Re: [PATCH 0/6][RFC] virtio-blk: Change I/O path from request to BIO

From: Christoph Hellwig
Date: Mon Jan 02 2012 - 11:15:38 EST


On Mon, Jan 02, 2012 at 05:12:00PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 01/01/2012 05:45 PM, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> >By the way, drivers for solid-state devices can set QUEUE_FLAG_NONROT
> >to hint that seek time optimizations may be sub-optimal. NBD and
> >other virtual/pseudo device drivers set this flag. Should virtio-blk
> >set it and how does it affect performance?
>
> By itself is not a good idea in general.
>
> When QEMU uses O_DIRECT, the guest should not use QUEUE_FLAG_NONROT
> unless it is active for the host disk as well. (In doubt, as is the
> case for remote hosts accessed over NFS, I would also avoid NONROT
> and allow more coalescing).

Do we have any benchmark numbers where QUEUE_FLAG_NONROT makes a
difference? I tried a few times, and the only constant measureable
thing was that it regressed performance when used for rotating devices
in a few benchmarks.

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