zipf/pareto/gauss: add option to disable hashing
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1Table of contents
2-----------------
3
41. Overview
52. How fio works
63. Running fio
74. Job file format
85. Detailed list of parameters
96. Normal output
107. Terse output
118. Trace file format
129. CPU idleness profiling
1310. Verification and triggers
1411. Log File Formats
15
16
171.0 Overview and history
18------------------------
19fio was originally written to save me the hassle of writing special test
20case programs when I wanted to test a specific workload, either for
21performance reasons or to find/reproduce a bug. The process of writing
22such a test app can be tiresome, especially if you have to do it often.
23Hence I needed a tool that would be able to simulate a given io workload
24without resorting to writing a tailored test case again and again.
25
26A test work load is difficult to define, though. There can be any number
27of processes or threads involved, and they can each be using their own
28way of generating io. You could have someone dirtying large amounts of
29memory in an memory mapped file, or maybe several threads issuing
30reads using asynchronous io. fio needed to be flexible enough to
31simulate both of these cases, and many more.
32
332.0 How fio works
34-----------------
35The first step in getting fio to simulate a desired io workload, is
36writing a job file describing that specific setup. A job file may contain
37any number of threads and/or files - the typical contents of the job file
38is a global section defining shared parameters, and one or more job
39sections describing the jobs involved. When run, fio parses this file
40and sets everything up as described. If we break down a job from top to
41bottom, it contains the following basic parameters:
42
43 IO type Defines the io pattern issued to the file(s).
44 We may only be reading sequentially from this
45 file(s), or we may be writing randomly. Or even
46 mixing reads and writes, sequentially or randomly.
47
48 Block size In how large chunks are we issuing io? This may be
49 a single value, or it may describe a range of
50 block sizes.
51
52 IO size How much data are we going to be reading/writing.
53
54 IO engine How do we issue io? We could be memory mapping the
55 file, we could be using regular read/write, we
56 could be using splice, async io, syslet, or even
57 SG (SCSI generic sg).
58
59 IO depth If the io engine is async, how large a queuing
60 depth do we want to maintain?
61
62 IO type Should we be doing buffered io, or direct/raw io?
63
64 Num files How many files are we spreading the workload over.
65
66 Num threads How many threads or processes should we spread
67 this workload over.
68
69The above are the basic parameters defined for a workload, in addition
70there's a multitude of parameters that modify other aspects of how this
71job behaves.
72
73
743.0 Running fio
75---------------
76See the README file for command line parameters, there are only a few
77of them.
78
79Running fio is normally the easiest part - you just give it the job file
80(or job files) as parameters:
81
82$ fio job_file
83
84and it will start doing what the job_file tells it to do. You can give
85more than one job file on the command line, fio will serialize the running
86of those files. Internally that is the same as using the 'stonewall'
87parameter described in the parameter section.
88
89If the job file contains only one job, you may as well just give the
90parameters on the command line. The command line parameters are identical
91to the job parameters, with a few extra that control global parameters
92(see README). For example, for the job file parameter iodepth=2, the
93mirror command line option would be --iodepth 2 or --iodepth=2. You can
94also use the command line for giving more than one job entry. For each
95--name option that fio sees, it will start a new job with that name.
96Command line entries following a --name entry will apply to that job,
97until there are no more entries or a new --name entry is seen. This is
98similar to the job file options, where each option applies to the current
99job until a new [] job entry is seen.
100
101fio does not need to run as root, except if the files or devices specified
102in the job section requires that. Some other options may also be restricted,
103such as memory locking, io scheduler switching, and decreasing the nice value.
104
105
1064.0 Job file format
107-------------------
108As previously described, fio accepts one or more job files describing
109what it is supposed to do. The job file format is the classic ini file,
110where the names enclosed in [] brackets define the job name. You are free
111to use any ascii name you want, except 'global' which has special meaning.
112A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
113may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
114several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
115section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
116'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
117
118So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
119randomly reading from a 128MB file.
120
121; -- start job file --
122[global]
123rw=randread
124size=128m
125
126[job1]
127
128[job2]
129
130; -- end job file --
131
132As you can see, the job file sections themselves are empty as all the
133described parameters are shared. As no filename= option is given, fio
134makes up a filename for each of the jobs as it sees fit. On the command
135line, this job would look as follows:
136
137$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
138
139
140Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
141to files.
142
143; -- start job file --
144[random-writers]
145ioengine=libaio
146iodepth=4
147rw=randwrite
148bs=32k
149direct=0
150size=64m
151numjobs=4
152
153; -- end job file --
154
155Here we have no global section, as we only have one job defined anyway.
156We want to use async io here, with a depth of 4 for each file. We also
157increased the buffer size used to 32KB and define numjobs to 4 to
158fork 4 identical jobs. The result is 4 processes each randomly writing
159to their own 64MB file. Instead of using the above job file, you could
160have given the parameters on the command line. For this case, you would
161specify:
162
163$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
164
165When fio is utilized as a basis of any reasonably large test suite, it might be
166desirable to share a set of standardized settings across multiple job files.
167Instead of copy/pasting such settings, any section may pull in an external
168.fio file with 'include filename' directive, as in the following example:
169
170; -- start job file including.fio --
171[global]
172filename=/tmp/test
173filesize=1m
174include glob-include.fio
175
176[test]
177rw=randread
178bs=4k
179time_based=1
180runtime=10
181include test-include.fio
182; -- end job file including.fio --
183
184; -- start job file glob-include.fio --
185thread=1
186group_reporting=1
187; -- end job file glob-include.fio --
188
189; -- start job file test-include.fio --
190ioengine=libaio
191iodepth=4
192; -- end job file test-include.fio --
193
194Settings pulled into a section apply to that section only (except global
195section). Include directives may be nested in that any included file may
196contain further include directive(s). Include files may not contain []
197sections.
198
199
2004.1 Environment variables
201-------------------------
202
203fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
204sub-string of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
205words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
206environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
207is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
208substituted.
209
210As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
211
212$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
213
214; -- start job file --
215[random-writers]
216rw=randwrite
217size=${SIZE}
218numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
219; -- end job file --
220
221This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
222
223; -- start job file --
224[random-writers]
225rw=randwrite
226size=64m
227numjobs=4
228; -- end job file --
229
230fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
231inspiration.
232
2334.2 Reserved keywords
234---------------------
235
236Additionally, fio has a set of reserved keywords that will be replaced
237internally with the appropriate value. Those keywords are:
238
239$pagesize The architecture page size of the running system
240$mb_memory Megabytes of total memory in the system
241$ncpus Number of online available CPUs
242
243These can be used on the command line or in the job file, and will be
244automatically substituted with the current system values when the job
245is run. Simple math is also supported on these keywords, so you can
246perform actions like:
247
248size=8*$mb_memory
249
250and get that properly expanded to 8 times the size of memory in the
251machine.
252
253
2545.0 Detailed list of parameters
255-------------------------------
256
257This section describes in details each parameter associated with a job.
258Some parameters take an option of a given type, such as an integer or
259a string. Anywhere a numeric value is required, an arithmetic expression
260may be used, provided it is surrounded by parentheses. Supported operators
261are:
262
263 addition (+)
264 subtraction (-)
265 multiplication (*)
266 division (/)
267 modulus (%)
268 exponentiation (^)
269
270For time values in expressions, units are microseconds by default. This is
271different than for time values not in expressions (not enclosed in
272parentheses). The following types are used:
273
274str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
275time Integer with possible time suffix. In seconds unless otherwise
276 specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
277 minutes, and hours, and accepts 'ms' (or 'msec') for milliseconds,
278 and 'us' (or 'usec') for microseconds.
279int SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a suffix
280 describing the base of the number. Accepted suffixes are k/m/g/t/p,
281 meaning kilo, mega, giga, tera, and peta. The suffix is not case
282 sensitive, and you may also include trailing 'b' (eg 'kb' is the same
283 as 'k'). So if you want to specify 4096, you could either write
284 out '4096' or just give 4k. The suffixes signify base 2 values, so
285 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on, unless the suffix is explicitly
286 set to a base 10 value using 'kib', 'mib', 'gib', etc. If that is the
287 case, then 1000 is used as the multiplier. This can be handy for
288 disks, since manufacturers generally use base 10 values when listing
289 the capacity of a drive. If the option accepts an upper and lower
290 range, use a colon ':' or minus '-' to separate such values. May also
291 include a prefix to indicate numbers base. If 0x is used, the number
292 is assumed to be hexadecimal. See irange.
293bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
294 true and false (1 and 0).
295irange Integer range with suffix. Allows value range to be given, such
296 as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
297 1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
298 specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
299 int.
300float_list A list of floating numbers, separated by a ':' character.
301
302With the above in mind, here follows the complete list of fio job
303parameters.
304
305name=str ASCII name of the job. This may be used to override the
306 name printed by fio for this job. Otherwise the job
307 name is used. On the command line this parameter has the
308 special purpose of also signaling the start of a new
309 job.
310
311wait_for=str Specifies the name of the already defined job to wait
312 for. Single waitee name only may be specified. If set, the job
313 won't be started until all workers of the waitee job are done.
314
315 Wait_for operates on the job name basis, so there are a few
316 limitations. First, the waitee must be defined prior to the
317 waiter job (meaning no forward references). Second, if a job
318 is being referenced as a waitee, it must have a unique name
319 (no duplicate waitees).
320
321description=str Text description of the job. Doesn't do anything except
322 dump this text description when this job is run. It's
323 not parsed.
324
325directory=str Prefix filenames with this directory. Used to place files
326 in a different location than "./". See the 'filename' option
327 for escaping certain characters.
328
329filename=str Fio normally makes up a filename based on the job name,
330 thread number, and file number. If you want to share
331 files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
332 a filename for each of them to override the default. If
333 the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host, port,
334 and protocol to use in the format of =host,port,protocol.
