bloom: always use a larger minimum size for bloom filter
[fio.git] / HOWTO
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1Table of contents
2-----------------
3
41. Overview
52. How fio works
63. Running fio
74. Job file format
85. Detailed list of parameters
96. Normal output
107. Terse output
25c8b9d7 118. Trace file format
43f09da1 129. CPU idleness profiling
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13
141.0 Overview and history
15------------------------
16fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
17case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
18performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
19such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
20Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
21without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
22
23A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
24of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
25way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
26memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
27reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
28simulate both of these cases, and many more.
29
302.0 How fio works
31-----------------
32The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
33writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
34any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
35is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
36sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
37and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
38bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
39
40 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
41 We may only be reading sequentially from this
42 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
43 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
44
45 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
46 a single value, or it may describe a range of
47 block sizes.
48
49 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
50
51 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
52 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
d0ff85df 53 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
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54 SG (SCSI generic sg).
55
6c219763 56 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
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57 depth do we want to maintain?
58
59 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
60
61 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
62
63 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
64 this workload over.
66c098b8 65
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66The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
67there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
68job behaves.
69
70
713.0 Running fio
72---------------
73See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
74of them.
75
76Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
77(or job files) as parameters:
78
79$ fio job_file
80
81and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
82more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
83of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
550b1db6 84parameter described in the parameter section.
71bfa161 85
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86If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
87parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
88to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
89(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
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90mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
91also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
92--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
93Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
94until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
95similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
96job until a new [] job entry is seen.
b4692828 97
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98fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
99in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
6c219763 100such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
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101
102
1034.0 Job file format
104-------------------
105As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
106what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
107where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
108to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
109A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
110may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
111several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
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112section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
113'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
71bfa161 114
3c54bc46 115So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
b22989b9 116randomly reading from a 128MB file.
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117
118; -- start job file --
119[global]
120rw=randread
121size=128m
122
123[job1]
124
125[job2]
126
127; -- end job file --
128
129As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
130described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
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131makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
132line, this job would look as follows:
133
134$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
135
71bfa161 136
3c54bc46 137Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
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138to files.
139
140; -- start job file --
141[random-writers]
142ioengine=libaio
143iodepth=4
144rw=randwrite
145bs=32k
146direct=0
147size=64m
148numjobs=4
149
150; -- end job file --
151
152Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
153We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
b22989b9 154increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
71bfa161 155fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
b22989b9 156to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
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157have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
158specify:
159
160$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
71bfa161 161
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162When fio is utilized as a basis of any reasonably large test suite, it might be
163desirable to share a set of standardized settings across multiple job files.
164Instead of copy/pasting such settings, any section may pull in an external
165.fio file with 'include filename' directive, as in the following example:
166
167; -- start job file including.fio --
168[global]
169filename=/tmp/test
170filesize=1m
171include glob-include.fio
172
173[test]
174rw=randread
175bs=4k
176time_based=1
177runtime=10
178include test-include.fio
179; -- end job file including.fio --
180
181; -- start job file glob-include.fio --
182thread=1
183group_reporting=1
184; -- end job file glob-include.fio --
185
186; -- start job file test-include.fio --
187ioengine=libaio
188iodepth=4
189; -- end job file test-include.fio --
190
191Settings pulled into a section apply to that section only (except global
192section). Include directives may be nested in that any included file may
193contain further include directive(s).
194
195
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1964.1 Environment variables
197-------------------------
198
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199fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
200substring of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
201words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
202environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
203is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
204substituted.
205
206As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
207
208$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
209
210; -- start job file --
211[random-writers]
212rw=randwrite
213size=${SIZE}
214numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
215; -- end job file --
216
217This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
218
219; -- start job file --
220[random-writers]
221rw=randwrite
222size=64m
223numjobs=4
224; -- end job file --
225
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226fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
227inspiration.
228
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2294.2 Reserved keywords
230---------------------
231
232Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
233internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
234
235$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
236$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
237$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
238
239These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
240automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
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241is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
242perform actions like:
243
244size=8*$mb_memory
245
246and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
247machine.
74929ac2 248
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249
2505.0 Detailed list of parameters
251-------------------------------
252
253This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
254Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
255a string. The following types are used:
256
257str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
b09da8fa 258time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
e417fd66 259 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
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260 minutes, and hours, and accepts 'ms' (or 'msec') for milliseconds,
261 and 'us' (or 'usec') for microseconds.
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262int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
263 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
264 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
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265 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
266 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
b09da8fa 267 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
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268 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
269 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
270 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
271 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
272 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
273 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
274 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
275 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
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276bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
277 true and false (1 and 0).
b09da8fa 278irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
bf9a3edb 279 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
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280 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
281 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
f7fa2653 282 int.
83349190 283float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
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284
285With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
286parameters.
287
288name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
289 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
c2b1e753 290 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
6c219763 291 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
c2b1e753 292 job.
71bfa161 293
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294description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
295 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
296 not parsed.
297
3776041e 298directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
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299 in a different location than "./". See the 'filename' option
300 for escaping certain characters.
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301
302filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
303 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
304 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
ed92ac0c 305 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
414c2a3e 306 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
0fd666bf 307 and protocol to use in the format of =host,port,protocol.
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308 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
309 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
310 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
311 as the two working files, you would use
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312 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are
313 accessed as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device,
314 \\.\PhysicalDrive1 for the second etc. Note: Windows and
315 FreeBSD prevent write access to areas of the disk containing
316 in-use data (e.g. filesystems).
317 If the wanted filename does need to include a colon, then
318 escape that with a '\' character. For instance, if the filename
319 is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would use
320 filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name, meaning
321 stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
322 direction set.
71bfa161 323
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324filename_format=str
325 If sharing multiple files between jobs, it is usually necessary
326 to have fio generate the exact names that you want. By default,
327 fio will name a file based on the default file format
328 specification of jobname.jobnumber.filenumber. With this
329 option, that can be customized. Fio will recognize and replace
330 the following keywords in this string:
331
332 $jobname
333 The name of the worker thread or process.
334
335 $jobnum
336 The incremental number of the worker thread or
337 process.
338
339 $filenum
340 The incremental number of the file for that worker
341 thread or process.
