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
+So let's look at a really simple job file that defines two processes, each
randomly reading from a 128MiB file.
; -- start job file --
$ fio --name=global --rw=randread --size=128m --name=job1 --name=job2
-Lets look at an example that have a number of processes writing randomly
+Let's look at an example that has a number of processes writing randomly
to files.
; -- start job file --
$ fio --name=random-writers --ioengine=libaio --iodepth=4 --rw=randwrite --bs=32k --direct=0 --size=64m --numjobs=4
+fio also supports environment variable expansion in job files. Any
+substring of the form "${VARNAME}" as part of an option value (in other
+words, on the right of the `='), will be expanded to the value of the
+environment variable called VARNAME. If no such environment variable
+is defined, or VARNAME is the empty string, the empty string will be
+substituted.
+
+As an example, let's look at a sample fio invocation and job file:
+
+$ SIZE=64m NUMJOBS=4 fio jobfile.fio
+
+; -- start job file --
+[random-writers]
+rw=randwrite
+size=${SIZE}
+numjobs=${NUMJOBS}
+; -- end job file --
+
+This will expand to the following equivalent job file at runtime:
+
+; -- start job file --
+[random-writers]
+rw=randwrite
+size=64m
+numjobs=4
+; -- end job file --
+
fio ships with a few example job files, you can also look there for
inspiration.
a string. The following types are used:
str String. This is a sequence of alpha characters.
-int Integer. A whole number value, may be negative.
+int Integer. A whole number value, can be negative. If prefixed with
+ 0x, the integer is assumed to be of base 16 (hexadecimal).
+time Integer with possible time postfix. In seconds unless otherwise
+ specified, use eg 10m for 10 minutes. Accepts s/m/h for seconds,
+ minutes, and hours.
siint SI integer. A whole number value, which may contain a postfix
describing the base of the number. Accepted postfixes are k/m/g,
meaning kilo, mega, and giga. So if you want to specify 4096,
you could either write out '4096' or just give 4k. The postfixes
signify base 2 values, so 1024 is 1k and 1024k is 1m and so on.
+ If the option accepts an upper and lower range, use a colon ':'
+ or minus '-' to separate such values. See irange.
bool Boolean. Usually parsed as an integer, however only defined for
true and false (1 and 0).
irange Integer range with postfix. Allows value range to be given, such
- as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the seperator, eg
+ as 1024-4096. A colon may also be used as the separator, eg
1k:4k. If the option allows two sets of ranges, they can be
specified with a ',' or '/' delimiter: 1k-4k/8k-32k. Also see
siint.
the ioengine used is 'net', the filename is the host and
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
+ by separating 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
+ you would use filename=/dev/sda:/dev/sdb. '-' is a reserved
+ name, meaning stdin or stdout. Which of the two depends
+ on the read/write direction set.
opendir=str Tell fio to recursively add any file it can find in this
directory and down the file system tree.
+lockfile=str Fio defaults to not doing any locking files before it does
+ IO to them. If a file or file descriptor is shared, fio
+ can serialize IO to that file to make the end result
+ consistent. This is usual for emulating real workloads that
+ share files. The lock modes are:
+
+ none No locking. The default.
+ exclusive Only one thread/process may do IO,
+ excluding all others.
+ readwrite Read-write locking on the file. Many
+ readers may access the file at the
+ same time, but writes get exclusive
+ access.
+
+ The option may be post-fixed with a lock batch number. If
+ set, then each thread/process may do that amount of IOs to
+ the file before giving up the lock. Since lock acquisition is
+ expensive, batching the lock/unlocks will speed up IO.
+
+readwrite=str
rw=str Type of io pattern. Accepted values are:
read Sequential reads
For the mixed io types, the default is to split them 50/50.
For certain types of io the result may still be skewed a bit,
- since the speed may be different.
+ since the speed may be different. It is possible to specify
+ a number of IO's to do before getting a new offset - this
+ is only useful for random IO, where fio would normally
+ generate a new random offset for every IO. If you append
+ eg 8 to randread, you would get a new random offset for
+ every 8 IO's. The result would be a seek for only every 8
+ IO's, instead of for every IO. Use rw=randread:8 to specify
+ that.
randrepeat=bool For random IO workloads, seed the generator in a predictable
way so that results are repeatable across repetitions.