335 See ioengine=net for more. If the ioengine is file based, you
336 can specify a number of files by separating the names with a
337 ':' colon. So if you wanted a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
338 as the two working files, you would use
339 filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. On Windows, disk devices are
340 accessed as \\.\PhysicalDrive0 for the first device,
341 \\.\PhysicalDrive1 for the second etc. Note: Windows and
342 FreeBSD prevent write access to areas of the disk containing
343 in-use data (e.g. filesystems).
344 If the wanted filename does need to include a colon, then
345 escape that with a '\' character. For instance, if the filename
346 is "/dev/dsk/foo@3,0:c", then you would use
347 filename="/dev/dsk/foo@3,0\:c". '-' is a reserved name, meaning
348 stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends on the read/write
349 direction set.
350
351filename_format=str
352 If sharing multiple files between jobs, it is usually necessary
353 to have fio generate the exact names that you want. By default,
354 fio will name a file based on the default file format
355 specification of jobname.jobnumber.filenumber. With this
356 option, that can be customized. Fio will recognize and replace
357 the following keywords in this string:
358
359 $jobname
360 The name of the worker thread or process.
361
362 $jobnum
363 The incremental number of the worker thread or
364 process.
365
366 $filenum
367 The incremental number of the file for that worker
368 thread or process.
369
370 To have dependent jobs share a set of files, this option can
371 be set to have fio generate filenames that are shared between
372 the two. For instance, if testfiles.$filenum is specified,
373 file number 4 for any job will be named testfiles.4. The
374 default of $jobname.$jobnum.$filenum will be used if
375 no other format specifier is given.
376
377opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
378 directory and down the file system tree.
379
380lockfile=str Fio defaults to not locking any files before it does
381 IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
382 can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
383 consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
384 share files. The lock modes are:
385
386 none No locking. The default.
387 exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
388 excluding all others.
389 readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
390 readers may access the file at the
391 same time, but writes get exclusive
392 access.
393
394readwrite=str
395rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
396
397 read Sequential reads
398 write Sequential writes
399 randwrite Random writes
400 randread Random reads
401 rw,readwrite Sequential mixed reads and writes
402 randrw Random mixed reads and writes
403 trimwrite Mixed trims and writes. Blocks will be
404 trimmed first, then written to.
405
406 For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
407 For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
408 since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
409 a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset, this is
410 done by appending a ':<nr>' to the end of the string given.
411 For a random read, it would look like 'rw=randread:8' for
412 passing in an offset modifier with a value of 8. If the
413 suffix is used with a sequential IO pattern, then the value
414 specified will be added to the generated offset for each IO.
415 For instance, using rw=write:4k will skip 4k for every
416 write. It turns sequential IO into sequential IO with holes.
417 See the 'rw_sequencer' option.
418
419rw_sequencer=str If an offset modifier is given by appending a number to
420 the rw=<str> line, then this option controls how that
421 number modifies the IO offset being generated. Accepted
422 values are:
423
424 sequential Generate sequential offset
425 identical Generate the same offset
426
427 'sequential' is only useful for random IO, where fio would
428 normally generate a new random offset for every IO. If you
429 append eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
430 every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
431 IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
432 that. As sequential IO is already sequential, setting
433 'sequential' for that would not result in any differences.
434 'identical' behaves in a similar fashion, except it sends
435 the same offset 8 number of times before generating a new
436 offset.
437
438kb_base=int The base unit for a kilobyte. The defacto base is 2^10, 1024.
439 Storage manufacturers like to use 10^3 or 1000 as a base
440 ten unit instead, for obvious reasons. Allow values are
441 1024 or 1000, with 1024 being the default.
442
443unified_rw_reporting=bool Fio normally reports statistics on a per
444 data direction basis, meaning that read, write, and trim are
445 accounted and reported separately. If this option is set,
446 the fio will sum the results and report them as "mixed"
447 instead.
448
449randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
450 way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
451 Defaults to true.
452
453randseed=int Seed the random number generators based on this seed value, to
454 be able to control what sequence of output is being generated.
455 If not set, the random sequence depends on the randrepeat
456 setting.
457
458fallocate=str Whether pre-allocation is performed when laying down files.
459 Accepted values are:
460
461 none Do not pre-allocate space
462 posix Pre-allocate via posix_fallocate()
463 keep Pre-allocate via fallocate() with
464 FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE set
465 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'
466 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'posix'
467
468 May not be available on all supported platforms. 'keep' is only
469 available on Linux.If using ZFS on Solaris this must be set to
470 'none' because ZFS doesn't support it. Default: 'posix'.
471
472fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
473 on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
474 want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
475 kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
476 If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
477 IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
478
479fadvise_stream=int Notify the kernel what write stream ID to place these
480 writes under. Only supported on Linux. Note, this option
481 may change going forward.
482
483size=int The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
484 this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
485 limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance,
486 or increased/decreased by 'io_size'). Unless specific nrfiles
487 and filesize options are given, fio will divide this size
488 between the available files specified by the job. If not set,
489 fio will use the full size of the given files or devices.
490 If the files do not exist, size must be given. It is also
491 possible to give size as a percentage between 1 and 100. If
492 size=20% is given, fio will use 20% of the full size of the
493 given files or devices.
494
495io_size=int
496io_limit=int Normally fio operates within the region set by 'size', which
497 means that the 'size' option sets both the region and size of
498 IO to be performed. Sometimes that is not what you want. With
499 this option, it is possible to define just the amount of IO
500 that fio should do. For instance, if 'size' is set to 20G and
501 'io_size' is set to 5G, fio will perform IO within the first
502 20G but exit when 5G have been done. The opposite is also
503 possible - if 'size' is set to 20G, and 'io_size' is set to
504 40G, then fio will do 40G of IO within the 0..20G region.
505
506filesize=int Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
507 will select sizes for files at random within the given range
508 and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
509 given, each created file is the same size.
510
511file_append=bool Perform IO after the end of the file. Normally fio will
512 operate within the size of a file. If this option is set, then
513 fio will append to the file instead. This has identical
514 behavior to setting offset to the size of a file. This option
515 is ignored on non-regular files.
516
517fill_device=bool
518fill_fs=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
519 space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
520 sense with sequential write. For a read workload, the mount
521 point will be filled first then IO started on the result. This
522 option doesn't make sense if operating on a raw device node,
523 since the size of that is already known by the file system.
524 Additionally, writing beyond end-of-device will not return
525 ENOSPC there.
526
527blocksize=int
528bs=int The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
529 can be given for both read and writes. If a single int is
530 given, it will apply to both. If a second int is specified
531 after a comma, it will apply to writes only. In other words,
532 the format is either bs=read_and_write or bs=read,write,trim.
533 bs=4k,8k will thus use 4k blocks for reads, 8k blocks for
534 writes, and 8k for trims. You can terminate the list with
535 a trailing comma. bs=4k,8k, would use the default value for
536 trims.. If you only wish to set the write size, you
537 can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
538 8k for writes and leave the read default value.
539
540blockalign=int
541ba=int At what boundary to align random IO offsets. Defaults to
542 the same as 'blocksize' the minimum blocksize given.
543 Minimum alignment is typically 512b for using direct IO,
544 though it usually depends on the hardware block size. This
545 option is mutually exclusive with using a random map for
546 files, so it will turn off that option.
547
548blocksize_range=irange
549bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
550 and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
551 io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
552 given (also see bs_unaligned). Applies to both reads and
553 writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
554 See bs=.
555
556bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
557 block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
558 This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
559 so that you are able to define a specific amount of
560 block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
561
562 bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
563
564 for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
565 a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
566 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
567
568 bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
569
570 Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
571 fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
572 option like this one:
573
574 bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
575
576 would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
577 always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
578 up to more, it will error out.
579
580 bssplit also supports giving separate splits to reads and
581 writes. The format is identical to what bs= accepts. You
582 have to separate the read and write parts with a comma. So
583 if you want a workload that has 50% 2k reads and 50% 4k reads,
584 while having 90% 4k writes and 10% 8k writes, you would
585 specify:
586
587 bssplit=2k/50:4k/50,4k/90:8k/10
588
589blocksize_unaligned
590bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
591 may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
592 direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
593
594bs_is_seq_rand If this option is set, fio will use the normal read,write
595 blocksize settings as sequential,random instead. Any random
596 read or write will use the WRITE blocksize settings, and any
597 sequential read or write will use the READ blocksize setting.
598
599zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
600 all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
601
602refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
603 on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
604 time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
605 isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
606 refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
607
608scramble_buffers=bool If refill_buffers is too costly and the target is
609 using data deduplication, then setting this option will
610 slightly modify the IO buffer contents to defeat normal
611 de-dupe attempts. This is not enough to defeat more clever
612 block compression attempts, but it will stop naive dedupe of
613 blocks. Default: true.
614
615buffer_compress_percentage=int If this is set, then fio will attempt to
616 provide IO buffer content (on WRITEs) that compress to
617 the specified level. Fio does this by providing a mix of
618 random data and a fixed pattern. The fixed pattern is either
619 zeroes, or the pattern specified by buffer_pattern. If the
620 pattern option is used, it might skew the compression ratio
621 slightly. Note that this is per block size unit, for file/disk
622 wide compression level that matches this setting, you'll also
623 want to set refill_buffers.
624
625buffer_compress_chunk=int See buffer_compress_percentage. This
626 setting allows fio to manage how big the ranges of random
627 data and zeroed data is. Without this set, fio will
628 provide buffer_compress_percentage of blocksize random
629 data, followed by the remaining zeroed. With this set
630 to some chunk size smaller than the block size, fio can
631 alternate random and zeroed data throughout the IO
632 buffer.