342
343 To have dependent jobs share a set of files, this option can
344 be set to have fio generate filenames that are shared between
345 the two. For instance, if testfiles.$filenum is specified,
346 file number 4 for any job will be named testfiles.4. The
347 default of $jobname.$jobnum.$filenum will be used if
348 no other format specifier is given.
349
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350opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
351 directory and down the file system tree.
352
3776041e 353lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
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354 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
355 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
356 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
357 share files. The lock modes are:
358
359 none No locking. The default.
360 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
361 excluding all others.
362 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
363 readers may access the file at the
364 same time, but writes get exclusive
365 access.
366
d3aad8f2 367readwrite=str
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368rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
369
370 read Sequential reads
371 write Sequential writes
372 randwrite Random writes
373 randread Random reads
10b023db 374 rw,readwrite Sequential mixed reads and writes
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375 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
376
377 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
378 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
211097b2 379 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
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380 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
381 one by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
382 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
059b0802 383 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
ddb754db 384 suffix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
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385 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
386 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
387 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
388 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
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389
390rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
391 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
392 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
393 values are:
394
395 sequential Generate sequential offset
396 identical Generate the same offset
397
398 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
399 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
400 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
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401 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
402 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
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403 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
404 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
405 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
406 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
407 offset.
71bfa161 408
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409kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
410 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
411 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
412 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
413
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414unified_rw_reporting=bool Fio normally reports statistics on a per
415 data direction basis, meaning that read, write, and trim are
416 accounted and reported separately. If this option is set,
417 the fio will sum the results and report them as "mixed"
418 instead.
419
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420randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
421 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
422
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423randseed=int Seed the random number generators based on this seed value, to
424 be able to control what sequence of output is being generated.
425 If not set, the random sequence depends on the randrepeat
426 setting.
427
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428use_os_rand=bool Fio can either use the random generator supplied by the OS
429 to generator random offsets, or it can use it's own internal
430 generator (based on Tausworthe). Default is to use the
431 internal generator, which is often of better quality and
432 faster.
433
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434fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
435 Accepted values are:
436
437 none Do not pre-allocate space
438 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
439 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
440 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
441 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
442 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
443
444 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
445 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
446 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
7bc8c2cf 447
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448fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
449 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
450 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
451 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
452 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
453 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
454
f7fa2653 455size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
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456 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
457 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance).
3776041e 458 Unless specific nrfiles and filesize options are given,
7616cafe 459 fio will divide this size between the available files
d6667268 460 specified by the job. If not set, fio will use the full
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461 size of the given files or devices. If the files do not
462 exist, size must be given. It is also possible to give
463 size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If size=20% is
464 given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the given
7bb59102 465 files or devices.
71bfa161 466
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467io_limit=int Normally fio operates within the region set by 'size', which
468 means that the 'size' option sets both the region and size of
469 IO to be performed. Sometimes that is not what you want. With
470 this option, it is possible to define just the amount of IO
471 that fio should do. For instance, if 'size' is set to 20G and
472 'io_limit' is set to 5G, fio will perform IO within the first
473 20G but exit when 5G have been done.
474
f7fa2653 475filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
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476 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
477 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
478 given, each created file is the same size.
479
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480file_append=bool Perform IO after the end of the file. Normally fio will
481 operate within the size of a file. If this option is set, then
482 fio will append to the file instead. This has identical
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483 behavior to setting offset to the size of a file. This option
484 is ignored on non-regular files.
bedc9dc2 485
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486fill_device=bool
487fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
aa31f1f1 488 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
de98bd30 489 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
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490 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
491 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
492 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
493 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
494 ENOSPC there.
aa31f1f1 495
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496blocksize=int
497bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
498 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
499 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
f90eff5a 500 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
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501 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write,trim.
502 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, 8k blocks for
503 writes, and 8k for trims. You can terminate the list with
504 a trailing comma. bs=4k,8k, would use the default value for
505 trims.. If you only wish to set the write size, you
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506 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
507 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
a00735e6 508
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509blockalign=int
510ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
511 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
512 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
513 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
514 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
515 files, so it will turn off that option.
516
d3aad8f2 517blocksize_range=irange
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518bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
519 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
520 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
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521 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
522 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
523 See bs=.
a00735e6 524
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525bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
526 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
527 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
528 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
529 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
530
531 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
532
533 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
534 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
535 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
536
537 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
538
539 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
540 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
541 option like this one:
542
543 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
544
545 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
546 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
547 up to more, it will error out.
548
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549 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
550 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
551 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
552 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
553 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
554 specify:
555
556 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90,8k/10
557
d3aad8f2 558blocksize_unaligned
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559bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
560 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
561 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
71bfa161 562
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563bs_is_seq_rand If this option is set, fio will use the normal read,write
564 blocksize settings as sequential,random instead. Any random
565 read or write will use the WRITE blocksize settings, and any
566 sequential read or write will use the READ blocksize setting.
567
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568zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
569 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
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570 The resulting IO buffers will not be completely zeroed,
571 unless scramble_buffers is also turned off.
e9459e5a 572
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573refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
574 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
575 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
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576 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
577 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
5973cafb 578
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579scramble_buffers=bool If refill_buffers is too costly and the target is
580 using data deduplication, then setting this option will
581 slightly modify the IO buffer contents to defeat normal
582 de-dupe attempts. This is not enough to defeat more clever
583 block compression attempts, but it will stop naive dedupe of
584 blocks. Default: true.
585
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586buffer_compress_percentage=int If this is set, then fio will attempt to
587 provide IO buffer content (on WRITEs) that compress to
588 the specified level. Fio does this by providing a mix of
589 random data and zeroes. Note that this is per block size
590 unit, for file/disk wide compression level that matches
591 this setting, you'll also want to set refill_buffers.
592
593buffer_compress_chunk=int See buffer_compress_percentage. This
594 setting allows fio to manage how big the ranges of random
595 data and zeroed data is. Without this set, fio will
596 provide buffer_compress_percentage of blocksize random
597 data, followed by the remaining zeroed. With this set
598 to some chunk size smaller than the block size, fio can
599 alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO
600 buffer.
601
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602buffer_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
603 pattern. If not set, the contents of io buffers is defined by
604 the other options related to buffer contents. The setting can
605 be any pattern of bytes, and can be prefixed with 0x for hex
606 values. It may also be a string, where the string must then
607 be wrapped with "".