-size=siint The total size of file io for this job. This may describe
- the size of the single file the job uses, or it may be
- divided between the number of files in the job. If the
- file already exists, the file size will be adjusted to this
- size if larger than the current file size. If this parameter
- is not given and the file exists, the file size will be used.
+fadvise_hint=bool By default, fio will use fadvise() to advise the kernel
+ on what IO patterns it is likely to issue. Sometimes you
+ want to test specific IO patterns without telling the
+ kernel about it, in which case you can disable this option.
+ If set, fio will use POSIX_FADV_SEQUENTIAL for sequential
+ IO and POSIX_FADV_RANDOM for random IO.
+
+size=siint The total size of file io for this job. Fio will run until
+ this many bytes has been transferred, unless runtime is
+ limited by other options (such as 'runtime', for instance).
+ Unless specific nr_files and filesize options are given,
+ fio will divide this size between the available files
+ specified by the job.
filesize=siint Individual file sizes. May be a range, in which case fio
will select sizes for files at random within the given range
and limited to 'size' in total (if that is given). If not
given, each created file is the same size.
+fill_device=bool Sets size to something really large and waits for ENOSPC (no
+ space left on device) as the terminating condition. Only makes
+ sense with sequential write.
+
+blocksize=siint
bs=siint The block size used for the io units. Defaults to 4k. Values
can be given for both read and writes. If a single siint is
given, it will apply to both. If a second siint is specified
can do so by passing an empty read size - bs=,8k will set
8k for writes and leave the read default value.
+blocksize_range=irange
bsrange=irange Instead of giving a single block size, specify a range
and fio will mix the issued io block sizes. The issued
io unit will always be a multiple of the minimum value
writes, however a second range can be given after a comma.
See bs=.
+bssplit=str Sometimes you want even finer grained control of the
+ block sizes issued, not just an even split between them.
+ This option allows you to weight various block sizes,
+ so that you are able to define a specific amount of
+ block sizes issued. The format for this option is:
+
+ bssplit=blocksize/percentage:blocksize/percentage
+
+ for as many block sizes as needed. So if you want to define
+ a workload that has 50% 64k blocks, 10% 4k blocks, and
+ 40% 32k blocks, you would write:
+
+ bssplit=4k/10:64k/50:32k/40
+
+ Ordering does not matter. If the percentage is left blank,
+ fio will fill in the remaining values evenly. So a bssplit
+ option like this one:
+
+ bssplit=4k/50:1k/:32k/
+
+ would have 50% 4k ios, and 25% 1k and 32k ios. The percentages
+ always add up to 100, if bssplit is given a range that adds
+ up to more, it will error out.
+
+blocksize_unaligned
bs_unaligned If this option is given, any byte size value within bsrange
may be used as a block range. This typically wont work with
direct IO, as that normally requires sector alignment.
+zero_buffers If this option is given, fio will init the IO buffers to
+ all zeroes. The default is to fill them with random data.
+
+refill_buffers If this option is given, fio will refill the IO buffers
+ on every submit. The default is to only fill it at init
+ time and reuse that data. Only makes sense if zero_buffers
+ isn't specified, naturally. If data verification is enabled,
+ refill_buffers is also automatically enabled.
+
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
sync Basic read(2) or write(2) io. lseek(2) is
used to position the io location.
+ psync Basic pread(2) or pwrite(2) io.
+
+ vsync Basic readv(2) or writev(2) IO.
+
libaio Linux native asynchronous io.
posixaio glibc posix asynchronous io.
+ solarisaio Solaris native asynchronous io.
+
mmap File is memory mapped and data copied
to/from using memcpy(3).
or receive, if the latter only the port
argument is used.
- cpu Doesn't transfer any data, but burns CPU
+ netsplice Like net, but uses splice/vmsplice to
+ map data and send/receive.
+
+ cpuio 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.
+ 85% of the CPU. In case of SMP machines,
+ use numjobs=<no_of_cpu> to get desired CPU
+ usage, as the cpuload only loads a single
+ CPU at the desired rate.