633
634buffer_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
635 pattern. If not set, the contents of io buffers is defined by
636 the other options related to buffer contents. The setting can
637 be any pattern of bytes, and can be prefixed with 0x for hex
638 values. It may also be a string, where the string must then
639 be wrapped with "", e.g.:
640
641 buffer_pattern="abcd"
642 or
643 buffer_pattern=-12
644 or
645 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface
646
647 Also you can combine everything together in any order:
648 buffer_pattern=0xdeadface"abcd"-12
649
650dedupe_percentage=int If set, fio will generate this percentage of
651 identical buffers when writing. These buffers will be
652 naturally dedupable. The contents of the buffers depend on
653 what other buffer compression settings have been set. It's
654 possible to have the individual buffers either fully
655 compressible, or not at all. This option only controls the
656 distribution of unique buffers.
657
658nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
659
660openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
661 the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
662 simultaneous opens.
663
664file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
665 service next. The following types are defined:
666
667 random Just choose a file at random.
668
669 roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
670 is the default.
671
672 sequential Finish one file before moving on to
673 the next. Multiple files can still be
674 open depending on 'openfiles'.
675
676 The string can have a number appended, indicating how
677 often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
678 given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
679 have been issued.
680
681ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
682 types are defined:
683
684 sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
685 used to position the io location.
686
687 psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
688
689 vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
690
691 psyncv Basic preadv(2) or pwritev(2) IO.
692
693 libaio Linux native asynchronous io. Note that Linux
694 may only support queued behaviour with
695 non-buffered IO (set direct=1 or buffered=0).
696 This engine defines engine specific options.
697
698 posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
699
700 solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
701
702 windowsaio Windows native asynchronous io.
703
704 mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
705 to/from using memcpy(3).
706
707 splice splice(2) is used to transfer the data and
708 vmsplice(2) to transfer data from user
709 space to the kernel.
710
711 syslet-rw Use the syslet system calls to make
712 regular read/write async.
713
714 sg SCSI generic sg v3 io. May either be
715 synchronous using the SG_IO ioctl, or if
716 the target is an sg character device
717 we use read(2) and write(2) for asynchronous
718 io.
719
720 null Doesn't transfer any data, just pretends
721 to. This is mainly used to exercise fio
722 itself and for debugging/testing purposes.
723
724 net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
725 Depending on the protocol used, the hostname,
726 port, listen and filename options are used to
727 specify what sort of connection to make, while
728 the protocol option determines which protocol
729 will be used.
730 This engine defines engine specific options.
731
732 netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
733 map data and send/receive.
734 This engine defines engine specific options.
735
736 cpuio Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
737 cycles according to the cpuload= and
738 cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
739 will cause that job to do nothing but burn
740 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
741 use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
742 usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
743 CPU at the desired rate.
744
745 guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
746 Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
747 to async IO. See
748
749 http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
750
751 for more info on GUASI.
752
753 rdma The RDMA I/O engine supports both RDMA
754 memory semantics (RDMA_WRITE/RDMA_READ) and
755 channel semantics (Send/Recv) for the
756 InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP protocols.
757
758 falloc IO engine that does regular fallocate to
759 simulate data transfer as fio ioengine.
760 DDIR_READ does fallocate(,mode = keep_size,)
761 DDIR_WRITE does fallocate(,mode = 0)
762 DDIR_TRIM does fallocate(,mode = punch_hole)
763
764 e4defrag IO engine that does regular EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT
765 ioctls to simulate defragment activity in
766 request to DDIR_WRITE event
767
768 rbd IO engine supporting direct access to Ceph
769 Rados Block Devices (RBD) via librbd without
770 the need to use the kernel rbd driver. This
771 ioengine defines engine specific options.
772
773 gfapi Using Glusterfs libgfapi sync interface to
774 direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
775 options.
776
777 gfapi_async Using Glusterfs libgfapi async interface
778 to direct access to Glusterfs volumes without
779 having to go through FUSE. This ioengine
780 defines engine specific options.
781
782 libhdfs Read and write through Hadoop (HDFS).
783 This engine interprets offsets a little
784 differently. In HDFS, files once created
785 cannot be modified. So random writes are not
786 possible. To imitate this, libhdfs engine
787 creates bunch of small files, and engine will
788 pick a file out of those files based on the
789 offset enerated by fio backend. Each jobs uses
790 it's own connection to HDFS.
791
792 mtd Read, write and erase an MTD character device
793 (e.g., /dev/mtd0). Discards are treated as
794 erases. Depending on the underlying device
795 type, the I/O may have to go in a certain
796 pattern, e.g., on NAND, writing sequentially
797 to erase blocks and discarding before
798 overwriting. The writetrim mode works well
799 for this constraint.
800
801 pmemblk Read and write through the NVML libpmemblk
802 interface.
803
804 external Prefix to specify loading an external
805 IO engine object file. Append the engine
806 filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
807 to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
808
809iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
810 the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
811 job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
812 concurrency. Note that increasing iodepth beyond 1 will not
813 affect synchronous ioengines (except for small degress when
814 verify_async is in use). Even async engines may impose OS
815 restrictions causing the desired depth not to be achieved.
816 This may happen on Linux when using libaio and not setting
817 direct=1, since buffered IO is not async on that OS. Keep an
818 eye on the IO depth distribution in the fio output to verify
819 that the achieved depth is as expected. Default: 1.
820
821iodepth_batch_submit=int
822iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
823 It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
824 as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
825 bigger batches of IO at the time. If it is set to 0 the iodepth
826 value will be used.
827
828iodepth_batch_complete_min=int
829iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
830 at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
831 for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
832 the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
833 hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
834 set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
835 events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
836 IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
837
838iodepth_batch_complete_max=int This defines maximum pieces of IO to
839 retrieve at once. This variable should be used along with
840 iodepth_batch_complete_min=int variable, specifying the range
841 of min and max amount of IO which should be retrieved. By default
842 it is equal to iodepth_batch_complete_min value.
843
844 Example #1:
845
846 iodepth_batch_complete_min=1
847 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
848
849 which means that we will retrieve at leat 1 IO and up to the
850 whole submitted queue depth. If none of IO has been completed
851 yet, we will wait.
852
853 Example #2:
854
855 iodepth_batch_complete_min=0
856 iodepth_batch_complete_max=<iodepth>
857
858 which means that we can retrieve up to the whole submitted
859 queue depth, but if none of IO has been completed yet, we will
860 NOT wait and immediately exit the system call. In this example
861 we simply do polling.
862
863iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
864 the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
865 that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
866 If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
867 after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
868 the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
869
870io_submit_mode=str This option controls how fio submits the IO to
871 the IO engine. The default is 'inline', which means that the
872 fio job threads submit and reap IO directly. If set to
873 'offload', the job threads will offload IO submission to a
874 dedicated pool of IO threads. This requires some coordination
875 and thus has a bit of extra overhead, especially for lower
876 queue depth IO where it can increase latencies. The benefit
877 is that fio can manage submission rates independently of
878 the device completion rates. This avoids skewed latency
879 reporting if IO gets back up on the device side (the
880 coordinated omission problem).
881
882direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
883 O_DIRECT. Note that ZFS on Solaris doesn't support direct io.
884 On Windows the synchronous ioengines don't support direct io.
885
886atomic=bool If value is true, attempt to use atomic direct IO. Atomic
887 writes are guaranteed to be stable once acknowledged by
888 the operating system. Only Linux supports O_ATOMIC right
889 now.
890
891buffered=bool If value is true, use buffered io. This is the opposite
892 of the 'direct' option. Defaults to true.
893
894offset=int Start io at the given offset in the file. The data before
895 the given offset will not be touched. This effectively
896 caps the file size at real_size - offset.
897
898offset_increment=int If this is provided, then the real offset becomes
899 offset + offset_increment * thread_number, where the thread
900 number is a counter that starts at 0 and is incremented for
901 each sub-job (i.e. when numjobs option is specified). This
902 option is useful if there are several jobs which are intended
903 to operate on a file in parallel disjoint segments, with
904 even spacing between the starting points.
905
906number_ios=int Fio will normally perform IOs until it has exhausted the size
907 of the region set by size=, or if it exhaust the allocated
908 time (or hits an error condition). With this setting, the
909 range/size can be set independently of the number of IOs to
910 perform. When fio reaches this number, it will exit normally
911 and report status. Note that this does not extend the amount
912 of IO that will be done, it will only stop fio if this
913 condition is met before other end-of-job criteria.
914
915fsync=int If writing to a file, issue a sync of the dirty data
916 for every number of blocks given. For example, if you give
917 32 as a parameter, fio will sync the file for every 32
918 writes issued. If fio is using non-buffered io, we may
919 not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
920 synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
921
922fdatasync=int Like fsync= but uses fdatasync() to only sync data and not
923 metadata blocks.
924 In FreeBSD and Windows there is no fdatasync(), this falls back
925 to using fsync()
926
927sync_file_range=str:val Use sync_file_range() for every 'val' number of
928 write operations. Fio will track range of writes that
929 have happened since the last sync_file_range() call. 'str'
930 can currently be one or more of:
931
932 wait_before SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE
933 write SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE
934 wait_after SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER
935
936 So if you do sync_file_range=wait_before,write:8, fio would
937 use SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE | SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE for
938 every 8 writes. Also see the sync_file_range(2) man page.
939 This option is Linux specific.
940
941overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
942 data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
943 created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
944 and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
945 will be done.
946
947end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when a write stage has completed.
948
949fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
950 This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
951 file close, not just at the end of the job.
952
953rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
954
955rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
956 rwmixread and rwmixwrite is given and the values do not add
957 up to 100%, the latter of the two will be used to override
958 the first. This may interfere with a given rate setting,
959 if fio is asked to limit reads or writes to a certain rate.
960 If that is the case, then the distribution may be skewed.
961
962random_distribution=str:float By default, fio will use a completely uniform
963 random distribution when asked to perform random IO. Sometimes
964 it is useful to skew the distribution in specific ways,
965 ensuring that some parts of the data is more hot than others.