608
609dedupe_percentage=int If set, fio will generate this percentage of
610 identical buffers when writing. These buffers will be
611 naturally dedupable. The contents of the buffers depend on
612 what other buffer compression settings have been set. It's
613 possible to have the individual buffers either fully
614 compressible, or not at all. This option only controls the
615 distribution of unique buffers.
ce35b1ec 616
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617nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
618
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619openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
620 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
621 simultaneous opens.
622
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623file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
624 service next. The following types are defined:
625
626 random Just choose a file at random.
627
628 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
629 is the default.
630
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631 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
632 the next. Multiple files can still be
633 open depending on 'openfiles'.
634
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635 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
636 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
637 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
638 have been issued.
639
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640ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
641 types are defined:
642
643 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
644 used to position the io location.
645
a31041ea 646 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
647
e05af9e5 648 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
1d2af02a 649
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650 psyncv Basic preadv(2) or pwritev(2) IO.
651
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652 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
653 may only support queued behaviour with
654 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
de890a1e 655 This engine defines engine specific options.
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656
657 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
658
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659 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
660
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661 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
662
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663 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
664 to/from using memcpy(3).
665
666 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
667 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
668 space to the kernel.
669
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670 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
671 regular read/write async.
672
71bfa161 673 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
6c219763 674 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
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675 the target is an sg character device
676 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
677 io.
678
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679 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
680 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
681 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
682
ed92ac0c 683 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
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684 Depending on the protocol used, the hostname,
685 port, listen and filename options are used to
686 specify what sort of connection to make, while
687 the protocol option determines which protocol
688 will be used.
689 This engine defines engine specific options.
ed92ac0c 690
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691 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
692 map data and send/receive.
de890a1e 693 This engine defines engine specific options.
9cce02e8 694
53aec0a4 695 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
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696 cycles according to the cpuload= and
697 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
698 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
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699 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
700 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
701 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
702 CPU at the desired rate.
ba0fbe10 703
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704 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
705 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
706 to async IO. See
707
708 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
709
710 for more info on GUASI.
711
21b8aee8 712 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
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713 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
714 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
715 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
21b8aee8 716
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717 falloc IO engine that does regular fallocate to
718 simulate data transfer as fio ioengine.
719 DDIR_READ does fallocate(,mode = keep_size,)
720 DDIR_WRITE does fallocate(,mode = 0)
721 DDIR_TRIM does fallocate(,mode = punch_hole)
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722
723 e4defrag IO engine that does regular EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT
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724 ioctls to simulate defragment activity in
725 request to DDIR_WRITE event
726
727 rbd IO engine supporting direct access to Ceph
728 Rados Block Devices (RBD) via librbd without
729 the need to use the kernel rbd driver. This
730 ioengine defines engine specific options.
731
732 gfapi Using Glusterfs libgfapi sync interface to
733 direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
734 options.
735
736 gfapi_async Using Glusterfs libgfapi async interface
737 to direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
738 having to go through FUSE. This ioengine
739 defines engine specific options.
0981fd71 740
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741 libhdfs Read and write through Hadoop (HDFS).
742 The 'filename' option is used to specify host,
743 port of the hdfs name-node to connect. This
744 engine interprets offsets a little
745 differently. In HDFS, files once created
746 cannot be modified. So random writes are not
747 possible. To imitate this, libhdfs engine
748 expects bunch of small files to be created
749 over HDFS, and engine will randomly pick a
750 file out of those files based on the offset
751 generated by fio backend. (see the example
752 job file to create such files, use rw=write
753 option). Please note, you might want to set
754 necessary environment variables to work with
755 hdfs/libhdfs properly.
1b10477b 756
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757 external Prefix to specify loading an external
758 IO engine object file. Append the engine
759 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
760 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
761
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762iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
763 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
764 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
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765 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
766 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
9b836561 767 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
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768 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
769 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
770 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
771 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
772 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
71bfa161 773
4950421a 774iodepth_batch_submit=int
cb5ab512 775iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
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776 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
777 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
778 bigger batches of IO at the time.
cb5ab512 779
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780iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
781 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
782 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
783 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
784 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
785 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
786 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
787 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
788
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789iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
790 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
791 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
792 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
793 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
794 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
795
71bfa161 796direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
9b836561 797 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
93bcfd20 798 On Windows the synchronous ioengines don't support direct io.
76a43db4 799
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800atomic=bool If value is true, attempt to use atomic direct IO. Atomic
801 writes are guaranteed to be stable once acknowledged by
802 the operating system. Only Linux supports O_ATOMIC right
803 now.
804
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805buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
806 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
71bfa161 807
f7fa2653 808offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
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809 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
810 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
811
214ac7e0 812offset_increment=int If this is provided, then the real offset becomes
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813 offset + offset_increment * thread_number, where the thread
814 number is a counter that starts at 0 and is incremented for
815 each sub-job (i.e. when numjobs option is specified). This
816 option is useful if there are several jobs which are intended
817 to operate on a file in parallel disjoint segments, with
818 even spacing between the starting points.
214ac7e0 819
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820number_ios=int Fio will normally perform IOs until it has exhausted the size
821 of the region set by size=, or if it exhaust the allocated
822 time (or hits an error condition). With this setting, the
823 range/size can be set independently of the number of IOs to
824 perform. When fio reaches this number, it will exit normally
825 and report status.
826
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827fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
828 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
829 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
830 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
831 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
6c219763 832 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
71bfa161 833
e76b1da4 834fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
5f9099ea 835 metadata blocks.
93bcfd20 836 In FreeBSD and Windows there is no fdatasync(), this falls back to
e72fa4d4 837 using fsync()
5f9099ea 838
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839sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
840 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
841 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
842 can currently be one or more of:
843
844 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
845 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
846 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
847
848 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
849 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
850 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
851 This option is Linux specific.
852
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853overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
854 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
855 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
856 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
857 will be done.
71bfa161 858
dbd11ead 859end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when a write stage has completed.
71bfa161 860
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861fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
862 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
863 file close, not just at the end of the job.
864
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865rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
866
867rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
868 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
869 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
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JA
870 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
871 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
872 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
71bfa161 873
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874random_distribution=str:float By default, fio will use a completely uniform
875 random distribution when asked to perform random IO. Sometimes
876 it is useful to skew the distribution in specific ways,
877 ensuring that some parts of the data is more hot than others.
