[PATCH 11/11] writeback: per-bdi background threshold

From: Wu Fengguang
Date: Mon Oct 03 2011 - 09:46:30 EST

One thing puzzled me is that in JBOD case, the per-disk writeout
performance is smaller than the corresponding single-disk case even
when they have comparable bdi_thresh. Tracing shows find that in single
disk case, bdi_writeback is always kept high while in JBOD case, it
could drop low from time to time and correspondingly bdi_reclaimable
could sometimes rush high.

The fix is to watch bdi_reclaimable and kick background writeback as
soon as it goes high. This resembles the global background threshold
but in per-bdi manner. The trick is, as long as bdi_reclaimable does
not go high, bdi_writeback naturally won't go low because
bdi_reclaimable+bdi_writeback ~= bdi_thresh.

With less fluctuated writeback pages, JBOD performance is observed to
increase noticeably in various cases.

vmstat:nr_written values before/after patch:

3.1.0-rc4-wo-underrun+ 3.1.0-rc4-bgthresh3+
------------------------ ------------------------
125596480 +25.9% 158179363 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X
61790815 +110.4% 130032231 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X
58853546 -0.1% 58823828 JBOD-10HDD-16G/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X
110159811 +24.7% 137355377 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X
69544762 +10.8% 77080047 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X
50644862 +0.5% 50890006 JBOD-10HDD-16G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-20:10-X
42677090 +28.0% 54643527 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X
47491324 +13.3% 53785605 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X
52548986 +0.9% 53001031 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X
26783091 +36.8% 36650248 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X
35526347 +14.0% 40492312 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X
44670723 -1.1% 44177606 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=100M/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-100M:10-X
127996037 +22.4% 156719990 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X
57518856 +3.8% 59677625 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X
51919909 +12.2% 58269894 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X
86410514 +79.0% 154660433 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X
40132519 +38.6% 55617893 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X
48423248 +7.5% 52042927 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=2G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-2048M:10-X
206041046 +44.1% 296846536 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X
72312903 -19.4% 58272885 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X
50635672 -0.5% 50384787 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=4G/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-4096M:10-X
68308534 +115.7% 147324758 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X
57882933 +14.5% 66269621 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X
52183472 +12.8% 58855181 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/ext4-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X
53788956 +94.2% 104460352 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-100dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X
44493342 +35.5% 60298210 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-10dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X
42641209 +18.9% 50681038 JBOD-10HDD-thresh=800M/xfs-1dd-1M-24p-16384M-800M:10-X

Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx>
---
fs/fs-writeback.c | 17 ++++++++++++-----
1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

--- linux-next.orig/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-10-02 10:28:55.000000000 +0800
+++ linux-next/fs/fs-writeback.c 2011-10-02 10:42:22.000000000 +0800
@@ -658,14 +658,21 @@ long writeback_inodes_wb(struct bdi_writ
return nr_pages - work.nr_pages;
}

-static inline bool over_bground_thresh(void)
+static bool over_bground_thresh(struct backing_dev_info *bdi)
{
unsigned long background_thresh, dirty_thresh;

global_dirty_limits(&background_thresh, &dirty_thresh);

- return (global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
- global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) > background_thresh);
+ if (global_page_state(NR_FILE_DIRTY) +
+ global_page_state(NR_UNSTABLE_NFS) > background_thresh)
+ return true;
+
+ if (bdi_stat(bdi, BDI_RECLAIMABLE) >
+ bdi_dirty_limit(bdi, background_thresh))
+ return true;
+
+ return false;
}

/*
@@ -727,7 +734,7 @@ static long wb_writeback(struct bdi_writ
* For background writeout, stop when we are below the
* background dirty threshold
*/
- if (work->for_background && !over_bground_thresh())
+ if (work->for_background && !over_bground_thresh(wb->bdi))
break;

if (work->for_kupdate) {
@@ -811,7 +818,7 @@ static unsigned long get_nr_dirty_pages(

static long wb_check_background_flush(struct bdi_writeback *wb)
{
- if (over_bground_thresh()) {
+ if (over_bground_thresh(wb->bdi)) {

struct wb_writeback_work work = {
.nr_pages = LONG_MAX,


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