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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
29dbd1e5 1310. Verification and triggers
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1411. Log File Formats
15
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16
171.0 Overview and history
18------------------------
19fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
20case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
21performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
22such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
23Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
24without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
25
26A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
27of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
28way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
29memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
30reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
31simulate both of these cases, and many more.
32
332.0 How fio works
34-----------------
35The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
36writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
37any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
38is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
39sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
40and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
41bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
42
43 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
44 We may only be reading sequentially from this
45 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
46 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
47
48 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
49 a single value, or it may describe a range of
50 block sizes.
51
52 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
53
54 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
55 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
d0ff85df 56 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
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57 SG (SCSI generic sg).
58
6c219763 59 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
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60 depth do we want to maintain?
61
62 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
63
64 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
65
66 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
67 this workload over.
66c098b8 68
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69The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
70there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
71job behaves.
72
73
743.0 Running fio
75---------------
76See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
77of them.
78
79Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
80(or job files) as parameters:
81
82$ fio job_file
83
84and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
85more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
86of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
550b1db6 87parameter described in the parameter section.
71bfa161 88
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89If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
90parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
91to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
92(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
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93mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
94also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
95--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
96Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
97until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
98similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
99job until a new [] job entry is seen.
b4692828 100
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101fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
102in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
6c219763 103such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
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104
105
1064.0 Job file format
107-------------------
108As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
109what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
110where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
111to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
112A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
113may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
114several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
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115section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
116'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
71bfa161 117
3c54bc46 118So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
b22989b9 119randomly reading from a 128MB file.
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120
121; -- start job file --
122[global]
123rw=randread
124size=128m
125
126[job1]
127
128[job2]
129
130; -- end job file --
131
132As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
133described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
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134makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
135line, this job would look as follows:
136
137$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
138
71bfa161 139
3c54bc46 140Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
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141to files.
142
143; -- start job file --
144[random-writers]
145ioengine=libaio
146iodepth=4
147rw=randwrite
148bs=32k
149direct=0
150size=64m
151numjobs=4
152
153; -- end job file --
154
155Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
156We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
b22989b9 157increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
71bfa161 158fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
b22989b9 159to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
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160have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
161specify:
162
163$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
71bfa161 164
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165When fio is utilized as a basis of any reasonably large test suite, it might be
166desirable to share a set of standardized settings across multiple job files.
167Instead of copy/pasting such settings, any section may pull in an external
168.fio file with 'include filename' directive, as in the following example:
169
170; -- start job file including.fio --
171[global]
172filename=/tmp/test
173filesize=1m
174include glob-include.fio
175
176[test]
177rw=randread
178bs=4k
179time_based=1
180runtime=10
181include test-include.fio
182; -- end job file including.fio --
183
184; -- start job file glob-include.fio --
185thread=1
186group_reporting=1
187; -- end job file glob-include.fio --
188
189; -- start job file test-include.fio --
190ioengine=libaio
191iodepth=4
192; -- end job file test-include.fio --
193
194Settings pulled into a section apply to that section only (except global
195section). Include directives may be nested in that any included file may
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196contain further include directive(s). Include files may not contain []
197sections.
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198
199
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2004.1 Environment variables
201-------------------------
202
3c54bc46 203fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
4fbe1860 204sub-string of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
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205words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
206environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
207is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
208substituted.
209
210As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
211
212$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
213
214; -- start job file --
215[random-writers]
216rw=randwrite
217size=${SIZE}
218numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
219; -- end job file --
220
221This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
222
223; -- start job file --
224[random-writers]
225rw=randwrite
226size=64m
227numjobs=4
228; -- end job file --
229
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230fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
231inspiration.
232
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2334.2 Reserved keywords
234---------------------
235
236Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
237internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
238
239$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
240$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
241$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
242
243These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
244automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
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245is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
246perform actions like:
247
248size=8*$mb_memory
249
250and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
251machine.
74929ac2 252
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253
2545.0 Detailed list of parameters
255-------------------------------
256
257This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
258Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
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259a string. Anywhere a numeric value is required, an arithmetic expression
260may be used, provided it is surrounded by parentheses. Supported operators
261are:
262
263 addition (+)
264 subtraction (-)
265 multiplication (*)
266 division (/)
267 modulus (%)
268 exponentiation (^)
269
270For time values in expressions, units are microseconds by default. This is
271different than for time values not in expressions (not enclosed in
272parentheses). The following types are used:
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273
274str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
b09da8fa 275time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
e417fd66 276 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
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277 minutes, and hours, and accepts 'ms' (or 'msec') for milliseconds,
278 and 'us' (or 'usec') for microseconds.
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279int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
280 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
281 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
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282 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
283 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
b09da8fa 284 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
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285 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
286 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
287 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
288 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
289 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
290 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
291 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
292 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
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293bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
294 true and false (1 and 0).
b09da8fa 295irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
bf9a3edb 296 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
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297 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
298 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
f7fa2653 299 int.
83349190 300float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
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301
302With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
303parameters.
304
305name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
306 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
c2b1e753 307 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
6c219763 308 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
c2b1e753 309 job.
71bfa161 310
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311wait_for=str Specifies the name of the already defined job to wait
312 for. Single waitee name only may be specified. If set, the job
313 won't be started until all workers of the waitee job are done.
314
315 Wait_for operates on the job name basis, so there are a few
316 limitations. First, the waitee must be defined prior to the
317 waiter job (meaning no forward references). Second, if a job
318 is being referenced as a waitee, it must have a unique name
319 (no duplicate waitees).
320
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321description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
322 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
323 not parsed.
324
3776041e 325directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
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326 in a different location than "./". See the 'filename' option
327 for escaping certain characters.
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328
329filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
330 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
331 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
ed92ac0c 332 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
414c2a3e 333 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
0fd666bf 334 and protocol to use in the format of =host,port,protocol.
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335 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
336 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
337 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
338 as the two working files, you would use
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339 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are
340 accessed as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device,
341 \\.\PhysicalDrive1 for the second etc. Note: Windows and
342 FreeBSD prevent write access to areas of the disk containing
343 in-use data (e.g. filesystems).
344 If the wanted filename does need to include a colon, then
345 escape that with a '\' character. For instance, if the filename
346 is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would use
347 filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name, meaning
348 stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
349 direction set.
71bfa161 350
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351filename_format=str
352 If sharing multiple files between jobs, it is usually necessary
353 to have fio generate the exact names that you want. By default,
354 fio will name a file based on the default file format
355 specification of jobname.jobnumber.filenumber. With this
356 option, that can be customized. Fio will recognize and replace
357 the following keywords in this string:
358
359 $jobname
360 The name of the worker thread or process.
361
362 $jobnum
363 The incremental number of the worker thread or
364 process.
365
366 $filenum
367 The incremental number of the file for that worker
368 thread or process.
369
370 To have dependent jobs share a set of files, this option can
371 be set to have fio generate filenames that are shared between
372 the two. For instance, if testfiles.$filenum is specified,
373 file number 4 for any job will be named testfiles.4. The
374 default of $jobname.$jobnum.$filenum will be used if
375 no other format specifier is given.
376
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377unique_filename=bool To avoid collisions between networked clients, fio
378 defaults to prefixing any generated filenames (with a directory
379 specified) with the source of the client connecting. To disable
380 this behavior, set this option to 0.
381
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382opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
383 directory and down the file system tree.
384
3776041e 385lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
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386 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
387 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
388 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
389 share files. The lock modes are:
390
391 none No locking. The default.
392 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
393 excluding all others.
394 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
395 readers may access the file at the
396 same time, but writes get exclusive
397 access.
398
d3aad8f2 399readwrite=str
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400rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
401
402 read Sequential reads
403 write Sequential writes
404 randwrite Random writes
405 randread Random reads
10b023db 406 rw,readwrite Sequential mixed reads and writes
71bfa161 407 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
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408 trimwrite Mixed trims and writes. Blocks will be
409 trimmed first, then written to.
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410
411 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
412 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
211097b2 413 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
38dad62d 414 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
892ea9bd 415 done by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
38dad62d 416 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
059b0802 417 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
ddb754db 418 suffix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
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419 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
420 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
421 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
422 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
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423
424rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
425 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
426 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
427 values are:
428
429 sequential Generate sequential offset
430 identical Generate the same offset
431
432 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
433 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
434 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
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435 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
436 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
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437 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
438 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
439 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
440 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
441 offset.