878 fio includes the following distribution models:
879
880 random Uniform random distribution
881 zipf Zipf distribution
882 pareto Pareto distribution
883
884 When using a zipf or pareto distribution, an input value
885 is also needed to define the access pattern. For zipf, this
886 is the zipf theta. For pareto, it's the pareto power. Fio
887 includes a test program, genzipf, that can be used visualize
888 what the given input values will yield in terms of hit rates.
889 If you wanted to use zipf with a theta of 1.2, you would use
890 random_distribution=zipf:1.2 as the option. If a non-uniform
891 model is used, fio will disable use of the random map.
892
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893percentage_random=int For a random workload, set how big a percentage should
894 be random. This defaults to 100%, in which case the workload
895 is fully random. It can be set from anywhere from 0 to 100.
896 Setting it to 0 would make the workload fully sequential. Any
897 setting in between will result in a random mix of sequential
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898 and random IO, at the given percentages. It is possible to
899 set different values for reads, writes, and trim. To do so,
900 simply use a comma separated list. See blocksize.
211c9b89 901
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902norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
903 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
904 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
905 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
906 some blocks may be read/written more than once. This option
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907 is mutually exclusive with verify= if and only if multiple
908 blocksizes (via bsrange=) are used, since fio only tracks
909 complete rewrites of blocks.
bb8895e0 910
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911softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
912 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
913 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
914 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
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915 disabled by default.
916
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917random_generator=str Fio supports the following engines for generating
918 IO offsets for random IO:
919
920 tausworthe Strong 2^88 cycle random number generator
921 lfsr Linear feedback shift register generator
922
923 Tausworthe is a strong random number generator, but it
924 requires tracking on the side if we want to ensure that
925 blocks are only read or written once. LFSR guarantees
926 that we never generate the same offset twice, and it's
927 also less computationally expensive. It's not a true
928 random generator, however, though for IO purposes it's
929 typically good enough. LFSR only works with single
930 block sizes, not with workloads that use multiple block
931 sizes. If used with such a workload, fio may read or write
932 some blocks multiple times.
43f09da1 933
71bfa161
JA
934nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
935
936prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
937 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
938 See man ionice(1).
939
940prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
941
942thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
943 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
48097d5c
JA
944 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
945 thinktime_spin.
946
947thinktime_spin=int
948 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
949 doing something with the data received, before falling back
950 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
951 thinktime.
9c1f7434 952
4d01ece6 953thinktime_blocks=int
9c1f7434
JA
954 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
955 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
956 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
4d01ece6
JA
957 after every block. This effectively makes any queue depth
958 setting redundant, since no more than 1 IO will be queued
959 before we have to complete it and do our thinktime. In
960 other words, this setting effectively caps the queue depth
961 if the latter is larger.
71bfa161 962
581e7141 963rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
b09da8fa 964 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
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965 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
966 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
967 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
968 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
969 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
970 limit reads.
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971
972ratemin=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
4e991c23 973 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
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974 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
975 read vs write separation.
4e991c23
JA
976
977rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
978 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
979 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
581e7141 980 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
de8f6de9 981 as rate is used for read vs write separation.
4e991c23
JA
982
983rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
581e7141 984 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
de8f6de9 985 write separation.
71bfa161 986
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987latency_target=int If set, fio will attempt to find the max performance
988 point that the given workload will run at while maintaining a
989 latency below this target. The values is given in microseconds.
990 See latency_window and latency_percentile
991
992latency_window=int Used with latency_target to specify the sample window
993 that the job is run at varying queue depths to test the
994 performance. The value is given in microseconds.
995
996latency_percentile=float The percentage of IOs that must fall within the
997 criteria specified by latency_target and latency_window. If not
998 set, this defaults to 100.0, meaning that all IOs must be equal
999 or below to the value set by latency_target.
1000
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1001max_latency=int If set, fio will exit the job if it exceeds this maximum
1002 latency. It will exit with an ETIME error.
1003
71bfa161 1004ratecycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'ratemin' over this number
6c219763 1005 of milliseconds.
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1006
1007cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
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1008 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
1009 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
1010 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
7dbb6eba 1011 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
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1012 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
1013 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
1014 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
1015 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
71bfa161 1016
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1017cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
1018 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
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JA
1019 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
1020 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
1021 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
d2e268b0 1022
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1023cpus_allowed_policy=str Set the policy of how fio distributes the CPUs
1024 specified by cpus_allowed or cpumask. Two policies are
1025 supported:
1026
1027 shared All jobs will share the CPU set specified.
1028 split Each job will get a unique CPU from the CPU set.
1029
1030 'shared' is the default behaviour, if the option isn't
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JA
1031 specified. If split is specified, then fio will will assign
1032 one cpu per job. If not enough CPUs are given for the jobs
1033 listed, then fio will roundrobin the CPUs in the set.
c2acfbac 1034
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1035numa_cpu_nodes=str Set this job running on spcified NUMA nodes' CPUs. The
1036 arguments allow comma delimited list of cpu numbers,
1037 A-B ranges, or 'all'. Note, to enable numa options support,
67bf9823 1038 fio must be built on a system with libnuma-dev(el) installed.
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YR
1039
1040numa_mem_policy=str Set this job's memory policy and corresponding NUMA
1041 nodes. Format of the argements:
1042 <mode>[:<nodelist>]
1043 `mode' is one of the following memory policy:
1044 default, prefer, bind, interleave, local
1045 For `default' and `local' memory policy, no node is
1046 needed to be specified.
1047 For `prefer', only one node is allowed.
1048 For `bind' and `interleave', it allow comma delimited
1049 list of numbers, A-B ranges, or 'all'.
1050
e417fd66 1051startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
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1052 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
1053 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
1054 time.
1055
e417fd66 1056runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
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1057 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
1058 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
1059 cap the total runtime to a given time.
1060
cf4464ca 1061time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
bf9a3edb 1062 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
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JA
1063 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
1064 as many times as the runtime allows.
1065
e417fd66 1066ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
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1067 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
1068 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
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JA
1069 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
1070 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
1071 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
1072 or runtime is specified.
721938ae 1073
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1074invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
1075 to starting io. Defaults to true.
1076
1077sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
1078 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
1079
d3aad8f2 1080iomem=str
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1081mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
1082 The allowed values are:
1083
1084 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
1085
1086 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
1087 through shmget(2).
