Re: [PATCH V3 00/11] block-throttle: add .high limit

[Paolo Valente]

> Il giorno 04 ott 2016, alle ore 21:14, Tejun Heo <tj@xxxxxxxxxx> ha scritto:
> 
> Hello, Paolo.
> 
> On Tue, Oct 04, 2016 at 09:02:47PM +0200, Paolo Valente wrote:
>> That's exactly what BFQ has succeeded in doing in all the tests
>> devised so far.  Can you give me a concrete example for which I can
>> try with BFQ and with any other mechanism you deem better.  If
>> you are right, numbers will just make your point.
> 
> Hmm... I think we already discussed this but here's a really simple
> case.  There are three unknown workloads A, B and C and we want to
> give A certain best-effort guarantees (let's say around 80% of the
> underlying device) whether A is sharing the device with B or C.
> 

That's the same example that you proposed me in our previous
discussion.  For this example I showed you, with many boring numbers,
that with BFQ you get the most accurate distribution of the resource.

If you have enough stamina, I can repeat them again.  To save your
patience, here is a very brief summary.  In a concrete use case, the
unknown workloads turn into something like this: there will be a first
time interval during which A happens to be, say, sequential, B happens
to be, say, random and C happens to be, say, quasi-sequential.  Then
there will be a next time interval during which their characteristics
change, and so on.  It is easy (but boring, I acknowledge it) to show
that, for each of these time intervals BFQ provides the best possible
service in terms of fairness, bandwidth distribution, stability and so
on.  Why?  Because of the elastic bandwidth-time scheduling of BFQ
that we already discussed, and because BFQ is naturally accurate in
redistributing aggregate throughput proportionally, when needed.

> I get that bfq can be a good compromise on most desktop workloads and
> behave reasonably well for some server workloads with the slice
> expiration mechanism but it really isn't an IO resource partitioning
> mechanism.
> 

Right.  My argument is that BFQ enables you to give to each client the
bandwidth and low-latency guarantees you want.  And this IMO is way
better than partitioning a resource and then getting unavoidable
unfairness and high latency.

Thanks,
Paolo

> Thanks.
> 
> -- 
> tejun


--
Paolo Valente
Algogroup
Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Informatiche e Matematiche
Via Campi 213/B
41125 Modena - Italy
http://algogroup.unimore.it/people/paolo/