71bfa161 442
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443kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
444 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
445 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
446 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
447
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448unified_rw_reporting=bool Fio normally reports statistics on a per
449 data direction basis, meaning that read, write, and trim are
450 accounted and reported separately. If this option is set,
451 the fio will sum the results and report them as "mixed"
452 instead.
453
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454randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
455 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
40fe5e7b 456 Defaults to true.
ee738499 457
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458randseed=int Seed the random number generators based on this seed value, to
459 be able to control what sequence of output is being generated.
460 If not set, the random sequence depends on the randrepeat
461 setting.
462
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463fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
464 Accepted values are:
465
466 none Do not pre-allocate space
467 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
468 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
469 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
470 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
471 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
472
473 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
474 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
475 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
7bc8c2cf 476
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477fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
478 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
479 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
480 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
481 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
482 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
483
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484fadvise_stream=int Notify the kernel what write stream ID to place these
485 writes under. Only supported on Linux. Note, this option
486 may change going forward.
487
f7fa2653 488size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
7616cafe 489 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
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490 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance,
491 or increased/decreased by 'io_size'). Unless specific nrfiles
492 and filesize options are given, fio will divide this size
493 between the available files specified by the job. If not set,
494 fio will use the full size of the given files or devices.
495 If the files do not exist, size must be given. It is also
496 possible to give size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If
497 size=20% is given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the
498 given files or devices.
499
500io_size=int
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501io_limit=int Normally fio operates within the region set by 'size', which
502 means that the 'size' option sets both the region and size of
503 IO to be performed. Sometimes that is not what you want. With
504 this option, it is possible to define just the amount of IO
505 that fio should do. For instance, if 'size' is set to 20G and
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506 'io_size' is set to 5G, fio will perform IO within the first
507 20G but exit when 5G have been done. The opposite is also
508 possible - if 'size' is set to 20G, and 'io_size' is set to
509 40G, then fio will do 40G of IO within the 0..20G region.
77731b29 510
f7fa2653 511filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
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512 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
513 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
514 given, each created file is the same size.
515
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516file_append=bool Perform IO after the end of the file. Normally fio will
517 operate within the size of a file. If this option is set, then
518 fio will append to the file instead. This has identical
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519 behavior to setting offset to the size of a file. This option
520 is ignored on non-regular files.
bedc9dc2 521
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522fill_device=bool
523fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
aa31f1f1 524 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
de98bd30 525 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
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526 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
527 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
528 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
529 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
530 ENOSPC there.
aa31f1f1 531
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532blocksize=int
533bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
534 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
535 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
f90eff5a 536 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
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537 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write,trim.
538 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, 8k blocks for
539 writes, and 8k for trims. You can terminate the list with
540 a trailing comma. bs=4k,8k, would use the default value for
541 trims.. If you only wish to set the write size, you
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542 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
543 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
a00735e6 544
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545blockalign=int
546ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
547 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
548 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
549 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
550 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
551 files, so it will turn off that option.
552
d3aad8f2 553blocksize_range=irange
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554bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
555 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
556 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
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557 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
558 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
559 See bs=.
a00735e6 560
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561bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
562 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
563 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
564 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
565 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
566
567 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
568
569 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
570 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
571 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
572
573 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
574
575 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
576 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
577 option like this one:
578
579 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
580
581 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
582 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
583 up to more, it will error out.
584
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585 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
586 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
587 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
588 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
589 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
590 specify:
591
892ea9bd 592 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90:8k/10
720e84ad 593
d3aad8f2 594blocksize_unaligned
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595bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
596 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
597 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
71bfa161 598
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599bs_is_seq_rand If this option is set, fio will use the normal read,write
600 blocksize settings as sequential,random instead. Any random
601 read or write will use the WRITE blocksize settings, and any
602 sequential read or write will use the READ blocksize setting.
603
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604zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
605 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
606
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607refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
608 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
609 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
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610 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
611 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
5973cafb 612
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613scramble_buffers=bool If refill_buffers is too costly and the target is
614 using data deduplication, then setting this option will
615 slightly modify the IO buffer contents to defeat normal
616 de-dupe attempts. This is not enough to defeat more clever
617 block compression attempts, but it will stop naive dedupe of
618 blocks. Default: true.
619
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620buffer_compress_percentage=int If this is set, then fio will attempt to
621 provide IO buffer content (on WRITEs) that compress to
622 the specified level. Fio does this by providing a mix of
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623 random data and a fixed pattern. The fixed pattern is either
624 zeroes, or the pattern specified by buffer_pattern. If the
625 pattern option is used, it might skew the compression ratio
626 slightly. Note that this is per block size unit, for file/disk
627 wide compression level that matches this setting, you'll also
628 want to set refill_buffers.
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629
630buffer_compress_chunk=int See buffer_compress_percentage. This
631 setting allows fio to manage how big the ranges of random
632 data and zeroed data is. Without this set, fio will
633 provide buffer_compress_percentage of blocksize random
634 data, followed by the remaining zeroed. With this set
635 to some chunk size smaller than the block size, fio can
636 alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO
637 buffer.
638
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639buffer_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
640 pattern. If not set, the contents of io buffers is defined by
641 the other options related to buffer contents. The setting can
642 be any pattern of bytes, and can be prefixed with 0x for hex
643 values. It may also be a string, where the string must then
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644 be wrapped with "", e.g.:
645
646 buffer_pattern="abcd"
647 or
648 buffer_pattern=-12
649 or
650 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface
651
652 Also you can combine everything together in any order:
653 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface"abcd"-12
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654
655dedupe_percentage=int If set, fio will generate this percentage of
656 identical buffers when writing. These buffers will be
657 naturally dedupable. The contents of the buffers depend on
658 what other buffer compression settings have been set. It's
659 possible to have the individual buffers either fully
660 compressible, or not at all. This option only controls the
661 distribution of unique buffers.
ce35b1ec 662
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663nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
664
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665openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
666 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
667 simultaneous opens.
668
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669file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
670 service next. The following types are defined:
671
672 random Just choose a file at random.
673
674 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
675 is the default.
676
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677 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
678 the next. Multiple files can still be
679 open depending on 'openfiles'.
680
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681 zipf Use a zipfian distribution to decide what file
682 to access.
683
684 pareto Use a pareto distribution to decide what file
685 to access.
686
687 gauss Use a gaussian (normal) distribution to decide
688 what file to access.
689
690 For random, roundrobin, and sequential, a postfix can be
691 appended to tell fio how many I/Os to issue before switching
692 to a new file. For example, specifying
693 'file_service_type=random:8' would cause fio to issue 8 I/Os
694 before selecting a new file at random. For the non-uniform
695 distributions, a floating point postfix can be given to
696 influence how the distribution is skewed. See
697 'random_distribution' for a description of how that would work.
1907dbc6 698
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699ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
700 types are defined:
701
702 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
703 used to position the io location.
704
a31041ea 705 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
706
e05af9e5 707 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
1d2af02a 708
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709 psyncv Basic preadv(2) or pwritev(2) IO.
710
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711 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
712 may only support queued behaviour with
713 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
de890a1e 714 This engine defines engine specific options.
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715
716 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
717
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718 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
719
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720 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
721
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722 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
723 to/from using memcpy(3).
724
725 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
726 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
727 space to the kernel.
728
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729 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
730 regular read/write async.
731
71bfa161 732 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
6c219763 733 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
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734 the target is an sg character device
735 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
736 io.
737
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738 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
739 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
740 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
741
ed92ac0c 742 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
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743 Depending on the protocol used, the hostname,
744 port, listen and filename options are used to
745 specify what sort of connection to make, while
746 the protocol option determines which protocol
747 will be used.
748 This engine defines engine specific options.
ed92ac0c 749
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750 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
751 map data and send/receive.
de890a1e 752 This engine defines engine specific options.
9cce02e8 753
53aec0a4 754 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
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755 cycles according to the cpuload= and
756 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
757 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
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758 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
759 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
760 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
761 CPU at the desired rate.
ba0fbe10 762
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763 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
764 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
765 to async IO. See
766
767 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
768
769 for more info on GUASI.
770
21b8aee8 771 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
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772 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
773 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
774 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
21b8aee8 775
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776 falloc IO engine that does regular fallocate to
777 simulate data transfer as fio ioengine.