966 fio includes the following distribution models:
967
968 random Uniform random distribution
969 zipf Zipf distribution
970 pareto Pareto distribution
971 gauss Normal (guassian) distribution
972 zoned Zoned random distribution
973
974 When using a zipf or pareto distribution, an input value
975 is also needed to define the access pattern. For zipf, this
976 is the zipf theta. For pareto, it's the pareto power. Fio
977 includes a test program, genzipf, that can be used visualize
978 what the given input values will yield in terms of hit rates.
979 If you wanted to use zipf with a theta of 1.2, you would use
980 random_distribution=zipf:1.2 as the option. If a non-uniform
981 model is used, fio will disable use of the random map. For
982 the gauss distribution, a normal deviation is supplied as
983 a value between 0 and 100.
984
985 For a zoned distribution, fio supports specifying percentages
986 of IO access that should fall within what range of the file or
987 device. For example, given a criteria of:
988
989 60% of accesses should be to the first 10%
990 30% of accesses should be to the next 20%
991 8% of accesses should be to to the next 30%
992 2% of accesses should be to the next 40%
993
994 we can define that through zoning of the random accesses. For
995 the above example, the user would do:
996
997 random_distribution=zoned:60/10:30/20:8/30:2/40
998
999 similarly to how bssplit works for setting ranges and
1000 percentages of block sizes. Like bssplit, it's possible to
1001 specify separate zones for reads, writes, and trims. If just
1002 one set is given, it'll apply to all of them.
1003
1004percentage_random=int For a random workload, set how big a percentage should
1005 be random. This defaults to 100%, in which case the workload
1006 is fully random. It can be set from anywhere from 0 to 100.
1007 Setting it to 0 would make the workload fully sequential. Any
1008 setting in between will result in a random mix of sequential
1009 and random IO, at the given percentages. It is possible to
1010 set different values for reads, writes, and trim. To do so,
1011 simply use a comma separated list. See blocksize.
1012
1013norandommap Normally fio will cover every block of the file when doing
1014 random IO. If this option is given, fio will just get a
1015 new random offset without looking at past io history. This
1016 means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
1017 some blocks may be read/written more than once. If this option
1018 is used with verify= and multiple blocksizes (via bsrange=),
1019 only intact blocks are verified, i.e., partially-overwritten
1020 blocks are ignored.
1021
1022softrandommap=bool See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map
1023 enabled and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is
1024 set it will continue without a random block map. As coverage
1025 will not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
1026 disabled by default.
1027
1028random_generator=str Fio supports the following engines for generating
1029 IO offsets for random IO:
1030
1031 tausworthe Strong 2^88 cycle random number generator
1032 lfsr Linear feedback shift register generator
1033 tausworthe64 Strong 64-bit 2^258 cycle random number
1034 generator
1035
1036 Tausworthe is a strong random number generator, but it
1037 requires tracking on the side if we want to ensure that
1038 blocks are only read or written once. LFSR guarantees
1039 that we never generate the same offset twice, and it's
1040 also less computationally expensive. It's not a true
1041 random generator, however, though for IO purposes it's
1042 typically good enough. LFSR only works with single
1043 block sizes, not with workloads that use multiple block
1044 sizes. If used with such a workload, fio may read or write
1045 some blocks multiple times. The default value is tausworthe,
1046 unless the required space exceeds 2^32 blocks. If it does,
1047 then tausworthe64 is selected automatically.
1048
1049nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
1050
1051prio=int Set the io priority value of this job. Linux limits us to
1052 a positive value between 0 and 7, with 0 being the highest.
1053 See man ionice(1).
1054
1055prioclass=int Set the io priority class. See man ionice(1).
1056
1057thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
1058 issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
1059 done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
1060 thinktime_spin.
1061
1062thinktime_spin=int
1063 Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
1064 doing something with the data received, before falling back
1065 to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
1066 thinktime.
1067
1068thinktime_blocks=int
1069 Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
1070 to issue, before waiting 'thinktime' usecs. If not set,
1071 defaults to 1 which will make fio wait 'thinktime' usecs
1072 after every block. This effectively makes any queue depth
1073 setting redundant, since no more than 1 IO will be queued
1074 before we have to complete it and do our thinktime. In
1075 other words, this setting effectively caps the queue depth
1076 if the latter is larger.
1077
1078rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job. The number is in bytes/sec,
1079 the normal suffix rules apply. You can use rate=500k to limit
1080 reads and writes to 500k each, or you can specify read and
1081 writes separately. Using rate=1m,500k would limit reads to
1082 1MB/sec and writes to 500KB/sec. Capping only reads or
1083 writes can be done with rate=,500k or rate=500k,. The former
1084 will only limit writes (to 500KB/sec), the latter will only
1085 limit reads.
1086
1087rate_min=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
1088 bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
1089 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for
1090 read vs write separation.
1091
1092rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
1093 as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
1094 job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
1095 the smallest block size is used as the metric. The same format
1096 as rate is used for read vs write separation.
1097
1098rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
1099 the job to exit. The same format as rate is used for read vs
1100 write separation.
1101
1102rate_process=str This option controls how fio manages rated IO
1103 submissions. The default is 'linear', which submits IO in a
1104 linear fashion with fixed delays between IOs that gets
1105 adjusted based on IO completion rates. If this is set to
1106 'poisson', fio will submit IO based on a more real world
1107 random request flow, known as the Poisson process
1108 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_process). The lambda
1109 will be 10^6 / IOPS for the given workload.
1110
1111latency_target=int If set, fio will attempt to find the max performance
1112 point that the given workload will run at while maintaining a
1113 latency below this target. The values is given in microseconds.
1114 See latency_window and latency_percentile
1115
1116latency_window=int Used with latency_target to specify the sample window
1117 that the job is run at varying queue depths to test the
1118 performance. The value is given in microseconds.
1119
1120latency_percentile=float The percentage of IOs that must fall within the
1121 criteria specified by latency_target and latency_window. If not
1122 set, this defaults to 100.0, meaning that all IOs must be equal
1123 or below to the value set by latency_target.
1124
1125max_latency=int If set, fio will exit the job if it exceeds this maximum
1126 latency. It will exit with an ETIME error.
1127
1128rate_cycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'rate_min' over this number
1129 of milliseconds.
1130
1131cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
1132 bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
1133 the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
1134 value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
1135 sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
1136 operating systems or kernel versions. This option doesn't
1137 work well for a higher CPU count than what you can store in
1138 an integer mask, so it can only control cpus 1-32. For
1139 boxes with larger CPU counts, use cpus_allowed.
1140
1141cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
1142 setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
1143 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5. This options also
1144 allows a range of CPUs. Say you wanted a binding to CPUs
1145 1, 5, and 8-15, you would set cpus_allowed=1,5,8-15.
1146
1147cpus_allowed_policy=str Set the policy of how fio distributes the CPUs
1148 specified by cpus_allowed or cpumask. Two policies are
1149 supported:
1150
1151 shared All jobs will share the CPU set specified.
1152 split Each job will get a unique CPU from the CPU set.
1153
1154 'shared' is the default behaviour, if the option isn't
1155 specified. If split is specified, then fio will will assign
1156 one cpu per job. If not enough CPUs are given for the jobs
1157 listed, then fio will roundrobin the CPUs in the set.
1158
1159numa_cpu_nodes=str Set this job running on spcified NUMA nodes' CPUs. The
1160 arguments allow comma delimited list of cpu numbers,
1161 A-B ranges, or 'all'. Note, to enable numa options support,
1162 fio must be built on a system with libnuma-dev(el) installed.
1163
1164numa_mem_policy=str Set this job's memory policy and corresponding NUMA
1165 nodes. Format of the argements:
1166 <mode>[:<nodelist>]
1167 `mode' is one of the following memory policy:
1168 default, prefer, bind, interleave, local
1169 For `default' and `local' memory policy, no node is
1170 needed to be specified.
1171 For `prefer', only one node is allowed.
1172 For `bind' and `interleave', it allow comma delimited
1173 list of numbers, A-B ranges, or 'all'.
1174
1175startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
1176 has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
1177 jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
1178 time.
1179
1180runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
1181 of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
1182 a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
1183 cap the total runtime to a given time.
1184
1185time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
1186 specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
1187 written. It will simply loop over the same workload
1188 as many times as the runtime allows.
1189
1190ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
1191 of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
1192 letting performance settle before logging results, thus
1193 minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
1194 that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
1195 thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
1196 or runtime is specified.
1197
1198invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
1199 to starting io. Defaults to true.
1200
1201sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
1202 io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
1203
1204iomem=str
1205mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
1206 The allowed values are:
1207
1208 malloc Use memory from malloc(3) as the buffers.
1209
1210 shm Use shared memory as the buffers. Allocated
1211 through shmget(2).
1212
1213 shmhuge Same as shm, but use huge pages as backing.
1214
1215 mmap Use mmap to allocate buffers. May either be
1216 anonymous memory, or can be file backed if
1217 a filename is given after the option. The
1218 format is mem=mmap:/path/to/file.
1219
1220 mmaphuge Use a memory mapped huge file as the buffer
1221 backing. Append filename after mmaphuge, ala
1222 mem=mmaphuge:/hugetlbfs/file
1223
1224 mmapshared Same as mmap, but use a MMAP_SHARED
1225 mapping.
1226
1227 The area allocated is a function of the maximum allowed
1228 bs size for the job, multiplied by the io depth given. Note
1229 that for shmhuge and mmaphuge to work, the system must have
1230 free huge pages allocated. This can normally be checked
1231 and set by reading/writing /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages on a
1232 Linux system. Fio assumes a huge page is 4MB in size. So
1233 to calculate the number of huge pages you need for a given
1234 job file, add up the io depth of all jobs (normally one unless
1235 iodepth= is used) and multiply by the maximum bs set. Then
1236 divide that number by the huge page size. You can see the
1237 size of the huge pages in /proc/meminfo. If no huge pages
1238 are allocated by having a non-zero number in nr_hugepages,
1239 using mmaphuge or shmhuge will fail. Also see hugepage-size.