+
+ guasi The GUASI IO engine is the Generic Userspace
+ Asyncronous Syscall Interface approach
+ to async IO. See
+
+ http://www.xmailserver.org/guasi-lib.html
+
+ for more info on GUASI.
external Prefix to specify loading an external
IO engine object file. Append the engine
job, can be overridden with a larger value for higher
concurrency.
+iodepth_batch_submit=int
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.
+ It defaults to 1 which means that we submit each IO
+ as soon as it is available, but can be raised to submit
+ bigger batches of IO at the time.
+
+iodepth_batch_complete=int This defines how many pieces of IO to retrieve
+ at once. It defaults to 1 which means that we'll ask
+ for a minimum of 1 IO in the retrieval process from
+ the kernel. The IO retrieval will go on until we
+ hit the limit set by iodepth_low. If this variable is
+ set to 0, then fio will always check for completed
+ events before queuing more IO. This helps reduce
+ IO latency, at the cost of more retrieval system calls.
iodepth_low=int The low water mark indicating when to start filling
the queue again. Defaults to the same as iodepth, meaning
not sync the file. The exception is the sg io engine, which
synchronizes the disk cache anyway.
-overwrite=bool If writing to a file, setup the file first and do overwrites.
+overwrite=bool If true, writes to a file will always overwrite existing
+ data. If the file doesn't already exist, it will be
+ created before the write phase begins. If the file exists
+ and is large enough for the specified write phase, nothing
+ will be done.
end_fsync=bool If true, fsync file contents when the job exits.
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.
-
rwmixread=int How large a percentage of the mix should be reads.
rwmixwrite=int How large a percentage of the mix should be writes. If both
new random offset without looking at past io history. This
means that some blocks may not be read or written, and that
some blocks may be read/written more than once. This option
- is mutually exclusive with verify= for that reason.
+ is mutually exclusive with verify= for that reason, since
+ fio doesn't track potential block rewrites which may alter
+ the calculated checksum for that block.
+
+softrandommap See norandommap. If fio runs with the random block map enabled
+ and it fails to allocate the map, if this option is set it
+ will continue without a random block map. As coverage will
+ not be as complete as with random maps, this option is
+ disabled by default.
nice=int Run the job with the given nice value. See man nice(2).
rate=int Cap the bandwidth used by this job to this number of KiB/sec.
ratemin=int Tell fio to do whatever it can to maintain at least this
- bandwidth.
+ bandwidth. Failing to meet this requirement, will cause
+ the job to exit.
+
+rate_iops=int Cap the bandwidth to this number of IOPS. Basically the same
+ as rate, just specified independently of bandwidth. If the
+ job is given a block size range instead of a fixed value,
+ the smallest block size is used as the metric.
+
+rate_iops_min=int If fio doesn't meet this rate of IO, it will cause
+ the job to exit.
ratecycle=int Average bandwidth for 'rate' and 'ratemin' over this number
of milliseconds.
cpumask=int Set the CPU affinity of this job. The parameter given is a
- bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. See man
- sched_setaffinity(2).
+ bitmask of allowed CPU's the job may run on. So if you want
+ the allowed CPUs to be 1 and 5, you would pass the decimal
+ value of (1 << 1 | 1 << 5), or 34. See man
+ sched_setaffinity(2). This may not work on all supported
+ operating systems or kernel versions.
+
+cpus_allowed=str Controls the same options as cpumask, but it allows a text
+ setting of the permitted CPUs instead. So to use CPUs 1 and
+ 5, you would specify cpus_allowed=1,5.
-startdelay=int Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
+startdelay=time Start this job the specified number of seconds after fio
has started. Only useful if the job file contains several
jobs, and you want to delay starting some jobs to a certain
time.
-runtime=int Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
+runtime=time Tell fio to terminate processing after the specified number
of seconds. It can be quite hard to determine for how long
a specified job will run, so this parameter is handy to
cap the total runtime to a given time.
+time_based If set, fio will run for the duration of the runtime
+ specified even if the file(s) are completely read or
+ written. It will simply loop over the same workload
+ as many times as the runtime allows.
+
+ramp_time=time If set, fio will run the specified workload for this amount
+ of time before logging any performance numbers. Useful for
+ letting performance settle before logging results, thus
+ minimizing the runtime required for stable results. Note
+ that the ramp_time is considered lead in time for a job,
+ thus it will increase the total runtime if a special timeout
+ or runtime is specified.