778 DDIR_READ does fallocate(,mode = keep_size,)
779 DDIR_WRITE does fallocate(,mode = 0)
780 DDIR_TRIM does fallocate(,mode = punch_hole)
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781
782 e4defrag IO engine that does regular EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT
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783 ioctls to simulate defragment activity in
784 request to DDIR_WRITE event
785
786 rbd IO engine supporting direct access to Ceph
787 Rados Block Devices (RBD) via librbd without
788 the need to use the kernel rbd driver. This
789 ioengine defines engine specific options.
790
791 gfapi Using Glusterfs libgfapi sync interface to
792 direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
793 options.
794
795 gfapi_async Using Glusterfs libgfapi async interface
796 to direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
797 having to go through FUSE. This ioengine
798 defines engine specific options.
0981fd71 799
b74e419e 800 libhdfs Read and write through Hadoop (HDFS).
a3f001f5 801 This engine interprets offsets a little
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802 differently. In HDFS, files once created
803 cannot be modified. So random writes are not
804 possible. To imitate this, libhdfs engine
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805 creates bunch of small files, and engine will
806 pick a file out of those files based on the
807 offset enerated by fio backend. Each jobs uses
808 it's own connection to HDFS.
1b10477b 809
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810 mtd Read, write and erase an MTD character device
811 (e.g., /dev/mtd0). Discards are treated as
812 erases. Depending on the underlying device
813 type, the I/O may have to go in a certain
814 pattern, e.g., on NAND, writing sequentially
815 to erase blocks and discarding before
816 overwriting. The writetrim mode works well
817 for this constraint.
818
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819 pmemblk Read and write through the NVML libpmemblk
820 interface.
821
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822 external Prefix to specify loading an external
823 IO engine object file. Append the engine
824 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
825 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
826
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827iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
828 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
829 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
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830 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
831 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
9b836561 832 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
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833 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
834 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
835 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
836 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
837 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
71bfa161 838
4950421a 839iodepth_batch_submit=int
cb5ab512 840iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
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841 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
842 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
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843 bigger batches of IO at the time. If it is set to 0 the iodepth
844 value will be used.
cb5ab512 845
82407585 846iodepth_batch_complete_min=int
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847iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
848 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
849 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
850 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
851 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
852 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
853 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
854 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
855
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856iodepth_batch_complete_max=int This defines maximum pieces of IO to
857 retrieve at once. This variable should be used along with
858 iodepth_batch_complete_min=int variable, specifying the range
859 of min and max amount of IO which should be retrieved. By default
860 it is equal to iodepth_batch_complete_min value.
861
862 Example #1:
863
864 iodepth_batch_complete_min=1
865 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
866
867 which means that we will retrieve at leat 1 IO and up to the
868 whole submitted queue depth. If none of IO has been completed
869 yet, we will wait.
870
871 Example #2:
872
873 iodepth_batch_complete_min=0
874 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
875
876 which means that we can retrieve up to the whole submitted
877 queue depth, but if none of IO has been completed yet, we will
878 NOT wait and immediately exit the system call. In this example
879 we simply do polling.
880
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881iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
882 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
883 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
884 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
885 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
886 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
887
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888io_submit_mode=str This option controls how fio submits the IO to
889 the IO engine. The default is 'inline', which means that the
890 fio job threads submit and reap IO directly. If set to
891 'offload', the job threads will offload IO submission to a
892 dedicated pool of IO threads. This requires some coordination
893 and thus has a bit of extra overhead, especially for lower
894 queue depth IO where it can increase latencies. The benefit
895 is that fio can manage submission rates independently of
896 the device completion rates. This avoids skewed latency
897 reporting if IO gets back up on the device side (the
898 coordinated omission problem).
899
71bfa161 900direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
9b836561 901 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
93bcfd20 902 On Windows the synchronous ioengines don't support direct io.
76a43db4 903
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CM
904atomic=bool If value is true, attempt to use atomic direct IO. Atomic
905 writes are guaranteed to be stable once acknowledged by
906 the operating system. Only Linux supports O_ATOMIC right
907 now.
908
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909buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
910 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
71bfa161 911
f7fa2653 912offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
71bfa161
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913 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
914 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
915
214ac7e0 916offset_increment=int If this is provided, then the real offset becomes
69bdd6ba
JH
917 offset + offset_increment * thread_number, where the thread
918 number is a counter that starts at 0 and is incremented for
919 each sub-job (i.e. when numjobs option is specified). This
920 option is useful if there are several jobs which are intended
921 to operate on a file in parallel disjoint segments, with
922 even spacing between the starting points.
214ac7e0 923
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924number_ios=int Fio will normally perform IOs until it has exhausted the size
925 of the region set by size=, or if it exhaust the allocated
926 time (or hits an error condition). With this setting, the
927 range/size can be set independently of the number of IOs to
928 perform. When fio reaches this number, it will exit normally
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929 and report status. Note that this does not extend the amount
930 of IO that will be done, it will only stop fio if this
931 condition is met before other end-of-job criteria.
ddf24e42 932
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933fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
934 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
935 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
936 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
937 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
6c219763 938 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
71bfa161 939
e76b1da4 940fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
5f9099ea 941 metadata blocks.
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942 In FreeBSD and Windows there is no fdatasync(), this falls back
943 to using fsync()
5f9099ea 944
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945sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
946 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
947 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
948 can currently be one or more of:
949
950 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
951 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
952 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
953
954 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
955 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
956 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
957 This option is Linux specific.
958
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959overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
960 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
961 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
962 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
963 will be done.
71bfa161 964
dbd11ead 965end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when a write stage has completed.
71bfa161 966
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967fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
968 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
969 file close, not just at the end of the job.
970
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971rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
972
973rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
974 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
975 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
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976 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
977 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
978 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
71bfa161 979
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980random_distribution=str:float By default, fio will use a completely uniform
981 random distribution when asked to perform random IO. Sometimes
982 it is useful to skew the distribution in specific ways,
983 ensuring that some parts of the data is more hot than others.
984 fio includes the following distribution models:
985
986 random Uniform random distribution
987 zipf Zipf distribution
988 pareto Pareto distribution
8116fd24 989 gauss Normal (guassian) distribution
e0a04ac1 990 zoned Zoned random distribution
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991
992 When using a zipf or pareto distribution, an input value
993 is also needed to define the access pattern. For zipf, this
994 is the zipf theta. For pareto, it's the pareto power. Fio
995 includes a test program, genzipf, that can be used visualize
996 what the given input values will yield in terms of hit rates.
997 If you wanted to use zipf with a theta of 1.2, you would use
998 random_distribution=zipf:1.2 as the option. If a non-uniform
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999 model is used, fio will disable use of the random map. For
1000 the gauss distribution, a normal deviation is supplied as
1001 a value between 0 and 100.
92d42d69 1002
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1003 For a zoned distribution, fio supports specifying percentages
1004 of IO access that should fall within what range of the file or
1005 device. For example, given a criteria of:
1006
1007 60% of accesses should be to the first 10%
1008 30% of accesses should be to the next 20%
1009 8% of accesses should be to to the next 30%
1010 2% of accesses should be to the next 40%
1011
1012 we can define that through zoning of the random accesses. For
1013 the above example, the user would do:
1014
1015 random_distribution=zoned:60/10:30/20:8/30:2/40
1016
1017 similarly to how bssplit works for setting ranges and
1018 percentages of block sizes. Like bssplit, it's possible to
1019 specify separate zones for reads, writes, and trims. If just
1020 one set is given, it'll apply to all of them.
1021
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1022percentage_random=int For a random workload, set how big a percentage should
1023 be random. This defaults to 100%, in which case the workload
1024 is fully random. It can be set from anywhere from 0 to 100.
1025 Setting it to 0 would make the workload fully sequential. Any
1026 setting in between will result in a random mix of sequential
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1027 and random IO, at the given percentages. It is possible to
1028 set different values for reads, writes, and trim. To do so,
1029 simply use a comma separated list. See blocksize.
211c9b89 1030
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1031norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
1032 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
1033 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
1034 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
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1035 some blocks may be read/written more than once. If this option
1036 is used with verify= and multiple blocksizes (via bsrange=),
1037 only intact blocks are verified, i.e., partially-overwritten
1038 blocks are ignored.
bb8895e0 1039
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1040softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
1041 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
1042 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
1043 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
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1044 disabled by default.