1240
1241 mmaphuge also needs to have hugetlbfs mounted and the file
1242 location should point there. So if it's mounted in /huge,
1243 you would use mem=mmaphuge:/huge/somefile.
1244
1245iomem_align=int This indiciates the memory alignment of the IO memory buffers.
1246 Note that the given alignment is applied to the first IO unit
1247 buffer, if using iodepth the alignment of the following buffers
1248 are given by the bs used. In other words, if using a bs that is
1249 a multiple of the page sized in the system, all buffers will
1250 be aligned to this value. If using a bs that is not page
1251 aligned, the alignment of subsequent IO memory buffers is the
1252 sum of the iomem_align and bs used.
1253
1254hugepage-size=int
1255 Defines the size of a huge page. Must at least be equal
1256 to the system setting, see /proc/meminfo. Defaults to 4MB.
1257 Should probably always be a multiple of megabytes, so using
1258 hugepage-size=Xm is the preferred way to set this to avoid
1259 setting a non-pow-2 bad value.
1260
1261exitall When one job finishes, terminate the rest. The default is
1262 to wait for each job to finish, sometimes that is not the
1263 desired action.
1264
1265exitall_on_error When one job finishes in error, terminate the rest. The
1266 default is to wait for each job to finish.
1267
1268bwavgtime=int Average the calculated bandwidth over the given time. Value
1269 is specified in milliseconds. If the job also does bandwidth
1270 logging through 'write_bw_log', then the minimum of this option
1271 and 'log_avg_msec' will be used. Default: 500ms.
1272
1273iopsavgtime=int Average the calculated IOPS over the given time. Value
1274 is specified in milliseconds. If the job also does IOPS logging
1275 through 'write_iops_log', then the minimum of this option and
1276 'log_avg_msec' will be used. Default: 500ms.
1277
1278create_serialize=bool If true, serialize the file creating for the jobs.
1279 This may be handy to avoid interleaving of data
1280 files, which may greatly depend on the filesystem
1281 used and even the number of processors in the system.
1282
1283create_fsync=bool fsync the data file after creation. This is the
1284 default.
1285
1286create_on_open=bool Don't pre-setup the files for IO, just create open()
1287 when it's time to do IO to that file.
1288
1289create_only=bool If true, fio will only run the setup phase of the job.
1290 If files need to be laid out or updated on disk, only
1291 that will be done. The actual job contents are not
1292 executed.
1293
1294allow_file_create=bool If true, fio is permitted to create files as part
1295 of its workload. This is the default behavior. If this
1296 option is false, then fio will error out if the files it
1297 needs to use don't already exist. Default: true.
1298
1299allow_mounted_write=bool If this isn't set, fio will abort jobs that
1300 are destructive (eg that write) to what appears to be a
1301 mounted device or partition. This should help catch creating
1302 inadvertently destructive tests, not realizing that the test
1303 will destroy data on the mounted file system. Default: false.
1304
1305pre_read=bool If this is given, files will be pre-read into memory before
1306 starting the given IO operation. This will also clear
1307 the 'invalidate' flag, since it is pointless to pre-read
1308 and then drop the cache. This will only work for IO engines
1309 that are seekable, since they allow you to read the same data
1310 multiple times. Thus it will not work on eg network or splice
1311 IO.
1312
1313unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
1314 runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
1315 set again and again.
1316
1317loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
1318 to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
1319 to 1.
1320
1321verify_only Do not perform specified workload---only verify data still
1322 matches previous invocation of this workload. This option
1323 allows one to check data multiple times at a later date
1324 without overwriting it. This option makes sense only for
1325 workloads that write data, and does not support workloads
1326 with the time_based option set.
1327
1328do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
1329 verify is set. Defaults to 1.
1330
1331verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
1332 after each iteration of the job. Each verification method also implies
1333 verification of special header, which is written to the beginning of
1334 each block. This header also includes meta information, like offset
1335 of the block, block number, timestamp when block was written, etc.
1336 verify=str can be combined with verify_pattern=str option.
1337 The allowed values are:
1338
1339 md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
1340 it in the header of each block.
1341
1342 crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
1343 area and store it in the header of each
1344 block.
1345
1346 crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
1347 it in the header of each block.
1348
1349 crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
1350 provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors. Falls
1351 back to regular software crc32c, if not
1352 supported by the system.
1353
1354 crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
1355 it in the header of each block.
1356
1357 crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
1358 it in the header of each block.
1359
1360 crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
1361 it in the header of each block.
1362
1363 xxhash Use xxhash as the checksum function. Generally
1364 the fastest software checksum that fio
1365 supports.
1366
1367 sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
1368
1369 sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
1370
1371 sha1 Use optimized sha1 as the checksum function.
1372
1373 meta This option is deprecated, since now meta information is
1374 included in generic verification header and meta verification
1375 happens by default. For detailed information see the description
1376 of the verify=str setting. This option is kept because of
1377 compatibility's sake with old configurations. Do not use it.
1378
1379 pattern Verify a strict pattern. Normally fio includes
1380 a header with some basic information and
1381 checksumming, but if this option is set, only
1382 the specific pattern set with 'verify_pattern'
1383 is verified.
1384
1385 null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
1386 internals with ioengine=null, not for much
1387 else.
1388
1389 This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
1390 system to make sure that the written data is also
1391 correctly read back. If the data direction given is
1392 a read or random read, fio will assume that it should
1393 verify a previously written file. If the data direction
1394 includes any form of write, the verify will be of the
1395 newly written data.
1396
1397verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
1398 it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
1399 often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
1400 the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
1401 can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
1402 fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
1403 significant.
1404
1405verify_offset=int Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
1406 in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
1407 verifying.
1408
1409verify_interval=int Write the verification header at a finer granularity
1410 than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
1411 size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
1412 evenly.
1413
1414verify_pattern=str If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
1415 pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
1416 bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
1417 pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
1418 width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
1419 buffer at the time(it can be either a decimal or a hex number).
1420 The verify_pattern if larger than a 32-bit quantity has to
1421 be a hex number that starts with either "0x" or "0X". Use
1422 with verify=str. Also, verify_pattern supports %o format,
1423 which means that for each block offset will be written and
1424 then verifyied back, e.g.:
1425
1426 verify_pattern=%o
1427
1428 Or use combination of everything:
1429 verify_pattern=0xff%o"abcd"-12
1430
1431verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
1432 before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
1433 option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
1434 failure.
1435
1436verify_dump=bool If set, dump the contents of both the original data
1437 block and the data block we read off disk to files. This
1438 allows later analysis to inspect just what kind of data
1439 corruption occurred. Off by default.
1440
1441verify_async=int Fio will normally verify IO inline from the submitting
1442 thread. This option takes an integer describing how many
1443 async offload threads to create for IO verification instead,
1444 causing fio to offload the duty of verifying IO contents
1445 to one or more separate threads. If using this offload
1446 option, even sync IO engines can benefit from using an
1447 iodepth setting higher than 1, as it allows them to have
1448 IO in flight while verifies are running.
1449
1450verify_async_cpus=str Tell fio to set the given CPU affinity on the
1451 async IO verification threads. See cpus_allowed for the
1452 format used.
1453
1454verify_backlog=int Fio will normally verify the written contents of a
1455 job that utilizes verify once that job has completed. In
1456 other words, everything is written then everything is read
1457 back and verified. You may want to verify continually
1458 instead for a variety of reasons. Fio stores the meta data
1459 associated with an IO block in memory, so for large
1460 verify workloads, quite a bit of memory would be used up
1461 holding this meta data. If this option is enabled, fio
1462 will write only N blocks before verifying these blocks.
1463
1464verify_backlog_batch=int Control how many blocks fio will verify
1465 if verify_backlog is set. If not set, will default to
1466 the value of verify_backlog (meaning the entire queue
1467 is read back and verified). If verify_backlog_batch is
1468 less than verify_backlog then not all blocks will be verified,
1469 if verify_backlog_batch is larger than verify_backlog, some
1470 blocks will be verified more than once.
1471
1472verify_state_save=bool When a job exits during the write phase of a verify
1473 workload, save its current state. This allows fio to replay
1474 up until that point, if the verify state is loaded for the
1475 verify read phase. The format of the filename is, roughly,
1476 <type>-<jobname>-<jobindex>-verify.state. <type> is "local"
1477 for a local run, "sock" for a client/server socket connection,
1478 and "ip" (192.168.0.1, for instance) for a networked
1479 client/server connection.
1480
1481verify_state_load=bool If a verify termination trigger was used, fio stores
1482 the current write state of each thread. This can be used at
1483 verification time so that fio knows how far it should verify.
1484 Without this information, fio will run a full verification
1485 pass, according to the settings in the job file used.
1486
1487stonewall
1488wait_for_previous Wait for preceding jobs in the job file to exit, before
1489 starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
1490 points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
1491 a new reporting group.
1492
1493new_group Start a new reporting group. See: group_reporting.
1494
1495numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
1496 used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
1497 the same thing. Each thread is reported separately; to see
1498 statistics for all clones as a whole, use group_reporting in
1499 conjunction with new_group.
1500
1501group_reporting It may sometimes be interesting to display statistics for
1502 groups of jobs as a whole instead of for each individual job.
1503 This is especially true if 'numjobs' is used; looking at
1504 individual thread/process output quickly becomes unwieldy.
1505 To see the final report per-group instead of per-job, use
1506 'group_reporting'. Jobs in a file will be part of the same
1507 reporting group, unless if separated by a stonewall, or by
1508 using 'new_group'.
1509
1510thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
1511 given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
1512 instead.
1513
1514zonesize=int Divide a file into zones of the specified size. See zoneskip.
1515
1516zoneskip=int Skip the specified number of bytes when zonesize data has
1517 been read. The two zone options can be used to only do
1518 io on zones of a file.
