Re: disk/crypto performance regression 2.6.31 -> 2.6.32 (mmapproblem?)

From: Mikael Abrahamsson
Date: Wed Feb 24 2010 - 00:20:35 EST


On Tue, 23 Feb 2010, James Cloos wrote:

Based on a recent thread on the ext4 list I've started using deadline
rather than cfq on that disk. There are some slowdowns on that disk's
other partition, but the overall throughput is significantly better than
using the combination of cfq, ext4 and barriers.

You might want to test out deadline and/or noop.

Cf: /sys/block/*/queue/scheduler

I have been running deadline on the drives itself for years, I've tried both with cfq and deadline in this case, and it doesn't really help.

Another question is what the recommended scheduler setup when it comes to my different layers drive->md->crypto(dm)->lvm(dm). For now I have only been changing scheduler to deadline on the drive layer.

I guess the different layers doesn't really know that much about each other? I can imagine a few different scenarios where one only wants to do most of the scheduling on the lvm layer, and then wants to keep the queueing to a minimum on the other layers and keep the queue as small as possible there, so it can do the proper re-ordering.

Anyone has any thoughts to share on this? I don't have much experience with this when it comes to block devices, I'm a network engineer and I'm trying to use my experience in QoS/packet schedulers in different layers, where for instance when one runs an IP QoS scheduler, one doesn't want a lot of buffering on the underlying ATM layer, because it makes the IP schedulers job much harder.

--
Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@xxxxxxxxx
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/