1045
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1046random_generator=str Fio supports the following engines for generating
1047 IO offsets for random IO:
1048
1049 tausworthe Strong 2^88 cycle random number generator
1050 lfsr Linear feedback shift register generator
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JA
1051 tausworthe64 Strong 64-bit 2^258 cycle random number
1052 generator
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1053
1054 Tausworthe is a strong random number generator, but it
1055 requires tracking on the side if we want to ensure that
1056 blocks are only read or written once. LFSR guarantees
1057 that we never generate the same offset twice, and it's
1058 also less computationally expensive. It's not a true
1059 random generator, however, though for IO purposes it's
1060 typically good enough. LFSR only works with single
1061 block sizes, not with workloads that use multiple block
1062 sizes. If used with such a workload, fio may read or write
3bb85e84
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1063 some blocks multiple times. The default value is tausworthe,
1064 unless the required space exceeds 2^32 blocks. If it does,
1065 then tausworthe64 is selected automatically.
43f09da1 1066
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1067nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
1068
1069prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
1070 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
1071 See man ionice(1).
1072
1073prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
1074
1075thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
1076 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
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1077 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
1078 thinktime_spin.
1079
1080thinktime_spin=int
1081 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
1082 doing something with the data received, before falling back
1083 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
1084 thinktime.
9c1f7434 1085
4d01ece6 1086thinktime_blocks=int
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1087 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
1088 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
1089 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
4d01ece6
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1090 after every block. This effectively makes any queue depth
1091 setting redundant, since no more than 1 IO will be queued
1092 before we have to complete it and do our thinktime. In
1093 other words, this setting effectively caps the queue depth
1094 if the latter is larger.
71bfa161 1095
581e7141 1096rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
b09da8fa 1097 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
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1098 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
1099 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
1100 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
1101 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
1102 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
1103 limit reads.
71bfa161 1104
6d428bcd 1105rate_min=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
4e991c23 1106 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
581e7141
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1107 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
1108 read vs write separation.
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1109
1110rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
1111 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
1112 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
581e7141 1113 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
de8f6de9 1114 as rate is used for read vs write separation.
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1115
1116rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
581e7141 1117 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
de8f6de9 1118 write separation.
71bfa161 1119
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1120rate_process=str This option controls how fio manages rated IO
1121 submissions. The default is 'linear', which submits IO in a
1122 linear fashion with fixed delays between IOs that gets
1123 adjusted based on IO completion rates. If this is set to
1124 'poisson', fio will submit IO based on a more real world
1125 random request flow, known as the Poisson process
5d02b083
JA
1126 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_process). The lambda
1127 will be 10^6 / IOPS for the given workload.
e7b24047 1128
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JA
1129latency_target=int If set, fio will attempt to find the max performance
1130 point that the given workload will run at while maintaining a
1131 latency below this target. The values is given in microseconds.
1132 See latency_window and latency_percentile
1133
1134latency_window=int Used with latency_target to specify the sample window
1135 that the job is run at varying queue depths to test the
1136 performance. The value is given in microseconds.
1137
1138latency_percentile=float The percentage of IOs that must fall within the
1139 criteria specified by latency_target and latency_window. If not
1140 set, this defaults to 100.0, meaning that all IOs must be equal
1141 or below to the value set by latency_target.
1142
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1143max_latency=int If set, fio will exit the job if it exceeds this maximum
1144 latency. It will exit with an ETIME error.
1145
6d428bcd 1146rate_cycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'rate_min' over this number
6c219763 1147 of milliseconds.
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JA
1148
1149cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
a08bc17f
JA
1150 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
1151 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
1152 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
7dbb6eba 1153 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
b0ea08ce
JA
1154 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
1155 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
1156 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
1157 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
71bfa161 1158
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JA
1159cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
1160 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
62a7273d
JA
1161 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
1162 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
1163 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
d2e268b0 1164
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JA
1165cpus_allowed_policy=str Set the policy of how fio distributes the CPUs
1166 specified by cpus_allowed or cpumask. Two policies are
1167 supported:
1168
1169 shared All jobs will share the CPU set specified.
1170 split Each job will get a unique CPU from the CPU set.
1171
1172 'shared' is the default behaviour, if the option isn't
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JA
1173 specified. If split is specified, then fio will will assign
1174 one cpu per job. If not enough CPUs are given for the jobs
1175 listed, then fio will roundrobin the CPUs in the set.
c2acfbac 1176
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YR
1177numa_cpu_nodes=str Set this job running on spcified NUMA nodes' CPUs. The
1178 arguments allow comma delimited list of cpu numbers,
1179 A-B ranges, or 'all'. Note, to enable numa options support,
67bf9823 1180 fio must be built on a system with libnuma-dev(el) installed.
d0b937ed
YR
1181
1182numa_mem_policy=str Set this job's memory policy and corresponding NUMA
1183 nodes. Format of the argements:
1184 <mode>[:<nodelist>]
1185 `mode' is one of the following memory policy:
1186 default, prefer, bind, interleave, local
1187 For `default' and `local' memory policy, no node is
1188 needed to be specified.
1189 For `prefer', only one node is allowed.
1190 For `bind' and `interleave', it allow comma delimited
1191 list of numbers, A-B ranges, or 'all'.
1192
e417fd66 1193startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
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1194 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
1195 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
1196 time.
1197
e417fd66 1198runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
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1199 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
1200 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
1201 cap the total runtime to a given time.
1202
cf4464ca 1203time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
bf9a3edb 1204 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
cf4464ca
JA
1205 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
1206 as many times as the runtime allows.
1207
e417fd66 1208ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
721938ae
JA
1209 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
1210 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
b29ee5b3
JA
1211 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
1212 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
1213 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
1214 or runtime is specified.
721938ae 1215
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JA
1216invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
1217 to starting io. Defaults to true.
1218
1219sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
1220 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
1221
d3aad8f2 1222iomem=str
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JA
1223mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
1224 The allowed values are:
1225
1226 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
1227
1228 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
1229 through shmget(2).
1230
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JA
1231 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
1232
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JA
1233 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
1234 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
1235 a filename is given after the option. The
1236 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
71bfa161 1237
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JA
1238 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
1239 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
1240 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
1241
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JA
1242 mmapshared Same as mmap, but use a MMAP_SHARED
1243 mapping.
1244
71bfa161 1245 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
5394ae5f
JA
1246 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
1247 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
1248 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
1249 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
b22989b9 1250 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
5394ae5f
JA
1251 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
1252 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
1253 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
1254 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
1255 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
1256 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
56bb17f2 1257 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
5394ae5f
JA
1258
1259 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
1260 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
1261 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
71bfa161 1262
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JA
1263iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
1264 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
1265 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
1266 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
1267 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
1268 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
1269 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
1270 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
1271
f7fa2653 1272hugepage-size=int
56bb17f2 1273 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
b22989b9 1274 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
c51074e7
JA
1275 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
1276 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
1277 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
56bb17f2 1278
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1279exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
1280 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
1281 desired action.
1282
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JA
1283exitall_on_error When one job finishes in error, terminate the rest. The
1284 default is to wait for each job to finish.
1285
71bfa161 1286bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
a47591e4
JA
1287 is specified in milliseconds. If the job also does bandwidth
1288 logging through 'write_bw_log', then the minimum of this option
1289 and 'log_avg_msec' will be used. Default: 500ms.
71bfa161 1290
c8eeb9df 1291iopsavgtime=int Average the calculated IOPS over the given time. Value
a47591e4
JA
1292 is specified in milliseconds. If the job also does IOPS logging
1293 through 'write_iops_log', then the minimum of this option and
1294 'log_avg_msec' will be used. Default: 500ms.
c8eeb9df 1295
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JA
1296create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
1297 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
1298 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
1299 used and even the number of processors in the system.
1300
1301create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
1302 default.
1303
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1304create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
1305 when it's time to do IO to that file.
1306
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JA
1307create_only=bool If true, fio will only run the setup phase of the job.
1308 If files need to be laid out or updated on disk, only
1309 that will be done. The actual job contents are not
1310 executed.
1311
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1312allow_file_create=bool If true, fio is permitted to create files as part
1313 of its workload. This is the default behavior. If this
1314 option is false, then fio will error out if the files it
1315 needs to use don't already exist. Default: true.