+
invalidate=bool Invalidate the buffer/page cache parts for this file prior
to starting io. Defaults to true.
sync=bool Use sync io for buffered writes. For the majority of the
io engines, this means using O_SYNC.
+iomem=str
mem=str Fio can use various types of memory as the io unit buffer.
The allowed values are:
default.
unlink=bool Unlink the job files when done. Not the default, as repeated
- runs of that job would then waste time recreating the fileset
- again and again.
+ runs of that job would then waste time recreating the file
+ set again and again.
loops=int Run the specified number of iterations of this job. Used
to repeat the same workload a given number of times. Defaults
to 1.
+do_verify=bool Run the verify phase after a write phase. Only makes sense if
+ verify is set. Defaults to 1.
+
verify=str If writing to a file, fio can verify the file contents
after each iteration of the job. The allowed values are:
md5 Use an md5 sum of the data area and store
it in the header of each block.
+ crc64 Use an experimental crc64 sum of the data
+ area and store it in the header of each
+ block.
+
+ crc32c Use a crc32c sum of the data area and store
+ it in the header of each block.
+
+ crc32c-intel Use hardware assisted crc32c calcuation
+ provided on SSE4.2 enabled processors.
+
crc32 Use a crc32 sum of the data area and store
it in the header of each block.
+ crc16 Use a crc16 sum of the data area and store
+ it in the header of each block.
+
+ crc7 Use a crc7 sum of the data area and store
+ it in the header of each block.
+
+ sha512 Use sha512 as the checksum function.
+
+ sha256 Use sha256 as the checksum function.
+
+ meta Write extra information about each io
+ (timestamp, block number etc.). The block
+ number is verified.
+
+ null Only pretend to verify. Useful for testing
+ internals with ioengine=null, not for much
+ else.
+
This option can be used for repeated burn-in tests of a
system to make sure that the written data is also
correctly read back.
+verifysort=bool If set, fio will sort written verify blocks when it deems
+ it faster to read them back in a sorted manner. This is
+ often the case when overwriting an existing file, since
+ the blocks are already laid out in the file system. You
+ can ignore this option unless doing huge amounts of really
+ fast IO where the red-black tree sorting CPU time becomes
+ significant.
+
+verify_offset=siint Swap the verification header with data somewhere else
+ in the block before writing. Its swapped back before
+ verifying.
+
+verify_interval=siint Write the verification header at a finer granularity
+ than the blocksize. It will be written for chunks the
+ size of header_interval. blocksize should divide this
+ evenly.
+
+verify_pattern=int If set, fio will fill the io buffers with this
+ pattern. Fio defaults to filling with totally random
+ bytes, but sometimes it's interesting to fill with a known
+ pattern for io verification purposes. Depending on the
+ width of the pattern, fio will fill 1/2/3/4 bytes of the
+ buffer at the time. The verify_pattern cannot be larger than
+ a 32-bit quantity.
+
+verify_fatal=bool Normally fio will keep checking the entire contents
+ before quitting on a block verification failure. If this
+ option is set, fio will exit the job on the first observed
+ failure.
+
stonewall Wait for preceeding jobs in the job file to exit, before
starting this one. Can be used to insert serialization
- points in the job file.
+ points in the job file. A stone wall also implies starting
+ a new reporting group.
+
+new_group Start a new reporting group. If this option isn't given,
+ jobs in a file will be part of the same reporting group
+ unless separated by a stone wall (or if it's a group
+ by itself, with the numjobs option).
numjobs=int Create the specified number of clones of this job. May be
used to setup a larger number of threads/processes doing
read_iolog=str Open an iolog with the specified file name and replay the
io patterns it contains. This can be used to store a
- workload and replay it sometime later.
+ workload and replay it sometime later. The iolog given
+ may also be a blktrace binary file, which allows fio
+ to replay a workload captured by blktrace. See blktrace
+ for how to capture such logging data. For blktrace replay,
+ the file needs to be turned into a blkparse binary data
+ file first (blktrace <device> -d file_for_fio.bin).
write_bw_log If given, write a bandwidth log of the jobs in this job
file. Can be used to store data of the bandwidth of the
cpuchunks=int If the job is a CPU cycle eater, split the load into
cycles of the given time. In milliseconds.
