A global section sets defaults for the jobs described in that file. A job
may override a global section parameter, and a job file may even have
several global sections if so desired. A job is only affected by a global
-section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';', the
-entire line is discarded as a comment.
+section residing above it. If the first character in a line is a ';' or a
+'#', the entire line is discarded as a comment.
So lets look at a really simple job file that define to threads, each
randomly reading from a 128MiB file.
files between threads in a job or several jobs, specify
a filename for each of them to override the default. If
the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host and
- port to connect to in the format of =host:port.
+ port to connect to in the format of =host/port. If the
+ ioengine is file based, you can specify a number of files
+ by seperating the names with a ':' colon. So if you wanted
+ a job to open /dev/sda and /dev/sdb as the two working files,
+ you would use filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb
rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
nrfiles=int Number of files to use for this job. Defaults to 1.
+openfiles=int Number of files to keep open at the same time. Defaults to
+ the same as nrfiles, can be set smaller to limit the number
+ simultaneous opens.
+
+file_service_type=str Defines how fio decides which file from a job to
+ service next. The following types are defined:
+
+ random Just choose a file at random.
+
+ roundrobin Round robin over open files. This
+ is the default.
+
+ The string can have a number appended, indicating how
+ often to switch to a new file. So if option random:4 is
+ given, fio will switch to a new random file after 4 ios
+ have been issued.
+
ioengine=str Defines how the job issues io to the file. The following
types are defined:
net Transfer over the network to given host:port.
'filename' must be set appropriately to
- filename=host:port regardless of send
+ filename=host/port regardless of send
or receive, if the latter only the port
argument is used.
+ cpu Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
+ cycles according to the cpuload= and
+ cpucycle= options. Setting cpuload=85
+ will cause that job to do nothing but burn
+ 85% of the CPU.
+
+ external Prefix to specify loading an external
+ IO engine object file. Append the engine
+ filename, eg ioengine=external:/tmp/foo.o
+ to load ioengine foo.o in /tmp.
+
iodepth=int This defines how many io units to keep in flight against
the file. The default is 1 for each file defined in this
job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
concurrency.
+iodepth_batch=int This defines how many pieces of IO to submit at once.
+ It defaults to the same as iodepth, but can be set lower
+ if one so desires.
+
+iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
+ the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
+ that fio will attempt to keep the queue full at all times.
+ If iodepth is set to eg 16 and iodepth_low is set to 4, then
+ after fio has filled the queue of 16 requests, it will let
+ the depth drain down to 4 before starting to fill it again.
+
direct=bool If value is true, use non-buffered io. This is usually
O_DIRECT.
end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when the job exits.
+fsync_on_close=bool If true, fio will fsync() a dirty file on close.
+ This differs from end_fsync in that it will happen on every
+ file close, not just at the end of the job.
+
rwmixcycle=int Value in milliseconds describing how often to switch between
reads and writes for a mixed workload. The default is
500 msecs.
thinktime=int Stall the job x microseconds after an io has completed before
issuing the next. May be used to simulate processing being
- done by an application. See thinktime_blocks.
+ done by an application. See thinktime_blocks and
+ thinktime_spin.
+
+thinktime_spin=int
+ Only valid if thinktime is set - pretend to spend CPU time
+ doing something with the data received, before falling back
+ to sleeping for the rest of the period specified by
+ thinktime.
thinktime_blocks
Only valid if thinktime is set - control how many blocks
numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
- the same thing.
+ the same thing. We regard that grouping of jobs as a
+ specific group.
+
+group_reporting If 'numjobs' is set, it may be interesting to display
+ statistics for the group as a whole instead of for each
+ individual job. This is especially true of 'numjobs' is
+ large, looking at individual thread/process output quickly
+ becomes unwieldy. If 'group_reporting' is specified, fio
+ will show the final report per-group instead of per-job.
thread fio defaults to forking jobs, however if this option is
given, fio will use pthread_create(3) to create threads
bw (KiB/s) : min= 0, max= 1196, per=51.00%, avg=664.02, stdev=681.68
cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969
IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
- lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 8=3.2%, 16=12.8%, 32=38.4%, 64=24.8%, 128=15.2%
- lat (msec): 256=4.0%, 512=0.0%, 1024=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
+ lat (msec): 2=1.6%, 4=0.0%, 10=3.2%, 20=12.8%, 50=38.4%, 100=24.8%,
+ lat (msec): 250=15.2%, 500=0.0%, 750=0.0%, 1000=0.0%, >=2048=0.0%
The client number is printed, along with the group id and error of that
thread. Below is the io statistics, here for writes. In the order listed,
time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
meaning that 2=1.6% means that 1.6% of the IO completed
- within 2 msecs, 16=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
- took more than 8 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 16 msecs.
+ within 2 msecs, 20=12.8% means that 12.8% of the IO
+ took more than 10 msecs, but less than (or equal to) 20 msecs.
After each client has been listed, the group statistics are printed. They
will look like this:
----------------
For scripted usage where you typically want to generate tables or graphs
-of the results, fio can output the results in a comma separated format.
+of the results, fio can output the results in a semicolon separated format.
The format is one long line of values, such as:
-client1,0,0,936,331,2894,0,0,0.000000,0.000000,1,170,22.115385,34.290410,16,714,84.252874%,366.500000,566.417819,3496,1237,2894,0,0,0.000000,0.000000,0,246,6.671625,21.436952,0,2534,55.465300%,1406.600000,2008.044216,0.000000%,0.431928%,1109
+client1;0;0;1906777;1090804;1790;0;0;0.000000;0.000000;0;0;0.000000;0.000000;929380;1152890;25.510151%;1078276.333333;128948.113404;0;0;0;0;0;0.000000;0.000000;0;0;0.000000;0.000000;0;0;0.000000%;0.000000;0.000000;100.000000%;0.000000%;324;100.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;100.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%
+;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%;0.0%
Split up, the format is as follows:
Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation
Bw: min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
CPU usage: user, system, context switches
+ IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
+ IO latencies: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, >=2000
+ Text description