1519
1520write_iolog=str Write the issued io patterns to the specified file. See
1521 read_iolog. Specify a separate file for each job, otherwise
1522 the iologs will be interspersed and the file may be corrupt.
1523
1524read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
1525 io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
1526 workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
1527 may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
1528 to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
1529 for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
1530 the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
1531 file first (blkparse <device> -o /dev/null -d file_for_fio.bin).
1532
1533replay_no_stall=int When replaying I/O with read_iolog the default behavior
1534 is to attempt to respect the time stamps within the log and
1535 replay them with the appropriate delay between IOPS. By
1536 setting this variable fio will not respect the timestamps and
1537 attempt to replay them as fast as possible while still
1538 respecting ordering. The result is the same I/O pattern to a
1539 given device, but different timings.
1540
1541replay_redirect=str While replaying I/O patterns using read_iolog the
1542 default behavior is to replay the IOPS onto the major/minor
1543 device that each IOP was recorded from. This is sometimes
1544 undesirable because on a different machine those major/minor
1545 numbers can map to a different device. Changing hardware on
1546 the same system can also result in a different major/minor
1547 mapping. Replay_redirect causes all IOPS to be replayed onto
1548 the single specified device regardless of the device it was
1549 recorded from. i.e. replay_redirect=/dev/sdc would cause all
1550 IO in the blktrace to be replayed onto /dev/sdc. This means
1551 multiple devices will be replayed onto a single, if the trace
1552 contains multiple devices. If you want multiple devices to be
1553 replayed concurrently to multiple redirected devices you must
1554 blkparse your trace into separate traces and replay them with
1555 independent fio invocations. Unfortuantely this also breaks
1556 the strict time ordering between multiple device accesses.
1557
1558replay_align=int Force alignment of IO offsets and lengths in a trace
1559 to this power of 2 value.
1560
1561replay_scale=int Scale sector offsets down by this factor when
1562 replaying traces.
1563
1564per_job_logs=bool If set, this generates bw/clat/iops log with per
1565 file private filenames. If not set, jobs with identical names
1566 will share the log filename. Default: true.
1567
1568write_bw_log=str If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
1569 file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
1570 jobs in their lifetime. The included fio_generate_plots
1571 script uses gnuplot to turn these text files into nice
1572 graphs. See write_lat_log for behaviour of given
1573 filename. For this option, the suffix is _bw.x.log, where
1574 x is the index of the job (1..N, where N is the number of
1575 jobs). If 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not
1576 include the job index. See 'Log File Formats'.
1577
1578write_lat_log=str Same as write_bw_log, except that this option stores io
1579 submission, completion, and total latencies instead. If no
1580 filename is given with this option, the default filename of
1581 "jobname_type.log" is used. Even if the filename is given,
1582 fio will still append the type of log. So if one specifies
1583
1584 write_lat_log=foo
1585
1586 The actual log names will be foo_slat.x.log, foo_clat.x.log,
1587 and foo_lat.x.log, where x is the index of the job (1..N,
1588 where N is the number of jobs). This helps fio_generate_plot
1589 fine the logs automatically. If 'per_job_logs' is false, then
1590 the filename will not include the job index. See 'Log File
1591 Formats'.
1592
1593write_iops_log=str Same as write_bw_log, but writes IOPS. If no filename is
1594 given with this option, the default filename of
1595 "jobname_type.x.log" is used,where x is the index of the job
1596 (1..N, where N is the number of jobs). Even if the filename
1597 is given, fio will still append the type of log. If
1598 'per_job_logs' is false, then the filename will not include
1599 the job index. See 'Log File Formats'.
1600
1601log_avg_msec=int By default, fio will log an entry in the iops, latency,
1602 or bw log for every IO that completes. When writing to the
1603 disk log, that can quickly grow to a very large size. Setting
1604 this option makes fio average the each log entry over the
1605 specified period of time, reducing the resolution of the log.
1606 See log_max_value as well. Defaults to 0, logging all entries.
1607
1608log_max_value=bool If log_avg_msec is set, fio logs the average over that
1609 window. If you instead want to log the maximum value, set this
1610 option to 1. Defaults to 0, meaning that averaged values are
1611 logged.
1612
1613log_offset=int If this is set, the iolog options will include the byte
1614 offset for the IO entry as well as the other data values.
1615
1616log_compression=int If this is set, fio will compress the IO logs as
1617 it goes, to keep the memory footprint lower. When a log
1618 reaches the specified size, that chunk is removed and
1619 compressed in the background. Given that IO logs are
1620 fairly highly compressible, this yields a nice memory
1621 savings for longer runs. The downside is that the
1622 compression will consume some background CPU cycles, so
1623 it may impact the run. This, however, is also true if
1624 the logging ends up consuming most of the system memory.
1625 So pick your poison. The IO logs are saved normally at the
1626 end of a run, by decompressing the chunks and storing them
1627 in the specified log file. This feature depends on the
1628 availability of zlib.
1629
1630log_compression_cpus=str Define the set of CPUs that are allowed to
1631 handle online log compression for the IO jobs. This can
1632 provide better isolation between performance sensitive jobs,
1633 and background compression work.
1634
1635log_store_compressed=bool If set, fio will store the log files in a
1636 compressed format. They can be decompressed with fio, using
1637 the --inflate-log command line parameter. The files will be
1638 stored with a .fz suffix.
1639
1640block_error_percentiles=bool If set, record errors in trim block-sized
1641 units from writes and trims and output a histogram of
1642 how many trims it took to get to errors, and what kind
1643 of error was encountered.
1644
1645lockmem=int Pin down the specified amount of memory with mlock(2). Can
1646 potentially be used instead of removing memory or booting
1647 with less memory to simulate a smaller amount of memory.
1648 The amount specified is per worker.
1649
1650exec_prerun=str Before running this job, issue the command specified
1651 through system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1652 jobname.prerun.txt.
1653
1654exec_postrun=str After the job completes, issue the command specified
1655 though system(3). Output is redirected in a file called
1656 jobname.postrun.txt.
1657
1658ioscheduler=str Attempt to switch the device hosting the file to the specified
1659 io scheduler before running.
1660
1661disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
1662 supports it. Defaults to on.
1663
1664disable_lat=bool Disable measurements of total latency numbers. Useful
1665 only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
1666 as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
1667 Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
1668 calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
1669 disable_bw as well.
1670
1671disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. See
1672 disable_lat.
1673
1674disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
1675 disable_slat.
1676
1677disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
1678 disable_lat.
1679
1680clat_percentiles=bool Enable the reporting of percentiles of
1681 completion latencies.
1682
1683percentile_list=float_list Overwrite the default list of percentiles
1684 for completion latencies and the block error histogram.
1685 Each number is a floating number in the range (0,100],
1686 and the maximum length of the list is 20. Use ':'
1687 to separate the numbers, and list the numbers in ascending
1688 order. For example, --percentile_list=99.5:99.9 will cause
1689 fio to report the values of completion latency below which
1690 99.5% and 99.9% of the observed latencies fell, respectively.
1691
1692clocksource=str Use the given clocksource as the base of timing. The
1693 supported options are:
1694
1695 gettimeofday gettimeofday(2)
1696
1697 clock_gettime clock_gettime(2)
1698
1699 cpu Internal CPU clock source
1700
1701 cpu is the preferred clocksource if it is reliable, as it
1702 is very fast (and fio is heavy on time calls). Fio will
1703 automatically use this clocksource if it's supported and
1704 considered reliable on the system it is running on, unless
1705 another clocksource is specifically set. For x86/x86-64 CPUs,
1706 this means supporting TSC Invariant.
1707
1708gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
1709 (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
1710 precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
1711 the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
1712 we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
1713 done if all time keeping was enabled.
1714
1715gtod_cpu=int Sometimes it's cheaper to dedicate a single thread of
1716 execution to just getting the current time. Fio (and
1717 databases, for instance) are very intensive on gettimeofday()
1718 calls. With this option, you can set one CPU aside for
1719 doing nothing but logging current time to a shared memory
1720 location. Then the other threads/processes that run IO
1721 workloads need only copy that segment, instead of entering
1722 the kernel with a gettimeofday() call. The CPU set aside
1723 for doing these time calls will be excluded from other
1724 uses. Fio will manually clear it from the CPU mask of other
1725 jobs.
1726
1727continue_on_error=str Normally fio will exit the job on the first observed
1728 failure. If this option is set, fio will continue the job when
1729 there is a 'non-fatal error' (EIO or EILSEQ) until the runtime
1730 is exceeded or the I/O size specified is completed. If this
1731 option is used, there are two more stats that are appended,
1732 the total error count and the first error. The error field
1733 given in the stats is the first error that was hit during the
1734 run.
1735
1736 The allowed values are:
1737
1738 none Exit on any IO or verify errors.
1739
1740 read Continue on read errors, exit on all others.
1741
1742 write Continue on write errors, exit on all others.
1743
1744 io Continue on any IO error, exit on all others.
1745
1746 verify Continue on verify errors, exit on all others.
1747
1748 all Continue on all errors.
1749
1750 0 Backward-compatible alias for 'none'.
1751
1752 1 Backward-compatible alias for 'all'.
1753
1754ignore_error=str Sometimes you want to ignore some errors during test
1755 in that case you can specify error list for each error type.
1756 ignore_error=READ_ERR_LIST,WRITE_ERR_LIST,VERIFY_ERR_LIST
1757 errors for given error type is separated with ':'. Error
1758 may be symbol ('ENOSPC', 'ENOMEM') or integer.
1759 Example:
1760 ignore_error=EAGAIN,ENOSPC:122
1761 This option will ignore EAGAIN from READ, and ENOSPC and
1762 122(EDQUOT) from WRITE.