1088
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1089 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
1090
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1091 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
1092 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
1093 a filename is given after the option. The
1094 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
71bfa161 1095
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1096 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
1097 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
1098 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
1099
71bfa161 1100 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
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JA
1101 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
1102 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
1103 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
1104 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
b22989b9 1105 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
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JA
1106 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
1107 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
1108 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
1109 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
1110 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
1111 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
56bb17f2 1112 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
5394ae5f
JA
1113
1114 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
1115 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
1116 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
71bfa161 1117
d529ee19
JA
1118iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
1119 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
1120 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
1121 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
1122 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
1123 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
1124 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
1125 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
1126
f7fa2653 1127hugepage-size=int
56bb17f2 1128 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
b22989b9 1129 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
c51074e7
JA
1130 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
1131 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
1132 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
56bb17f2 1133
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JA
1134exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
1135 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
1136 desired action.
1137
1138bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
6c219763 1139 is specified in milliseconds.
71bfa161 1140
c8eeb9df
JA
1141iopsavgtime=int Average the calculated IOPS over the given time. Value
1142 is specified in milliseconds.
1143
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JA
1144create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
1145 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
1146 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
1147 used and even the number of processors in the system.
1148
1149create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
1150 default.
1151
814452bd
JA
1152create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
1153 when it's time to do IO to that file.
1154
25460cf6
JA
1155create_only=bool If true, fio will only run the setup phase of the job.
1156 If files need to be laid out or updated on disk, only
1157 that will be done. The actual job contents are not
1158 executed.
1159
afad68f7 1160pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
34f1c044
JA
1161 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
1162 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
9c0d2241
JA
1163 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
1164 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
1165 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
1166 IO.
afad68f7 1167
e545a6ce 1168unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
bf9a3edb
JA
1169 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
1170 set again and again.
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JA
1171
1172loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
1173 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
1174 to 1.
1175
62167762
JC
1176verify_only Do not perform specified workload---only verify data still
1177 matches previous invocation of this workload. This option
1178 allows one to check data multiple times at a later date
1179 without overwriting it. This option makes sense only for
1180 workloads that write data, and does not support workloads
1181 with the time_based option set.
1182
68e1f29a 1183do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
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SL
1184 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
1185
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JA
1186verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
1187 after each iteration of the job. The allowed values are:
1188
1189 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
1190 it in the header of each block.
1191
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JA
1192 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
1193 area and store it in the header of each
1194 block.
1195
bac39e0e
JA
1196 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
1197 it in the header of each block.
1198
3845591f 1199 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
0539d758
JA
1200 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
1201 back to regular software crc32c, if not
1202 supported by the system.
3845591f 1203
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JA
1204 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
1205 it in the header of each block.
1206
969f7ed3
JA
1207 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
1208 it in the header of each block.
1209
17dc34df
JA
1210 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
1211 it in the header of each block.
1212
844ea602
JA
1213 xxhash Use xxhash as the checksum function. Generally
1214 the fastest software checksum that fio
1215 supports.
1216
cd14cc10
JA
1217 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
1218
1219 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
1220
7c353ceb
JA
1221 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
1222
7437ee87
SL
1223 meta Write extra information about each io
1224 (timestamp, block number etc.). The block
62167762
JC
1225 number is verified. The io sequence number is
1226 verified for workloads that write data.
1227 See also verify_pattern.
7437ee87 1228
36690c9b
JA
1229 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
1230 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
1231 else.
1232
6c219763 1233 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
71bfa161 1234 system to make sure that the written data is also
b892dc08
JA
1235 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
1236 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
1237 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
1238 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
1239 newly written data.
71bfa161 1240
160b966d
JA
1241verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
1242 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
1243 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
1244 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
1245 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
1246 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
1247 significant.
3f9f4e26 1248
f7fa2653 1249verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
546a9142
SL
1250 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
1251 verifying.
1252
f7fa2653 1253verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
3f9f4e26
SL
1254 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
1255 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
1256 evenly.
90059d65 1257
0e92f873 1258verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
e28218f3
SL
1259 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
1260 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
1261 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
1262 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
0e92f873
RR
1263 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
1264 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
996093bb
JA
1265 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
1266 with verify=meta.
e28218f3 1267
68e1f29a 1268verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
a12a3b4d
JA
1269 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
1270 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
1271 failure.
e8462bd8 1272
b463e936
JA
1273verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
1274 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
1275 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
ef71e317 1276 corruption occurred. Off by default.
b463e936 1277
e8462bd8
JA
1278verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
1279 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
1280 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
1281 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
c85c324c
JA
1282 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
1283 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
1284 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
1285 IO in flight while verifies are running.
e8462bd8
JA
1286
1287verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
1288 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
1289 format used.
6f87418f
JA
1290
1291verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
1292 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
1293 other words, everything is written then everything is read
1294 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
1295 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
1296 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
1297 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
1298 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
f42195a3
JA
1299 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
1300
6f87418f
JA
1301verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1302 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1303 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
f42195a3
JA
1304 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1305 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1306 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1307 blocks will be verified more than once.
66c098b8 1308
d392365e 1309stonewall
de8f6de9 1310wait_for_previous Wait for preceding jobs in the job file to exit, before
71bfa161 1311 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
b3d62a75
JA
1312 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1313 a new reporting group.
1314
abcab6af 1315new_group Start a new reporting group. See: group_reporting.
71bfa161
JA
1316
1317numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1318 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
abcab6af
AV
1319 the same thing. Each thread is reported separately; to see
1320 statistics for all clones as a whole, use group_reporting in
1321 conjunction with new_group.
1322
1323group_reporting It may sometimes be interesting to display statistics for
04b2f799
JA
1324 groups of jobs as a whole instead of for each individual job.
1325 This is especially true if 'numjobs' is used; looking at
1326 individual thread/process output quickly becomes unwieldy.
1327 To see the final report per-group instead of per-job, use
1328 'group_reporting'. Jobs in a file will be part of the same
1329 reporting group, unless if separated by a stonewall, or by
1330 using 'new_group'.
71bfa161
JA
1331
1332thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1333 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1334 instead.
1335
f7fa2653 1336zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
71bfa161 1337
f7fa2653 1338zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
71bfa161
JA
1339 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1340 io on zones of a file.
