
1843
1844The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
71bfa161 1845
525c2bfa
JA
1846To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
1847value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
1848be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
1849signify that change.
6820cb3b 1850
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1851Split up, the format is as follows:
1852
5e726d0a 1853 terse version, fio version, jobname, groupid, error
71bfa161 1854 READ status:
312b4af2 1855 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
de196b82
JA
1856 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1857 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1db92cb6 1858 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
de196b82 1859 Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
0d237712 1860 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
71bfa161 1861 WRITE status:
312b4af2 1862 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
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JA
1863 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1864 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1db92cb6 1865 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
de196b82 1866 Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
0d237712 1867 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
046ee302 1868 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
2270890c 1869 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
562c2d2f
DN
1870 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
1871 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
f2f788dd
JA
1872 Disk utilization: Disk name, Read ios, write ios,
1873 Read merges, write merges,
1874 Read ticks, write ticks,
3d7cd9b4 1875 Time spent in queue, disk utilization percentage
de8f6de9 1876 Additional Info (dependent on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
66c098b8 1877
de8f6de9 1878 Additional Info (dependent on description being set): Text description
25c8b9d7 1879
1db92cb6
JA
1880Completion latency percentiles can be a grouping of up to 20 sets, so
1881for the terse output fio writes all of them. Each field will look like this:
1882
1883 1.00%=6112
1884
1885which is the Xth percentile, and the usec latency associated with it.
1886
f2f788dd
JA
1887For disk utilization, all disks used by fio are shown. So for each disk
1888there will be a disk utilization section.
1889
25c8b9d7
PD
1890
18918.0 Trace file format
1892---------------------
66c098b8 1893There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
25c8b9d7
PD
1894is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
1895below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
1896
1897In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
1898
1899
19008.1 Trace file format v1
1901------------------------
1902Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
1903
1904rw, offset, length
1905
1906where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
1907
1908This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
1909
1910
19118.2 Trace file format v2
1912------------------------
1913The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
1914It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
1915possible file actions.
1916
1917The first line of the trace file has to be:
1918
1919fio version 2 iolog
1920
1921Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
1922
1923The file management format:
1924
1925filename action
1926
1927The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
1928
1929add Add the given filename to the trace
66c098b8 1930open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
25c8b9d7
PD
1931 been added with the add action before.
1932close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
1933 opened before.
1934
1935
1936The file io action format:
1937
1938filename action offset length
1939
1940The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
66c098b8 1941before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
25c8b9d7
PD
1942bytes. The action can be one of these:
1943
1944wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
1945read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
1946write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
1947sync fsync() the file
1948datasync fdatasync() the file
1949trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes
f2a2ce0e
HL
1950
1951
19529.0 CPU idleness profiling
06464907 1953--------------------------
f2a2ce0e
HL
1954In some cases, we want to understand CPU overhead in a test. For example,
1955we test patches for the specific goodness of whether they reduce CPU usage.
1956fio implements a balloon approach to create a thread per CPU that runs at
1957idle priority, meaning that it only runs when nobody else needs the cpu.
1958By measuring the amount of work completed by the thread, idleness of each
1959CPU can be derived accordingly.
1960
1961An unit work is defined as touching a full page of unsigned characters. Mean
1962and standard deviation of time to complete an unit work is reported in "unit
1963work" section. Options can be chosen to report detailed percpu idleness or
1964overall system idleness by aggregating percpu stats.