1763
1764error_dump=bool If set dump every error even if it is non fatal, true
1765 by default. If disabled only fatal error will be dumped
1766
1767cgroup=str Add job to this control group. If it doesn't exist, it will
1768 be created. The system must have a mounted cgroup blkio
1769 mount point for this to work. If your system doesn't have it
1770 mounted, you can do so with:
1771
1772 # mount -t cgroup -o blkio none /cgroup
1773
1774cgroup_weight=int Set the weight of the cgroup to this value. See
1775 the documentation that comes with the kernel, allowed values
1776 are in the range of 100..1000.
1777
1778cgroup_nodelete=bool Normally fio will delete the cgroups it has created after
1779 the job completion. To override this behavior and to leave
1780 cgroups around after the job completion, set cgroup_nodelete=1.
1781 This can be useful if one wants to inspect various cgroup
1782 files after job completion. Default: false
1783
1784uid=int Instead of running as the invoking user, set the user ID to
1785 this value before the thread/process does any work.
1786
1787gid=int Set group ID, see uid.
1788
1789flow_id=int The ID of the flow. If not specified, it defaults to being a
1790 global flow. See flow.
1791
1792flow=int Weight in token-based flow control. If this value is used, then
1793 there is a 'flow counter' which is used to regulate the
1794 proportion of activity between two or more jobs. fio attempts
1795 to keep this flow counter near zero. The 'flow' parameter
1796 stands for how much should be added or subtracted to the flow
1797 counter on each iteration of the main I/O loop. That is, if
1798 one job has flow=8 and another job has flow=-1, then there
1799 will be a roughly 1:8 ratio in how much one runs vs the other.
1800
1801flow_watermark=int The maximum value that the absolute value of the flow
1802 counter is allowed to reach before the job must wait for a
1803 lower value of the counter.
1804
1805flow_sleep=int The period of time, in microseconds, to wait after the flow
1806 watermark has been exceeded before retrying operations
1807
1808In addition, there are some parameters which are only valid when a specific
1809ioengine is in use. These are used identically to normal parameters, with the
1810caveat that when used on the command line, they must come after the ioengine
1811that defines them is selected.
1812
1813[libaio] userspace_reap Normally, with the libaio engine in use, fio will use
1814 the io_getevents system call to reap newly returned events.
1815 With this flag turned on, the AIO ring will be read directly
1816 from user-space to reap events. The reaping mode is only
1817 enabled when polling for a minimum of 0 events (eg when
1818 iodepth_batch_complete=0).
1819
1820[psyncv2] hipri Set RWF_HIPRI on IO, indicating to the kernel that
1821 it's of higher priority than normal.
1822
1823[cpu] cpuload=int Attempt to use the specified percentage of CPU cycles.
1824
1825[cpu] cpuchunks=int Split the load into cycles of the given time. In
1826 microseconds.
1827
1828[cpu] exit_on_io_done=bool Detect when IO threads are done, then exit.
1829
1830[netsplice] hostname=str
1831[net] hostname=str The host name or IP address to use for TCP or UDP based IO.
1832 If the job is a TCP listener or UDP reader, the hostname is not
1833 used and must be omitted unless it is a valid UDP multicast
1834 address.
1835[libhdfs] namenode=str The host name or IP address of a HDFS cluster namenode to contact.
1836
1837[netsplice] port=int
1838[net] port=int The TCP or UDP port to bind to or connect to. If this is used
1839with numjobs to spawn multiple instances of the same job type, then this will
1840be the starting port number since fio will use a range of ports.
1841[libhdfs] port=int the listening port of the HFDS cluster namenode.
1842
1843[netsplice] interface=str
1844[net] interface=str The IP address of the network interface used to send or
1845 receive UDP multicast
1846
1847[netsplice] ttl=int
1848[net] ttl=int Time-to-live value for outgoing UDP multicast packets.
1849 Default: 1
1850
1851[netsplice] nodelay=bool
1852[net] nodelay=bool Set TCP_NODELAY on TCP connections.
1853
1854[netsplice] protocol=str
1855[netsplice] proto=str
1856[net] protocol=str
1857[net] proto=str The network protocol to use. Accepted values are:
1858
1859 tcp Transmission control protocol
1860 tcpv6 Transmission control protocol V6
1861 udp User datagram protocol
1862 udpv6 User datagram protocol V6
1863 unix UNIX domain socket
1864
1865 When the protocol is TCP or UDP, the port must also be given,
1866 as well as the hostname if the job is a TCP listener or UDP
1867 reader. For unix sockets, the normal filename option should be
1868 used and the port is invalid.
1869
1870[net] listen For TCP network connections, tell fio to listen for incoming
1871 connections rather than initiating an outgoing connection. The
1872 hostname must be omitted if this option is used.
1873
1874[net] pingpong Normaly a network writer will just continue writing data, and
1875 a network reader will just consume packages. If pingpong=1
1876 is set, a writer will send its normal payload to the reader,
1877 then wait for the reader to send the same payload back. This
1878 allows fio to measure network latencies. The submission
1879 and completion latencies then measure local time spent
1880 sending or receiving, and the completion latency measures
1881 how long it took for the other end to receive and send back.
1882 For UDP multicast traffic pingpong=1 should only be set for a
1883 single reader when multiple readers are listening to the same
1884 address.
1885
1886[net] window_size Set the desired socket buffer size for the connection.
1887
1888[net] mss Set the TCP maximum segment size (TCP_MAXSEG).
1889
1890[e4defrag] donorname=str
1891 File will be used as a block donor(swap extents between files)
1892[e4defrag] inplace=int
1893 Configure donor file blocks allocation strategy
1894 0(default): Preallocate donor's file on init
1895 1 : allocate space immidietly inside defragment event,
1896 and free right after event
1897
1898[rbd] clustername=str Specifies the name of the Ceph cluster.
1899[rbd] rbdname=str Specifies the name of the RBD.
1900[rbd] pool=str Specifies the naem of the Ceph pool containing RBD.
1901[rbd] clientname=str Specifies the username (without the 'client.' prefix)
1902 used to access the Ceph cluster. If the clustername is
1903 specified, the clientmae shall be the full type.id
1904 string. If no type. prefix is given, fio will add
1905 'client.' by default.
1906
1907[mtd] skip_bad=bool Skip operations against known bad blocks.
1908
1909[libhdfs] hdfsdirectory libhdfs will create chunk in this HDFS directory
1910[libhdfs] chunck_size the size of the chunck to use for each file.
1911
1912
19136.0 Interpreting the output
1914---------------------------
1915
1916fio spits out a lot of output. While running, fio will display the
1917status of the jobs created. An example of that would be:
1918
1919Threads: 1: [_r] [24.8% done] [ 13509/ 8334 kb/s] [eta 00h:01m:31s]
1920
1921The characters inside the square brackets denote the current status of
1922each thread. The possible values (in typical life cycle order) are:
1923
1924Idle Run
1925---- ---
1926P Thread setup, but not started.
1927C Thread created.
1928I Thread initialized, waiting or generating necessary data.
1929 p Thread running pre-reading file(s).
1930 R Running, doing sequential reads.
1931 r Running, doing random reads.
1932 W Running, doing sequential writes.
1933 w Running, doing random writes.
1934 M Running, doing mixed sequential reads/writes.
1935 m Running, doing mixed random reads/writes.
1936 F Running, currently waiting for fsync()
1937 f Running, finishing up (writing IO logs, etc)
1938 V Running, doing verification of written data.
1939E Thread exited, not reaped by main thread yet.
1940_ Thread reaped, or
1941X Thread reaped, exited with an error.
1942K Thread reaped, exited due to signal.
1943
1944Fio will condense the thread string as not to take up more space on the
1945command line as is needed. For instance, if you have 10 readers and 10
1946writers running, the output would look like this:
1947
1948Jobs: 20 (f=20): [R(10),W(10)] [4.0% done] [2103MB/0KB/0KB /s] [538K/0/0 iops] [eta 57m:36s]
1949
1950Fio will still maintain the ordering, though. So the above means that jobs
19511..10 are readers, and 11..20 are writers.
1952
1953The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
1954currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
1955listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
1956and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
1957the following groups (if any). Note that the string is displayed in order,
1958so it's possible to tell which of the jobs are currently doing what. The
1959first character is the first job defined in the job file, and so forth.
1960
1961When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
1962each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
1963direction, the output looks like:
1964
1965Client1 (g=0): err= 0:
1966 write: io= 32MB, bw= 666KB/s, iops=89 , runt= 50320msec
1967 slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
1968 clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
1969 bw (KB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
1970 cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
1971 IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
1972 submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1973 complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
1974 issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=0/0
1975 lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
1976 lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
1977
1978The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
1979thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
1980they denote:
1981
1982io= Number of megabytes io performed
1983bw= Average bandwidth rate
1984iops= Average IOs performed per second
1985runt= The runtime of that thread
1986 slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
1987 standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
1988 the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
1989 latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
1990 value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
1991 the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
1992 above, milliseconds is the best scale. Note: in --minimal mode
1993 latencies are always expressed in microseconds.
1994 clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
1995 time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
1996 sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
1997 as the time from submit to complete is basically just
1998 CPU time (io has already been done, see slat explanation).
1999 bw= Bandwidth. Same names as the xlat stats, but also includes
2000 an approximate percentage of total aggregate bandwidth
2001 this thread received in this group. This last value is
2002 only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
2003 same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
2004cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
2005 of context switches this thread went through, usage of
2006 system and user time, and finally the number of major
2007 and minor page faults. The CPU utilization numbers are
2008 averages for the jobs in that reporting group, while the
2009 context and fault counters are summed.
2010IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
2011 numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
2012 16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
2013 than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
2014 range from 16 to 31.
2015IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
2016 call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
2017 the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
2018 anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
2019IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
2020IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
2021 of them were short.
2022IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
2023 time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
2024 The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
2025 meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
2026 within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
2027 took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
2028
2029After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
2030will look like this:
2031
2032Run status group 0 (all jobs):
2033 READ: io=64MB, aggrb=22178, minb=11355, maxb=11814, mint=2840msec, maxt=2955msec
2034 WRITE: io=64MB, aggrb=1302, minb=666, maxb=669, mint=50093msec, maxt=50320msec
2035
2036For each data direction, it prints:
2037
2038io= Number of megabytes io performed.