1341
076efc7c 1342write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
5b42a488
SH
1343 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1344 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
71bfa161 1345
076efc7c 1346read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
71bfa161 1347 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
6df8adaa
JA
1348 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1349 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1350 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1351 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1352 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
ea3e51c3 1353 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
66c098b8 1354
64bbb865 1355replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
62776229
JA
1356 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1357 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1358 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1359 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1360 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1361 given device, but different timings.
71bfa161 1362
d1c46c04
DN
1363replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1364 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1365 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
de8f6de9 1366 undesirable because on a different machine those major/minor
d1c46c04
DN
1367 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1368 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1369 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1370 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1371 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1372 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1373 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1374 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1375 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1376 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1377 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1378 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1379
e3cedca7 1380write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
71bfa161 1381 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
e0da9bc2
JA
1382 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1383 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
ddb754db 1384 graphs. See write_lat_log for behaviour of given
8ad3b3dd
JA
1385 filename. For this option, the suffix is _bw.x.log, where
1386 x is the index of the job (1..N, where N is the number of
1387 jobs).
71bfa161 1388
e3cedca7 1389write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
02af0988
JA
1390 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1391 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1392 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1393 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
e3cedca7
JA
1394
1395 write_lat_log=foo
1396
8ad3b3dd
JA
1397 The actual log names will be foo_slat.x.log, foo_clat.x.log,
1398 and foo_lat.x.log, where x is the index of the job (1..N,
1399 where N is the number of jobs). This helps fio_generate_plot
1400 fine the logs automatically.
71bfa161 1401
b8bc8cba
JA
1402write_iops_log=str Same as write_bw_log, but writes IOPS. If no filename is
1403 given with this option, the default filename of
8ad3b3dd
JA
1404 "jobname_type.x.log" is used,where x is the index of the job
1405 (1..N, where N is the number of jobs). Even if the filename
1406 is given, fio will still append the type of log.
b8bc8cba
JA
1407
1408log_avg_msec=int By default, fio will log an entry in the iops, latency,
1409 or bw log for every IO that completes. When writing to the
1410 disk log, that can quickly grow to a very large size. Setting
1411 this option makes fio average the each log entry over the
1412 specified period of time, reducing the resolution of the log.
1413 Defaults to 0.
1414
ae588852
JA
1415log_offset=int If this is set, the iolog options will include the byte
1416 offset for the IO entry as well as the other data values.
1417
aee2ab67
JA
1418log_compression=int If this is set, fio will compress the IO logs as
1419 it goes, to keep the memory footprint lower. When a log
1420 reaches the specified size, that chunk is removed and
1421 compressed in the background. Given that IO logs are
1422 fairly highly compressible, this yields a nice memory
1423 savings for longer runs. The downside is that the
1424 compression will consume some background CPU cycles, so
1425 it may impact the run. This, however, is also true if
1426 the logging ends up consuming most of the system memory.
1427 So pick your poison. The IO logs are saved normally at the
1428 end of a run, by decompressing the chunks and storing them
1429 in the specified log file. This feature depends on the
1430 availability of zlib.
1431
b26317c9
JA
1432log_store_compressed=bool If set, and log_compression is also set,
1433 fio will store the log files in a compressed format. They
1434 can be decompressed with fio, using the --inflate-log
1435 command line parameter. The files will be stored with a
1436 .fz suffix.
1437
f7fa2653 1438lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
71bfa161
JA
1439 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1440 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
81c6b6cd 1441 The amount specified is per worker.
71bfa161
JA
1442
1443exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1444 through system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1445 jobname.prerun.txt.
71bfa161
JA
1446
1447exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
74c8c488
JA
1448 though system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1449 jobname.postrun.txt.
71bfa161
JA
1450
1451ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1452 io scheduler before running.
1453
0a839f30
JA
1454disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1455 supports it. Defaults to on.
1456
02af0988 1457disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
9520ebb9
JA
1458 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1459 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1460 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1461 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1462 disable_bw as well.
1463
02af0988
JA
1464disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1465 disable_lat.
1466
9520ebb9 1467disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
02af0988 1468 disable_slat.
9520ebb9
JA
1469
1470disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
02af0988 1471 disable_lat.
9520ebb9 1472
83349190
YH
1473clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1474 completion latencies.
1475
1476percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
1477 for completion latencies. Each number is a floating
1478 number in the range (0,100], and the maximum length of
1479 the list is 20. Use ':' to separate the numbers, and
1480 list the numbers in ascending order. For example,
1481 --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause fio to report
1482 the values of completion latency below which 99.5% and
1483 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
1484
23893646
JA
1485clocksource=str Use the given clocksource as the base of timing. The
1486 supported options are:
1487
1488 gettimeofday gettimeofday(2)
1489
1490 clock_gettime clock_gettime(2)
1491
1492 cpu Internal CPU clock source
1493
1494 cpu is the preferred clocksource if it is reliable, as it
1495 is very fast (and fio is heavy on time calls). Fio will
1496 automatically use this clocksource if it's supported and
1497 considered reliable on the system it is running on, unless
1498 another clocksource is specifically set. For x86/x86-64 CPUs,
1499 this means supporting TSC Invariant.
1500
993bf48b
JA
1501gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1502 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1503 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1504 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1505 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1506 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1507
be4ecfdf
JA
1508gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1509 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1510 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1511 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1512 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1513 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1514 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1515 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1516 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1517 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1518 jobs.
a696fa2a 1519
06842027 1520continue_on_error=str Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
f2bba182
RR
1521 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1522 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1523 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1524 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1525 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1526 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1527 run.
be4ecfdf 1528
06842027
SL
1529 The allowed values are:
1530
1531 none Exit on any IO or verify errors.
1532
1533 read Continue on read errors, exit on all others.
1534
1535 write Continue on write errors, exit on all others.
1536
1537 io Continue on any IO error, exit on all others.
1538
1539 verify Continue on verify errors, exit on all others.
1540
1541 all Continue on all errors.
1542
1543 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'.
1544
1545 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'all'.
1546
8b28bd41
DM
1547ignore_error=str Sometimes you want to ignore some errors during test
1548 in that case you can specify error list for each error type.