+disk_util=bool Generate disk utilization statistics, if the platform
+ supports it. Defaults to on.
+
+disable_clat=bool Disable measurements of completion latency numbers. Useful
+ only for cutting back the number of calls to gettimeofday,
+ as that does impact performance at really high IOPS rates.
+ Note that to really get rid of a large amount of these
+ calls, this option must be used with disable_slat and
+ disable_bw as well.
+
+disable_slat=bool Disable measurements of submission latency numbers. See
+ disable_clat.
+
+disable_bw=bool Disable measurements of throughput/bandwidth numbers. See
+ disable_clat.
+
+gtod_reduce=bool Enable all of the gettimeofday() reducing options
+ (disable_clat, disable_slat, disable_bw) plus reduce
+ precision of the timeout somewhat to really shrink
+ the gettimeofday() call count. With this option enabled,
+ we only do about 0.4% of the gtod() calls we would have
+ done if all time keeping was enabled.
+
6.0 Interpreting the output
---------------------------
_ Thread reaped.
The other values are fairly self explanatory - number of threads
-currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check, and the estimated
-completion percentage and time for the running group. It's impossible to
-estimate runtime of the following groups (if any).
+currently running and doing io, rate of io since last check (read speed
+listed first, then write speed), and the estimated completion percentage
+and time for the running group. It's impossible to estimate runtime of
+the following groups (if any).
When fio is done (or interrupted by ctrl-c), it will show the data for
each thread, group of threads, and disks in that order. For each data
slat (msec): min= 0, max= 136, avg= 0.03, stdev= 1.92
clat (msec): min= 0, max= 631, avg=48.50, stdev=86.82
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
+ cpu : usr=1.49%, sys=0.25%, ctx=7969, majf=0, minf=17
IO depths : 1=0.1%, 2=0.3%, 4=0.5%, 8=99.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >32=0.0%
+ submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
+ complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
+ issued r/w: total=0/32768, short=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%
io= Number of megabytes io performed
bw= Average bandwidth rate
runt= The runtime of that thread
- slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, dev being the
+ slat= Submission latency (avg being the average, stdev being the
standard deviation). This is the time it took to submit
the io. For sync io, the slat is really the completion
- latency, since queue/complete is one operation there.
+ latency, since queue/complete is one operation there. This
+ value can be in milliseconds or microseconds, fio will choose
+ the most appropriate base and print that. In the example
+ above, milliseconds is the best scale.
clat= Completion latency. Same names as slat, this denotes the
time from submission to completion of the io pieces. For
sync io, clat will usually be equal (or very close) to 0,
only really useful if the threads in this group are on the
same disk, since they are then competing for disk access.
cpu= CPU usage. User and system time, along with the number
- of context switches this thread went through.
+ of context switches this thread went through, usage of
+ system and user time, and finally the number of major
+ and minor page faults.
IO depths= The distribution of io depths over the job life time. The
numbers are divided into powers of 2, so for example the
16= entries includes depths up to that value but higher
than the previous entry. In other words, it covers the
range from 16 to 31.
+IO submit= How many pieces of IO were submitting in a single submit
+ call. Each entry denotes that amount and below, until
+ the previous entry - eg, 8=100% mean that we submitted
+ anywhere in between 5-8 ios per submit call.
+IO complete= Like the above submit number, but for completions instead.
+IO issued= The number of read/write requests issued, and how many
+ of them were short.
IO latencies= The distribution of IO completion latencies. This is the
time from when IO leaves fio and when it gets completed.
The numbers follow the same pattern as the IO depths,
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%
+To enable terse output, use the --minimal command line option.
+
Split up, the format is as follows:
jobname, groupid, error
Submission latency: min, max, mean, deviation
Completion latency: min, max, mean, deviation
Bw: min, max, aggregate percentage of total, mean, deviation
- CPU usage: user, system, context switches
+ CPU usage: user, system, context switches, major faults, minor faults
IO depths: <=1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, >=64
IO latencies: <=2, 4, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, >=2000
Text description
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