[RFC] nfs: use 2*rsize readahead size

From: Wu Fengguang
Date: Tue Feb 23 2010 - 21:41:15 EST


With default rsize=512k and NFS_MAX_READAHEAD=15, the current NFS
readahead size 512k*15=7680k is too large than necessary for typical
clients.

On a e1000e--e1000e connection, I got the following numbers

readahead size throughput
16k 35.5 MB/s
32k 54.3 MB/s
64k 64.1 MB/s
128k 70.5 MB/s
256k 74.6 MB/s
rsize ==> 512k 77.4 MB/s
1024k 85.5 MB/s
2048k 86.8 MB/s
4096k 87.9 MB/s
8192k 89.0 MB/s
16384k 87.7 MB/s

So it seems that readahead_size=2*rsize (ie. keep two RPC requests in flight)
can already get near full NFS bandwidth.

The test script is:

#!/bin/sh

file=/mnt/sparse
BDI=0:15

for rasize in 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384
do
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
echo $rasize > /sys/devices/virtual/bdi/$BDI/read_ahead_kb
echo readahead_size=${rasize}k
dd if=$file of=/dev/null bs=4k count=1024000
done

CC: Trond Myklebust <Trond.Myklebust@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx>
---
fs/nfs/client.c | 4 +++-
fs/nfs/internal.h | 8 --------
2 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

--- linux.orig/fs/nfs/client.c 2010-02-23 11:15:44.000000000 +0800
+++ linux/fs/nfs/client.c 2010-02-24 10:16:00.000000000 +0800
@@ -889,7 +889,9 @@ static void nfs_server_set_fsinfo(struct
server->rpages = (server->rsize + PAGE_CACHE_SIZE - 1) >> PAGE_CACHE_SHIFT;

server->backing_dev_info.name = "nfs";
- server->backing_dev_info.ra_pages = server->rpages * NFS_MAX_READAHEAD;
+ server->backing_dev_info.ra_pages = max_t(unsigned long,
+ default_backing_dev_info.ra_pages,
+ 2 * server->rpages);
server->backing_dev_info.capabilities |= BDI_CAP_ACCT_UNSTABLE;

if (server->wsize > max_rpc_payload)
--- linux.orig/fs/nfs/internal.h 2010-02-23 11:15:44.000000000 +0800
+++ linux/fs/nfs/internal.h 2010-02-23 13:26:00.000000000 +0800
@@ -10,14 +10,6 @@

struct nfs_string;

-/* Maximum number of readahead requests
- * FIXME: this should really be a sysctl so that users may tune it to suit
- * their needs. People that do NFS over a slow network, might for
- * instance want to reduce it to something closer to 1 for improved
- * interactive response.
- */
-#define NFS_MAX_READAHEAD (RPC_DEF_SLOT_TABLE - 1)
-
/*
* Determine if sessions are in use.
*/
--
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