1549 ignore_error=READ_ERR_LIST,WRITE_ERR_LIST,VERIFY_ERR_LIST
1550 errors for given error type is separated with ':'. Error
1551 may be symbol ('ENOSPC', 'ENOMEM') or integer.
1552 Example:
1553 ignore_error=EAGAIN,ENOSPC:122
66c098b8
BC
1554 This option will ignore EAGAIN from READ, and ENOSPC and
1555 122(EDQUOT) from WRITE.
8b28bd41
DM
1556
1557error_dump=bool If set dump every error even if it is non fatal, true
1558 by default. If disabled only fatal error will be dumped
66c098b8 1559
6adb38a1
JA
1560cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1561 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1562 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1563 mounted, you can do so with:
a696fa2a
JA
1564
1565 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1566
a696fa2a
JA
1567cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1568 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1569 are in the range of 100..1000.
71bfa161 1570
7de87099
VG
1571cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1572 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1573 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1574 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1575 files after job completion. Default: false
1576
e0b0d892
JA
1577uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1578 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1579
1580gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1581
9e684a49
DE
1582flow_id=int The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a
1583 global flow. See flow.
1584
1585flow=int Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then
1586 there is a 'flow counter' which is used to regulate the
1587 proportion of activity between two or more jobs. fio attempts
1588 to keep this flow counter near zero. The 'flow' parameter
1589 stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the flow
1590 counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if
1591 one job has flow=8 and another job has flow=-1, then there
1592 will be a roughly 1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
1593
1594flow_watermark=int The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow
1595 counter is allowed to reach before the job must wait for a
1596 lower value of the counter.
1597
1598flow_sleep=int The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow
1599 watermark has been exceeded before retrying operations
1600
de890a1e
SL
1601In addition, there are some parameters which are only valid when a specific
1602ioengine is in use. These are used identically to normal parameters, with the
1603caveat that when used on the command line, they must come after the ioengine
1604that defines them is selected.
1605
1606[libaio] userspace_reap Normally, with the libaio engine in use, fio will use
1607 the io_getevents system call to reap newly returned events.
1608 With this flag turned on, the AIO ring will be read directly
1609 from user-space to reap events. The reaping mode is only
1610 enabled when polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
1611 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
1612
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JA
1613[cpu] cpuload=int Attempt to use the specified percentage of CPU cycles.
1614
1615[cpu] cpuchunks=int Split the load into cycles of the given time. In
1616 microseconds.
1617
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JA
1618[cpu] exit_on_io_done=bool Detect when IO threads are done, then exit.
1619
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SL
1620[netsplice] hostname=str
1621[net] hostname=str The host name or IP address to use for TCP or UDP based IO.
1622 If the job is a TCP listener or UDP reader, the hostname is not
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SB
1623 used and must be omitted unless it is a valid UDP multicast
1624 address.
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SL
1625
1626[netsplice] port=int
1627[net] port=int The TCP or UDP port to bind to or connect to.
1628
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SB
1629[netsplice] interface=str
1630[net] interface=str The IP address of the network interface used to send or
1631 receive UDP multicast
1632
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SB
1633[netsplice] ttl=int
1634[net] ttl=int Time-to-live value for outgoing UDP multicast packets.
1635 Default: 1
1636
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JA
1637[netsplice] nodelay=bool
1638[net] nodelay=bool Set TCP_NODELAY on TCP connections.
1639
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SL
1640[netsplice] protocol=str
1641[netsplice] proto=str
1642[net] protocol=str
1643[net] proto=str The network protocol to use. Accepted values are:
1644
1645 tcp Transmission control protocol
49ccb8c1 1646 tcpv6 Transmission control protocol V6
f5cc3d0e 1647 udp User datagram protocol
49ccb8c1 1648 udpv6 User datagram protocol V6
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SL
1649 unix UNIX domain socket
1650
1651 When the protocol is TCP or UDP, the port must also be given,
1652 as well as the hostname if the job is a TCP listener or UDP
1653 reader. For unix sockets, the normal filename option should be
1654 used and the port is invalid.
1655
1656[net] listen For TCP network connections, tell fio to listen for incoming
1657 connections rather than initiating an outgoing connection. The
1658 hostname must be omitted if this option is used.
b511c9aa 1659[net] pingpong Normaly a network writer will just continue writing data, and
7aeb1e94
JA
1660 a network reader will just consume packages. If pingpong=1
1661 is set, a writer will send its normal payload to the reader,
1662 then wait for the reader to send the same payload back. This
1663 allows fio to measure network latencies. The submission
1664 and completion latencies then measure local time spent
1665 sending or receiving, and the completion latency measures
1666 how long it took for the other end to receive and send back.
b511c9aa
SB
1667 For UDP multicast traffic pingpong=1 should only be set for a
1668 single reader when multiple readers are listening to the same
1669 address.
7aeb1e94 1670
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DM
1671[e4defrag] donorname=str
1672 File will be used as a block donor(swap extents between files)
1673[e4defrag] inplace=int
66c098b8 1674 Configure donor file blocks allocation strategy
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DM
1675 0(default): Preallocate donor's file on init
1676 1 : allocate space immidietly inside defragment event,
1677 and free right after event
1678
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SL
1679
1680
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16816.0 Interpreting the output
1682---------------------------
1683
1684fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1685status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1686
73c8b082 1687Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
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JA
1688
1689The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1690each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1691
1692Idle Run
1693---- ---
1694P Thread setup, but not started.
1695C Thread created.
9c6f6316 1696I Thread initialized, waiting or generating necessary data.
b0f65863 1697 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
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JA
1698 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1699 r Running, doing random reads.
1700 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1701 w Running, doing random writes.
1702 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1703 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1704 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
3d434057 1705 f Running, finishing up (writing IO logs, etc)
fc6bd43c 1706 V Running, doing verification of written data.
71bfa161 1707E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
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JA
1708_ Thread reaped, or
1709X Thread reaped, exited with an error.
a5e371a6 1710K Thread reaped, exited due to signal.
71bfa161 1711
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JA
1712Fio will condense the thread string as not to take up more space on the
1713command line as is needed. For instance, if you have 10 readers and 10
1714writers running, the output would look like this:
1715
1716Jobs: 20 (f=20): [R(10),W(10)] [4.0% done] [2103MB/0KB/0KB /s] [538K/0/0 iops] [eta 57m:36s]
1717
1718Fio will still maintain the ordering, though. So the above means that jobs
17191..10 are readers, and 11..20 are writers.