1316
e81ecca3
JA
1317allow_mounted_write=bool If this isn't set, fio will abort jobs that
1318 are destructive (eg that write) to what appears to be a
1319 mounted device or partition. This should help catch creating
1320 inadvertently destructive tests, not realizing that the test
1321 will destroy data on the mounted file system. Default: false.
1322
afad68f7 1323pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
34f1c044
JA
1324 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
1325 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
9c0d2241
JA
1326 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
1327 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
1328 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
1329 IO.
afad68f7 1330
e545a6ce 1331unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
bf9a3edb
JA
1332 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
1333 set again and again.
71bfa161
JA
1334
1335loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
1336 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
1337 to 1.
1338
62167762
JC
1339verify_only Do not perform specified workload---only verify data still
1340 matches previous invocation of this workload. This option
1341 allows one to check data multiple times at a later date
1342 without overwriting it. This option makes sense only for
1343 workloads that write data, and does not support workloads
1344 with the time_based option set.
1345
68e1f29a 1346do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
e84c73a8
SL
1347 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
1348
71bfa161 1349verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
b638d82f
RP
1350 after each iteration of the job. Each verification method also implies
1351 verification of special header, which is written to the beginning of
1352 each block. This header also includes meta information, like offset
1353 of the block, block number, timestamp when block was written, etc.
1354 verify=str can be combined with verify_pattern=str option.
1355 The allowed values are:
71bfa161
JA
1356
1357 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
1358 it in the header of each block.
1359
17dc34df
JA
1360 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
1361 area and store it in the header of each
1362 block.
1363
bac39e0e
JA
1364 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
1365 it in the header of each block.
1366
3845591f 1367 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
0539d758
JA
1368 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
1369 back to regular software crc32c, if not
1370 supported by the system.
3845591f 1371
71bfa161
JA
1372 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
1373 it in the header of each block.
1374
969f7ed3
JA
1375 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
1376 it in the header of each block.
1377
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JA
1378 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
1379 it in the header of each block.
1380
844ea602
JA
1381 xxhash Use xxhash as the checksum function. Generally
1382 the fastest software checksum that fio
1383 supports.
1384
cd14cc10
JA
1385 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
1386
1387 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
1388
7c353ceb
JA
1389 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
1390
b638d82f
RP
1391 meta This option is deprecated, since now meta information is
1392 included in generic verification header and meta verification
1393 happens by default. For detailed information see the description
1394 of the verify=str setting. This option is kept because of
1395 compatibility's sake with old configurations. Do not use it.
7437ee87 1396
59245381
JA
1397 pattern Verify a strict pattern. Normally fio includes
1398 a header with some basic information and
1399 checksumming, but if this option is set, only
1400 the specific pattern set with 'verify_pattern'
1401 is verified.
1402
36690c9b
JA
1403 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
1404 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
1405 else.
1406
6c219763 1407 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
71bfa161 1408 system to make sure that the written data is also
b892dc08
JA
1409 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
1410 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
1411 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
1412 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
1413 newly written data.
71bfa161 1414
160b966d
JA
1415verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
1416 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
1417 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
1418 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
1419 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
1420 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
1421 significant.
3f9f4e26 1422
f7fa2653 1423verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
546a9142
SL
1424 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
1425 verifying.
1426
f7fa2653 1427verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
3f9f4e26
SL
1428 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
1429 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
1430 evenly.
90059d65 1431
0e92f873 1432verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
e28218f3
SL
1433 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
1434 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
1435 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
1436 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
0e92f873
RR
1437 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
1438 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
996093bb 1439 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
b638d82f 1440 with verify=str. Also, verify_pattern supports %o format,
61b9861d
RP
1441 which means that for each block offset will be written and
1442 then verifyied back, e.g.:
1443
1444 verify_pattern=%o
1445
1446 Or use combination of everything:
1447 verify_pattern=0xff%o"abcd"-12
e28218f3 1448
68e1f29a 1449verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
a12a3b4d
JA
1450 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
1451 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
1452 failure.
e8462bd8 1453
b463e936
JA
1454verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
1455 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
1456 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
ef71e317 1457 corruption occurred. Off by default.
b463e936 1458
e8462bd8
JA
1459verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
1460 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
1461 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
1462 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
c85c324c
JA
1463 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
1464 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
1465 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
1466 IO in flight while verifies are running.
e8462bd8
JA
1467
1468verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
1469 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
1470 format used.
6f87418f
JA
1471
1472verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
1473 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
1474 other words, everything is written then everything is read
1475 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
1476 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
1477 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
1478 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
1479 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
f42195a3
JA
1480 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
1481
6f87418f
JA
1482verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1483 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1484 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
f42195a3
JA
1485 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1486 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1487 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1488 blocks will be verified more than once.
66c098b8 1489
ca09be4b
JA
1490verify_state_save=bool When a job exits during the write phase of a verify
1491 workload, save its current state. This allows fio to replay
1492 up until that point, if the verify state is loaded for the
1493 verify read phase. The format of the filename is, roughly,
1494 <type>-<jobname>-<jobindex>-verify.state. <type> is "local"
1495 for a local run, "sock" for a client/server socket connection,
1496 and "ip" (192.168.0.1, for instance) for a networked
1497 client/server connection.
1498
1499verify_state_load=bool If a verify termination trigger was used, fio stores
1500 the current write state of each thread. This can be used at
1501 verification time so that fio knows how far it should verify.
1502 Without this information, fio will run a full verification
1503 pass, according to the settings in the job file used.
1504
d392365e 1505stonewall
de8f6de9 1506wait_for_previous Wait for preceding jobs in the job file to exit, before
71bfa161 1507 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
b3d62a75
JA
1508 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1509 a new reporting group.
1510
abcab6af 1511new_group Start a new reporting group. See: group_reporting.
71bfa161
JA
1512
1513numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1514 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
abcab6af
AV
1515 the same thing. Each thread is reported separately; to see
1516 statistics for all clones as a whole, use group_reporting in
1517 conjunction with new_group.
1518
1519group_reporting It may sometimes be interesting to display statistics for
04b2f799
JA
1520 groups of jobs as a whole instead of for each individual job.
1521 This is especially true if 'numjobs' is used; looking at
1522 individual thread/process output quickly becomes unwieldy.
1523 To see the final report per-group instead of per-job, use
1524 'group_reporting'. Jobs in a file will be part of the same
1525 reporting group, unless if separated by a stonewall, or by
1526 using 'new_group'.
71bfa161
JA
1527
1528thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1529 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1530 instead.
1531
f7fa2653 1532zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
71bfa161 1533
f7fa2653 1534zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
71bfa161
JA
1535 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1536 io on zones of a file.
1537
076efc7c 1538write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
5b42a488
SH
1539 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1540 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
71bfa161 1541
076efc7c 1542read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
71bfa161 1543 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
6df8adaa
JA
1544 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1545 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1546 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1547 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1548 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
ea3e51c3 1549 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
66c098b8 1550
64bbb865 1551replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
62776229
JA
1552 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1553 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1554 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1555 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1556 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1557 given device, but different timings.
71bfa161 1558
d1c46c04
DN
1559replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1560 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1561 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
de8f6de9 1562 undesirable because on a different machine those major/minor
d1c46c04
DN
1563 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1564 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1565 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1566 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1567 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1568 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1569 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1570 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1571 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1572 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1573 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1574 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1575
0c63576e
JA
1576replay_align=int Force alignment of IO offsets and lengths in a trace
1577 to this power of 2 value.
1578
1579replay_scale=int Scale sector offsets down by this factor when
1580 replaying traces.
1581
3a5db920
JA
1582per_job_logs=bool If set, this generates bw/clat/iops log with per
1583 file private filenames. If not set, jobs with identical names
1584 will share the log filename. Default: true.
1585
e3cedca7 1586write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
71bfa161 1587 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
e0da9bc2
JA
1588 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1589 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
ddb754db 1590 graphs. See write_lat_log for behaviour of given
8ad3b3dd
JA
1591 filename. For this option, the suffix is _bw.x.log, where
1592 x is the index of the job (1..N, where N is the number of
3a5db920 1593 jobs). If 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not
a3ae5b05 1594 include the job index. See 'Log File Formats'.