2039aggrb= Aggregate bandwidth of threads in this group.
2040minb= The minimum average bandwidth a thread saw.
2041maxb= The maximum average bandwidth a thread saw.
2042mint= The smallest runtime of the threads in that group.
2043maxt= The longest runtime of the threads in that group.
2044
2045And finally, the disk statistics are printed. They will look like this:
2046
2047Disk stats (read/write):
2048 sda: ios=16398/16511, merge=30/162, ticks=6853/819634, in_queue=826487, util=100.00%
2049
2050Each value is printed for both reads and writes, with reads first. The
2051numbers denote:
2052
2053ios= Number of ios performed by all groups.
2054merge= Number of merges io the io scheduler.
2055ticks= Number of ticks we kept the disk busy.
2056io_queue= Total time spent in the disk queue.
2057util= The disk utilization. A value of 100% means we kept the disk
2058 busy constantly, 50% would be a disk idling half of the time.
2059
2060It is also possible to get fio to dump the current output while it is
2061running, without terminating the job. To do that, send fio the USR1 signal.
2062You can also get regularly timed dumps by using the --status-interval
2063parameter, or by creating a file in /tmp named fio-dump-status. If fio
2064sees this file, it will unlink it and dump the current output status.
2065
2066
20677.0 Terse output
2068----------------
2069
2070For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
2071of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
2072The format is one long line of values, such as:
2073
20742;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%
2075A description of this job goes here.
2076
2077The job description (if provided) follows on a second line.
2078
2079To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option. The first
2080value is the version of the terse output format. If the output has to
2081be changed for some reason, this number will be incremented by 1 to
2082signify that change.
2083
2084Split up, the format is as follows:
2085
2086 terse version, fio version, jobname, groupid, error
2087 READ status:
2088 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
2089 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2090 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2091 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
2092 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2093 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
2094 WRITE status:
2095 Total IO (KB), bandwidth (KB/sec), IOPS, runtime (msec)
2096 Submission latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2097 Completion latency: min, max, mean, stdev(usec)
2098 Completion latency percentiles: 20 fields (see below)
2099 Total latency: min, max, mean, stdev (usec)
2100 Bw (KB/s): min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, stdev
2101 CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
2102 IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
2103 IO latencies microseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
2104 IO latencies milliseconds: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 2000, >=2000
2105 Disk utilization: Disk name, Read ios, write ios,
2106 Read merges, write merges,
2107 Read ticks, write ticks,
2108 Time spent in queue, disk utilization percentage
2109 Additional Info (dependent on continue_on_error, default off): total # errors, first error code
2110
2111 Additional Info (dependent on description being set): Text description
2112
2113Completion latency percentiles can be a grouping of up to 20 sets, so
2114for the terse output fio writes all of them. Each field will look like this:
2115
2116 1.00%=6112
2117
2118which is the Xth percentile, and the usec latency associated with it.
2119
2120For disk utilization, all disks used by fio are shown. So for each disk
2121there will be a disk utilization section.
2122
2123
21248.0 Trace file format
2125---------------------
2126There are two trace file format that you can encounter. The older (v1) format
2127is unsupported since version 1.20-rc3 (March 2008). It will still be described
2128below in case that you get an old trace and want to understand it.
2129
2130In any case the trace is a simple text file with a single action per line.
2131
2132
21338.1 Trace file format v1
2134------------------------
2135Each line represents a single io action in the following format:
2136
2137rw, offset, length
2138
2139where rw=0/1 for read/write, and the offset and length entries being in bytes.
2140
2141This format is not supported in Fio versions => 1.20-rc3.
2142
2143
21448.2 Trace file format v2
2145------------------------
2146The second version of the trace file format was added in Fio version 1.17.
2147It allows to access more then one file per trace and has a bigger set of
2148possible file actions.
2149
2150The first line of the trace file has to be:
2151
2152fio version 2 iolog
2153
2154Following this can be lines in two different formats, which are described below.
2155
2156The file management format:
2157
2158filename action
2159
2160The filename is given as an absolute path. The action can be one of these:
2161
2162add Add the given filename to the trace
2163open Open the file with the given filename. The filename has to have
2164 been added with the add action before.
2165close Close the file with the given filename. The file has to have been
2166 opened before.
2167
2168
2169The file io action format:
2170
2171filename action offset length
2172
2173The filename is given as an absolute path, and has to have been added and opened
2174before it can be used with this format. The offset and length are given in
2175bytes. The action can be one of these:
2176
2177wait Wait for 'offset' microseconds. Everything below 100 is discarded.
2178 The time is relative to the previous wait statement.
2179read Read 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2180write Write 'length' bytes beginning from 'offset'
2181sync fsync() the file
2182datasync fdatasync() the file
2183trim trim the given file from the given 'offset' for 'length' bytes
2184
2185
21869.0 CPU idleness profiling
2187--------------------------
2188In some cases, we want to understand CPU overhead in a test. For example,
2189we test patches for the specific goodness of whether they reduce CPU usage.
2190fio implements a balloon approach to create a thread per CPU that runs at
2191idle priority, meaning that it only runs when nobody else needs the cpu.
2192By measuring the amount of work completed by the thread, idleness of each
2193CPU can be derived accordingly.
2194
2195An unit work is defined as touching a full page of unsigned characters. Mean
2196and standard deviation of time to complete an unit work is reported in "unit
2197work" section. Options can be chosen to report detailed percpu idleness or
2198overall system idleness by aggregating percpu stats.
2199
2200
220110.0 Verification and triggers
2202------------------------------
2203Fio is usually run in one of two ways, when data verification is done. The
2204first is a normal write job of some sort with verify enabled. When the
2205write phase has completed, fio switches to reads and verifies everything
2206it wrote. The second model is running just the write phase, and then later
2207on running the same job (but with reads instead of writes) to repeat the
2208same IO patterns and verify the contents. Both of these methods depend
2209on the write phase being completed, as fio otherwise has no idea how much
2210data was written.
2211
2212With verification triggers, fio supports dumping the current write state
2213to local files. Then a subsequent read verify workload can load this state
2214and know exactly where to stop. This is useful for testing cases where
2215power is cut to a server in a managed fashion, for instance.
2216
2217A verification trigger consists of two things:
2218
22191) Storing the write state of each job
22202) Executing a trigger command
2221
2222The write state is relatively small, on the order of hundreds of bytes
2223to single kilobytes. It contains information on the number of completions
2224done, the last X completions, etc.
2225
2226A trigger is invoked either through creation ('touch') of a specified
2227file in the system, or through a timeout setting. If fio is run with
2228--trigger-file=/tmp/trigger-file, then it will continually check for
2229the existence of /tmp/trigger-file. When it sees this file, it will
2230fire off the trigger (thus saving state, and executing the trigger
2231command).
2232
2233For client/server runs, there's both a local and remote trigger. If
2234fio is running as a server backend, it will send the job states back
2235to the client for safe storage, then execute the remote trigger, if
2236specified. If a local trigger is specified, the server will still send
2237back the write state, but the client will then execute the trigger.
2238
223910.1 Verification trigger example
2240---------------------------------
2241Lets say we want to run a powercut test on the remote machine 'server'.
2242Our write workload is in write-test.fio. We want to cut power to 'server'
2243at some point during the run, and we'll run this test from the safety
2244or our local machine, 'localbox'. On the server, we'll start the fio
2245backend normally:
2246
2247server# fio --server
2248
2249and on the client, we'll fire off the workload:
2250
2251localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger-remote="bash -c \"echo b > /proc/sysrq-triger\""
2252
2253We set /tmp/my-trigger as the trigger file, and we tell fio to execute
2254
2255echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger
2256
2257on the server once it has received the trigger and sent us the write
2258state. This will work, but it's not _really_ cutting power to the server,
2259it's merely abruptly rebooting it. If we have a remote way of cutting
2260power to the server through IPMI or similar, we could do that through
2261a local trigger command instead. Lets assume we have a script that does
2262IPMI reboot of a given hostname, ipmi-reboot. On localbox, we could
2263then have run fio with a local trigger instead:
2264
2265localbox$ fio --client=server --trigger-file=/tmp/my-trigger --trigger="ipmi-reboot server"
2266
2267For this case, fio would wait for the server to send us the write state,
2268then execute 'ipmi-reboot server' when that happened.
2269
227010.2 Loading verify state
2271-------------------------
2272To load store write state, read verification job file must contain
2273the verify_state_load option. If that is set, fio will load the previously
2274stored state. For a local fio run this is done by loading the files directly,
2275and on a client/server run, the server backend will ask the client to send
2276the files over and load them from there.
2277
2278
227911.0 Log File Formats
2280---------------------
2281
2282Fio supports a variety of log file formats, for logging latencies, bandwidth,
2283and IOPS. The logs share a common format, which looks like this:
2284
2285time (msec), value, data direction, offset
2286
2287Time for the log entry is always in milliseconds. The value logged depends
2288on the type of log, it will be one of the following:
2289
2290 Latency log Value is latency in usecs
2291 Bandwidth log Value is in KB/sec
2292 IOPS log Value is IOPS
2293
2294Data direction is one of the following:
2295
2296 0 IO is a READ
2297 1 IO is a WRITE
2298 2 IO is a TRIM
2299
2300The offset is the offset, in bytes, from the start of the file, for that
2301particular IO. The logging of the offset can be toggled with 'log_offset'.
2302
2303If windowed logging is enabled though 'log_avg_msec', then fio doesn't log
2304individual IOs. Instead of logs the average values over the specified
2305period of time. Since 'data direction' and 'offset' are per-IO values,
2306they aren't applicable if windowed logging is enabled. If windowed logging
2307is enabled and 'log_max_value' is set, then fio logs maximum values in
2308that window instead of averages.
2309