1720
71bfa161 1721The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
c9f60304
JA
1722currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1723listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1724and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
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JA
1725the following groups (if any). Note that the string is displayed in order,
1726so it's possible to tell which of the jobs are currently doing what. The
1727first character is the first job defined in the job file, and so forth.
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1728
1729When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1730each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1731direction, the output looks like:
1732
1733Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
35649e58 1734 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
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JA
1735 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1736 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
b22989b9 1737 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
e7823a94 1738 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
71619dc2 1739 IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
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JA
1740 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1741 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
30061b97 1742 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
8abdce66
JA
1743 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1744 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
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1745
1746The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1747thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1748they denote:
1749
1750io= Number of megabytes io performed
1751bw= Average bandwidth rate
35649e58 1752iops= Average IOs performed per second
71bfa161 1753runt= The runtime of that thread
72fbda2a 1754 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
71bfa161
JA
1755 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
1756 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
8a35c71e 1757 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
bf9a3edb 1758 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
8a35c71e 1759 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
0d237712
LAG
1760 above, milliseconds is the best scale. Note: in --minimal mode
1761 latencies are always expressed in microseconds.
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JA
1762 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
1763 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
1764 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
1765 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
1766 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
1767 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
1768 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
1769 this thread received in this group. This last value is
1770 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
1771 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
1772cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
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JA
1773 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
1774 system and user time, and finally the number of major
1775 and minor page faults.
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JA
1776IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
1777 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
1778 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
1779 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
1780 range from 16 to 31.
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JA
1781IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
1782 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
1783 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
1784 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
1785IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
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JA
1786IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
1787 of them were short.
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JA
1788IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
1789 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
1790 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
1791 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
8abdce66
JA
1792 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
1793 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
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1794
1795After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
1796will look like this:
1797
1798Run status group 0 (all jobs):
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JA
1799 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
1800 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
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1801
1802For each data direction, it prints:
1803
1804io= Number of megabytes io performed.
1805aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
1806minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1807maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
1808mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
1809maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
1810
1811And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
1812
1813Disk stats (read/write):
1814 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
1815
1816Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
1817numbers denote:
1818
1819ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
1820merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
1821ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
1822io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
1823util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
1824 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
1825
8423bd11
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1826It is also possible to get fio to dump the current output while it is
1827running, without terminating the job. To do that, send fio the USR1 signal.
06464907
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1828You can also get regularly timed dumps by using the --status-interval
1829parameter, or by creating a file in /tmp named fio-dump-status. If fio
1830sees this file, it will unlink it and dump the current output status.
8423bd11 1831
71bfa161
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1832
18337.0 Terse output
1834----------------
1835
1836For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
6af019c9 1837of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
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JA
1838The format is one long line of values, such as:
1839
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DN
18402;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%
1841A description of this job goes here.
1842
1843The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
71bfa161 1844
525c2bfa
JA
1845To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
1846value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
1847be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
1848signify that change.
6820cb3b 1849
71bfa161
JA
1850Split up, the format is as follows:
1851
5e726d0a 1852 terse version, fio version, jobname, groupid, error
71bfa161 1853 READ status:
312b4af2 1854 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
de196b82
JA
1855 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1856 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1db92cb6 1857 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
de196b82 1858 Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
0d237712 1859 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
71bfa161 1860 WRITE status:
312b4af2 1861 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
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JA
1862 Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1863 Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
1db92cb6 1864 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
de196b82 1865 Total latency: min, max, mean, deviation (usec)
0d237712 1866 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
046ee302 1867 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
2270890c 1868 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
562c2d2f
DN
1869 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
1870 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
f2f788dd
JA
1871 Disk utilization: Disk name, Read ios, write ios,
1872 Read merges, write merges,
1873 Read ticks, write ticks,
3d7cd9b4 1874 Time spent in queue, disk utilization percentage
de8f6de9 1875 Additional Info (dependent on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
66c098b8 1876
de8f6de9 1877 Additional Info (dependent on description being set): Text description
25c8b9d7 1878
1db92cb6
JA
1879Completion latency percentiles can be a grouping of up to 20 sets, so
1880for the terse output fio writes all of them. Each field will look like this:
1881
1882 1.00%=6112
1883
1884which is the Xth percentile, and the usec latency associated with it.
1885
f2f788dd
JA
1886For disk utilization, all disks used by fio are shown. So for each disk
1887there will be a disk utilization section.
1888
25c8b9d7
PD
1889
18908.0 Trace file format
1891---------------------
66c098b8 1892There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
25c8b9d7
PD
1893is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
1894below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
1895
1896In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
1897
1898
18998.1 Trace file format v1
1900------------------------
1901Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
1902
1903rw, offset, length
1904
1905where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
1906
1907This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
1908
1909
19108.2 Trace file format v2
1911------------------------
1912The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
1913It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
1914possible file actions.
1915
1916The first line of the trace file has to be:
1917
1918fio version 2 iolog
1919
1920Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
1921
1922The file management format:
1923
1924filename action
1925
1926The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
1927
1928add Add the given filename to the trace
66c098b8 1929open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
25c8b9d7
PD
1930 been added with the add action before.
1931close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
1932 opened before.
1933
1934
1935The file io action format:
1936
1937filename action offset length
1938
1939The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
66c098b8 1940before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
25c8b9d7
PD
1941bytes. The action can be one of these:
1942
1943wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
1944read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
1945write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
1946sync fsync() the file
1947datasync fdatasync() the file
1948trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes
f2a2ce0e
HL
1949
1950
19519.0 CPU idleness profiling
06464907 1952--------------------------
f2a2ce0e
HL
1953In some cases, we want to understand CPU overhead in a test. For example,
1954we test patches for the specific goodness of whether they reduce CPU usage.
1955fio implements a balloon approach to create a thread per CPU that runs at
1956idle priority, meaning that it only runs when nobody else needs the cpu.
1957By measuring the amount of work completed by the thread, idleness of each
1958CPU can be derived accordingly.
1959
1960An unit work is defined as touching a full page of unsigned characters. Mean
1961and standard deviation of time to complete an unit work is reported in "unit
1962work" section. Options can be chosen to report detailed percpu idleness or
1963overall system idleness by aggregating percpu stats.