71bfa161 1595
e3cedca7 1596write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
02af0988
JA
1597 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1598 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1599 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1600 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
e3cedca7
JA
1601
1602 write_lat_log=foo
1603
8ad3b3dd
JA
1604 The actual log names will be foo_slat.x.log, foo_clat.x.log,
1605 and foo_lat.x.log, where x is the index of the job (1..N,
1606 where N is the number of jobs). This helps fio_generate_plot
3a5db920 1607 fine the logs automatically. If 'per_job_logs' is false, then
a3ae5b05
JA
1608 the filename will not include the job index. See 'Log File
1609 Formats'.
71bfa161 1610
b8bc8cba
JA
1611write_iops_log=str Same as write_bw_log, but writes IOPS. If no filename is
1612 given with this option, the default filename of
8ad3b3dd
JA
1613 "jobname_type.x.log" is used,where x is the index of the job
1614 (1..N, where N is the number of jobs). Even if the filename
3a5db920
JA
1615 is given, fio will still append the type of log. If
1616 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not include
a3ae5b05 1617 the job index. See 'Log File Formats'.
b8bc8cba
JA
1618
1619log_avg_msec=int By default, fio will log an entry in the iops, latency,
1620 or bw log for every IO that completes. When writing to the
1621 disk log, that can quickly grow to a very large size. Setting
1622 this option makes fio average the each log entry over the
1623 specified period of time, reducing the resolution of the log.
4b1ddb7a
JA
1624 See log_max_value as well. Defaults to 0, logging all entries.
1625
1626log_max_value=bool If log_avg_msec is set, fio logs the average over that
1627 window. If you instead want to log the maximum value, set this
1628 option to 1. Defaults to 0, meaning that averaged values are
1629 logged.
b8bc8cba 1630
ae588852
JA
1631log_offset=int If this is set, the iolog options will include the byte
1632 offset for the IO entry as well as the other data values.
1633
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JA
1634log_compression=int If this is set, fio will compress the IO logs as
1635 it goes, to keep the memory footprint lower. When a log
1636 reaches the specified size, that chunk is removed and
1637 compressed in the background. Given that IO logs are
1638 fairly highly compressible, this yields a nice memory
1639 savings for longer runs. The downside is that the
1640 compression will consume some background CPU cycles, so
1641 it may impact the run. This, however, is also true if
1642 the logging ends up consuming most of the system memory.
1643 So pick your poison. The IO logs are saved normally at the
1644 end of a run, by decompressing the chunks and storing them
1645 in the specified log file. This feature depends on the
1646 availability of zlib.
1647
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JA
1648log_compression_cpus=str Define the set of CPUs that are allowed to
1649 handle online log compression for the IO jobs. This can
1650 provide better isolation between performance sensitive jobs,
1651 and background compression work.
1652
1653log_store_compressed=bool If set, fio will store the log files in a
1654 compressed format. They can be decompressed with fio, using
1655 the --inflate-log command line parameter. The files will be
1656 stored with a .fz suffix.
b26317c9 1657
66347cfa
DE
1658block_error_percentiles=bool If set, record errors in trim block-sized
1659 units from writes and trims and output a histogram of
1660 how many trims it took to get to errors, and what kind
1661 of error was encountered.
1662
f7fa2653 1663lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
71bfa161
JA
1664 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1665 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
81c6b6cd 1666 The amount specified is per worker.
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1667
1668exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1669 through system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1670 jobname.prerun.txt.
71bfa161
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1671
1672exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1673 though system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1674 jobname.postrun.txt.
71bfa161
JA
1675
1676ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1677 io scheduler before running.
1678
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JA
1679disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1680 supports it. Defaults to on.
1681
02af0988 1682disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
9520ebb9
JA
1683 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1684 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1685 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1686 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1687 disable_bw as well.
1688
02af0988
JA
1689disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1690 disable_lat.
1691
9520ebb9 1692disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
02af0988 1693 disable_slat.
9520ebb9
JA
1694
1695disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
02af0988 1696 disable_lat.
9520ebb9 1697
83349190
YH
1698clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1699 completion latencies.
1700
1701percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
66347cfa
DE
1702 for completion latencies and the block error histogram.
1703 Each number is a floating number in the range (0,100],
1704 and the maximum length of the list is 20. Use ':'
1705 to separate the numbers, and list the numbers in ascending
1706 order. For example, --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause
1707 fio to report the values of completion latency below which
1708 99.5% and 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
83349190 1709
23893646
JA
1710clocksource=str Use the given clocksource as the base of timing. The
1711 supported options are:
1712
1713 gettimeofday gettimeofday(2)
1714
1715 clock_gettime clock_gettime(2)
1716
1717 cpu Internal CPU clock source
1718
1719 cpu is the preferred clocksource if it is reliable, as it
1720 is very fast (and fio is heavy on time calls). Fio will
1721 automatically use this clocksource if it's supported and
1722 considered reliable on the system it is running on, unless
1723 another clocksource is specifically set. For x86/x86-64 CPUs,
1724 this means supporting TSC Invariant.
1725
993bf48b
JA
1726gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1727 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1728 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1729 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1730 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1731 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1732
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JA
1733gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1734 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1735 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1736 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1737 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1738 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1739 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1740 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1741 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1742 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1743 jobs.
a696fa2a 1744
06842027 1745continue_on_error=str Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
f2bba182
RR
1746 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1747 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1748 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1749 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1750 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1751 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1752 run.
be4ecfdf 1753
06842027
SL
1754 The allowed values are:
1755
1756 none Exit on any IO or verify errors.
1757
1758 read Continue on read errors, exit on all others.
1759
1760 write Continue on write errors, exit on all others.
1761
1762 io Continue on any IO error, exit on all others.
1763
1764 verify Continue on verify errors, exit on all others.
1765
1766 all Continue on all errors.
1767
1768 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'.
1769
1770 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'all'.
1771
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DM
1772ignore_error=str Sometimes you want to ignore some errors during test
1773 in that case you can specify error list for each error type.
1774 ignore_error=READ_ERR_LIST,WRITE_ERR_LIST,VERIFY_ERR_LIST
1775 errors for given error type is separated with ':'. Error
1776 may be symbol ('ENOSPC', 'ENOMEM') or integer.
1777 Example:
1778 ignore_error=EAGAIN,ENOSPC:122
66c098b8
BC
1779 This option will ignore EAGAIN from READ, and ENOSPC and
1780 122(EDQUOT) from WRITE.
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DM
1781
1782error_dump=bool If set dump every error even if it is non fatal, true
1783 by default. If disabled only fatal error will be dumped
66c098b8 1784
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1785cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1786 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1787 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1788 mounted, you can do so with:
a696fa2a
JA
1789
1790 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1791
a696fa2a
JA
1792cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1793 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1794 are in the range of 100..1000.
71bfa161 1795
7de87099
VG
1796cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1797 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1798 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1799 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1800 files after job completion. Default: false
1801
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JA
1802uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1803 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1804
1805gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1806
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DE
1807flow_id=int The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a
1808 global flow. See flow.
1809
1810flow=int Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then
1811 there is a 'flow counter' which is used to regulate the
1812 proportion of activity between two or more jobs. fio attempts
1813 to keep this flow counter near zero. The 'flow' parameter
1814 stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the flow
1815 counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if
1816 one job has flow=8 and another job has flow=-1, then there
1817 will be a roughly 1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
1818
1819flow_watermark=int The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow
1820 counter is allowed to reach before the job must wait for a
1821 lower value of the counter.
1822
1823flow_sleep=int The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow
1824 watermark has been exceeded before retrying operations
1825
de890a1e
SL
1826In addition, there are some parameters which are only valid when a specific
1827ioengine is in use. These are used identically to normal parameters, with the
1828caveat that when used on the command line, they must come after the ioengine
1829that defines them is selected.
1830
1831[libaio] userspace_reap Normally, with the libaio engine in use, fio will use
1832 the io_getevents system call to reap newly returned events.
1833 With this flag turned on, the AIO ring will be read directly
1834 from user-space to reap events. The reaping mode is only
1835 enabled when polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
1836 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
1837
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1838[psyncv2] hipri Set RWF_HIPRI on IO, indicating to the kernel that
1839 it's of higher priority than normal.
1840
0353050f
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1841[cpu] cpuload=int Attempt to use the specified percentage of CPU cycles.
1842
1843[cpu] cpuchunks=int Split the load into cycles of the given time. In
1844 microseconds.
1845
046395d7
JA
1846[cpu] exit_on_io_done=bool Detect when IO threads are done, then exit.
1847
de890a1e
SL
1848[netsplice] hostname=str
1849[net] hostname=str The host name or IP address to use for TCP or UDP based IO.
1850 If the job is a TCP listener or UDP reader, the hostname is not
b511c9aa
SB
1851 used and must be omitted unless it is a valid UDP multicast
1852 address.
a3f001f5 1853[libhdfs] namenode=str The host name or IP address of a HDFS cluster namenode to contact.
de890a1e
SL
1854
1855[netsplice] port=int
6315af9d
JA
1856[net] port=int The TCP or UDP port to bind to or connect to. If this is used
1857with numjobs to spawn multiple instances of the same job type, then this will
1858be the starting port number since fio will use a range of ports.
a3f001f5 1859[libhdfs] port=int the listening port of the HFDS cluster namenode.
de890a1e 1860
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SB
1861[netsplice] interface=str
1862[net] interface=str The IP address of the network interface used to send or
1863 receive UDP multicast
1864
d3a623de
SB
1865[netsplice] ttl=int
1866[net] ttl=int Time-to-live value for outgoing UDP multicast packets.
1867 Default: 1
1868
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JA
1869[netsplice] nodelay=bool
1870[net] nodelay=bool Set TCP_NODELAY on TCP connections.
1871
de890a1e
SL
1872[netsplice] protocol=str
1873[netsplice] proto=str
1874[net] protocol=str
1875[net] proto=str The network protocol to use. Accepted values are:
1876
1877 tcp Transmission control protocol
49ccb8c1 1878 tcpv6 Transmission control protocol V6
f5cc3d0e 1879 udp User datagram protocol
49ccb8c1 1880 udpv6 User datagram protocol V6
de890a1e
SL
1881 unix UNIX domain socket
1882
1883 When the protocol is TCP or UDP, the port must also be given,
1884 as well as the hostname if the job is a TCP listener or UDP
1885 reader. For unix sockets, the normal filename option should be
1886 used and the port is invalid.
1887
1888[net] listen For TCP network connections, tell fio to listen for incoming
1889 connections rather than initiating an outgoing connection. The
1890 hostname must be omitted if this option is used.
1008602c 1891
b511c9aa 1892[net] pingpong Normaly a network writer will just continue writing data, and
7aeb1e94
JA
1893 a network reader will just consume packages. If pingpong=1
1894 is set, a writer will send its normal payload to the reader,
1895 then wait for the reader to send the same payload back. This
1896 allows fio to measure network latencies. The submission
1897 and completion latencies then measure local time spent
1898 sending or receiving, and the completion latency measures
1899 how long it took for the other end to receive and send back.
b511c9aa
SB
1900 For UDP multicast traffic pingpong=1 should only be set for a
1901 single reader when multiple readers are listening to the same
1902 address.
7aeb1e94 1903
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1904[net] window_size Set the desired socket buffer size for the connection.
1905
e5f34d95
JA
1906[net] mss Set the TCP maximum segment size (TCP_MAXSEG).
1907
d54fce84
DM
1908[e4defrag] donorname=str
1909 File will be used as a block donor(swap extents between files)
1910[e4defrag] inplace=int
66c098b8 1911 Configure donor file blocks allocation strategy
d54fce84
DM
1912 0(default): Preallocate donor's file on init
1913 1 : allocate space immidietly inside defragment event,
1914 and free right after event
1915
08a2cbf6
JA
1916[rbd] clustername=str Specifies the name of the Ceph cluster.
1917[rbd] rbdname=str Specifies the name of the RBD.
1918[rbd] pool=str Specifies the naem of the Ceph pool containing RBD.
1919[rbd] clientname=str Specifies the username (without the 'client.' prefix)
1920 used to access the Ceph cluster. If the clustername is
1921 specified, the clientmae shall be the full type.id
1922 string. If no type. prefix is given, fio will add
1923 'client.' by default.
1924
65fa28ca 1925[mtd] skip_bad=bool Skip operations against known bad blocks.
de890a1e 1926
a3f001f5
FB
1927[libhdfs] hdfsdirectory libhdfs will create chunk in this HDFS directory
1928[libhdfs] chunck_size the size of the chunck to use for each file.
1929
de890a1e 1930
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19316.0 Interpreting the output
1932---------------------------
1933
1934fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1935status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1936
73c8b082 1937Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
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1938
1939The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1940each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1941
1942Idle Run
1943---- ---
1944P Thread setup, but not started.
1945C Thread created.
9c6f6316 1946I Thread initialized, waiting or generating necessary data.
b0f65863 1947 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
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1948 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1949 r Running, doing random reads.
1950 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1951 w Running, doing random writes.
1952 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1953 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1954 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
3d434057 1955 f Running, finishing up (writing IO logs, etc)
fc6bd43c 1956 V Running, doing verification of written data.
71bfa161 1957E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
4f7e57a4
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1958_ Thread reaped, or
1959X Thread reaped, exited with an error.
a5e371a6 1960K Thread reaped, exited due to signal.
71bfa161 1961
3e2e48a7
JA
1962Fio will condense the thread string as not to take up more space on the
1963command line as is needed. For instance, if you have 10 readers and 10
1964writers running, the output would look like this:
1965
1966Jobs: 20 (f=20): [R(10),W(10)] [4.0% done] [2103MB/0KB/0KB /s] [538K/0/0 iops] [eta 57m:36s]
1967
1968Fio will still maintain the ordering, though. So the above means that jobs
19691..10 are readers, and 11..20 are writers.
1970
71bfa161 1971The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
c9f60304
JA
1972currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1973listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1974and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
4f7e57a4
JA
1975the following groups (if any). Note that the string is displayed in order,
1976so it's possible to tell which of the jobs are currently doing what. The
1977first character is the first job defined in the job file, and so forth.
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1978
1979When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1980each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1981direction, the output looks like:
1982
1983Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
35649e58 1984 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
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JA
1985 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1986 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
b22989b9 1987 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
e7823a94 1988 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
71619dc2 1989 IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
838bc709
JA
1990 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1991 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
30061b97 1992 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
8abdce66
JA
1993 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1994 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
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1995
1996The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1997thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1998they denote:
1999
2000io= Number of megabytes io performed
2001bw= Average bandwidth rate
35649e58 2002iops= Average IOs performed per second
71bfa161 2003runt= The runtime of that thread
72fbda2a 2004 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
71bfa161
JA
2005 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
2006 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
8a35c71e 2007 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
bf9a3edb 2008 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
8a35c71e 2009 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
0d237712
LAG
2010 above, milliseconds is the best scale. Note: in --minimal mode
2011 latencies are always expressed in microseconds.
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2012 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
2013 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
2014 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
2015 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
2016 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
2017 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
2018 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
2019 this thread received in this group. This last value is
2020 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
2021 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
2022cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
e7823a94
JA
2023 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
2024 system and user time, and finally the number of major
23a8e176
JA
2025 and minor page faults. The CPU utilization numbers are
2026 averages for the jobs in that reporting group, while the
2027 context and fault counters are summed.
71619dc2
JA
2028IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
2029 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
2030 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
2031 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
2032 range from 16 to 31.
838bc709
JA
2033IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
2034 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
2035 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
2036 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
2037IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
30061b97
JA
2038IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
2039 of them were short.
ec118304
JA
2040IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
2041 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
2042 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
2043 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
8abdce66
JA
2044 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
2045 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
71bfa161
JA
2046
2047After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
2048will look like this:
2049
2050Run status group 0 (all jobs):
b22989b9
JA
2051 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
2052 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
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JA
2053
2054For each data direction, it prints:
2055
2056io= Number of megabytes io performed.
2057aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
2058minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
2059maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
2060mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
2061maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
2062
2063And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
2064
2065Disk stats (read/write):
2066 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
2067
2068Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
2069numbers denote:
2070
2071ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
2072merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
2073ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
2074io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
2075util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
2076 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
2077
8423bd11
JA
2078It is also possible to get fio to dump the current output while it is
2079running, without terminating the job. To do that, send fio the USR1 signal.
06464907
JA
2080You can also get regularly timed dumps by using the --status-interval
2081parameter, or by creating a file in /tmp named fio-dump-status. If fio
2082sees this file, it will unlink it and dump the current output status.
8423bd11 2083
71bfa161
JA
2084
20857.0 Terse output
2086----------------
2087
2088For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
6af019c9 2089of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
71bfa161
JA
2090The format is one long line of values, such as:
2091
562c2d2f
DN
20922;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%
2093A description of this job goes here.
2094
2095The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
71bfa161 2096
525c2bfa
JA
2097To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
2098value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
2099be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
2100signify that change.
6820cb3b 2101
71bfa161
JA
2102Split up, the format is as follows:
2103
5e726d0a 2104 terse version, fio version, jobname, groupid, error
71bfa161 2105 READ status:
312b4af2 2106 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
d86ae56c
CW
2107 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2108 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
1db92cb6 2109 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
d86ae56c
CW
2110 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2111 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
71bfa161 2112 WRITE status:
312b4af2 2113 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
d86ae56c
CW
2114 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2115 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev(usec)
1db92cb6 2116 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
d86ae56c
CW
2117 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2118 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
046ee302 2119 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
2270890c 2120 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
562c2d2f
DN
2121 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
2122 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
f2f788dd
JA
2123 Disk utilization: Disk name, Read ios, write ios,
2124 Read merges, write merges,
2125 Read ticks, write ticks,
3d7cd9b4 2126 Time spent in queue, disk utilization percentage
de8f6de9 2127 Additional Info (dependent on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
66c098b8 2128
de8f6de9 2129 Additional Info (dependent on description being set): Text description
25c8b9d7 2130
1db92cb6
JA
2131Completion latency percentiles can be a grouping of up to 20 sets, so
2132for the terse output fio writes all of them. Each field will look like this:
2133
2134 1.00%=6112
2135
2136which is the Xth percentile, and the usec latency associated with it.
2137
f2f788dd
JA
2138For disk utilization, all disks used by fio are shown. So for each disk
2139there will be a disk utilization section.
2140
25c8b9d7
PD
2141
21428.0 Trace file format
2143---------------------
66c098b8 2144There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
25c8b9d7
PD
2145is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
2146below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
2147
2148In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
2149
2150
21518.1 Trace file format v1
2152------------------------
2153Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
2154
2155rw, offset, length
2156
2157where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
2158
2159This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
2160
2161
21628.2 Trace file format v2
2163------------------------
2164The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
2165It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
2166possible file actions.
2167
2168The first line of the trace file has to be:
2169
2170fio version 2 iolog
2171
2172Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
2173
2174The file management format:
2175
2176filename action
2177
2178The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
2179
2180add Add the given filename to the trace
66c098b8 2181open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
25c8b9d7
PD
2182 been added with the add action before.
2183close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
2184 opened before.
2185
2186
2187The file io action format:
2188
2189filename action offset length
2190
2191The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
66c098b8 2192before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
25c8b9d7
PD
2193bytes. The action can be one of these:
2194
2195wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
5c7808fe 2196 The time is relative to the previous wait statement.
25c8b9d7
PD
2197read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2198write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2199sync fsync() the file
2200datasync fdatasync() the file
2201trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes
f2a2ce0e
HL
2202
2203
22049.0 CPU idleness profiling
06464907 2205--------------------------
f2a2ce0e
HL
2206In some cases, we want to understand CPU overhead in a test. For example,
2207we test patches for the specific goodness of whether they reduce CPU usage.
2208fio implements a balloon approach to create a thread per CPU that runs at
2209idle priority, meaning that it only runs when nobody else needs the cpu.
2210By measuring the amount of work completed by the thread, idleness of each
2211CPU can be derived accordingly.
2212
2213An unit work is defined as touching a full page of unsigned characters. Mean
2214and standard deviation of time to complete an unit work is reported in "unit
2215work" section. Options can be chosen to report detailed percpu idleness or
2216overall system idleness by aggregating percpu stats.
99b9a85a
JA
2217
2218
221910.0 Verification and triggers
2220------------------------------
2221Fio is usually run in one of two ways, when data verification is done. The
2222first is a normal write job of some sort with verify enabled. When the
2223write phase has completed, fio switches to reads and verifies everything
2224it wrote. The second model is running just the write phase, and then later
2225on running the same job (but with reads instead of writes) to repeat the
2226same IO patterns and verify the contents. Both of these methods depend
2227on the write phase being completed, as fio otherwise has no idea how much
2228data was written.
2229
2230With verification triggers, fio supports dumping the current write state
2231to local files. Then a subsequent read verify workload can load this state
2232and know exactly where to stop. This is useful for testing cases where
2233power is cut to a server in a managed fashion, for instance.
2234
2235A verification trigger consists of two things:
2236
22371) Storing the write state of each job
22382) Executing a trigger command
2239
2240The write state is relatively small, on the order of hundreds of bytes
2241to single kilobytes. It contains information on the number of completions
2242done, the last X completions, etc.
2243
2244A trigger is invoked either through creation ('touch') of a specified
2245file in the system, or through a timeout setting. If fio is run with
2246--trigger-file=/tmp/trigger-file, then it will continually check for
2247the existence of /tmp/trigger-file. When it sees this file, it will
2248fire off the trigger (thus saving state, and executing the trigger
2249command).
2250
2251For client/server runs, there's both a local and remote trigger. If
2252fio is running as a server backend, it will send the job states back
2253to the client for safe storage, then execute the remote trigger, if
2254specified. If a local trigger is specified, the server will still send
2255back the write state, but the client will then execute the trigger.
2256
225710.1 Verification trigger example
2258---------------------------------
2259Lets say we want to run a powercut test on the remote machine 'server'.
2260Our write workload is in write-test.fio. We want to cut power to 'server'
2261at some point during the run, and we'll run this test from the safety
2262or our local machine, 'localbox'. On the server, we'll start the fio
2263backend normally:
2264
2265server# fio --server
2266
2267and on the client, we'll fire off the workload:
2268
2269localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger-remote="bash -c \"echo b > /proc/sysrq-triger\""
2270
2271We set /tmp/my-trigger as the trigger file, and we tell fio to execute
2272
2273echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger
2274
2275on the server once it has received the trigger and sent us the write
2276state. This will work, but it's not _really_ cutting power to the server,
2277it's merely abruptly rebooting it. If we have a remote way of cutting
2278power to the server through IPMI or similar, we could do that through
2279a local trigger command instead. Lets assume we have a script that does
2280IPMI reboot of a given hostname, ipmi-reboot. On localbox, we could
2281then have run fio with a local trigger instead:
2282
2283localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger="ipmi-reboot server"
2284
2285For this case, fio would wait for the server to send us the write state,
2286then execute 'ipmi-reboot server' when that happened.
2287
29dbd1e5 228810.2 Loading verify state
99b9a85a
JA
2289-------------------------
2290To load store write state, read verification job file must contain
2291the verify_state_load option. If that is set, fio will load the previously
2292stored state. For a local fio run this is done by loading the files directly,
2293and on a client/server run, the server backend will ask the client to send
2294the files over and load them from there.
a3ae5b05
JA
2295
2296
229711.0 Log File Formats
2298---------------------
2299
2300Fio supports a variety of log file formats, for logging latencies, bandwidth,
2301and IOPS. The logs share a common format, which looks like this:
2302
2303time (msec), value, data direction, offset
2304
2305Time for the log entry is always in milliseconds. The value logged depends
2306on the type of log, it will be one of the following:
2307
2308 Latency log Value is latency in usecs
2309 Bandwidth log Value is in KB/sec
2310 IOPS log Value is IOPS
2311
2312Data direction is one of the following:
2313
2314 0 IO is a READ
2315 1 IO is a WRITE
2316 2 IO is a TRIM
2317
2318The offset is the offset, in bytes, from the start of the file, for that
2319particular IO. The logging of the offset can be toggled with 'log_offset'.
2320
2321If windowed logging is enabled though 'log_avg_msec', then fio doesn't log
2322individual IOs. Instead of logs the average values over the specified
2323period of time. Since 'data direction' and 'offset' are per-IO values,
2324they aren't applicable if windowed logging is enabled. If windowed logging
2325is enabled and 'log_max_value' is set, then fio logs maximum values in
2326that window instead of averages.
2327