The Stochastic multiqueue (SMQ) policy (vs MQ) offers the promise of
less memory utilization, improved performance and increased adaptability
in the face of changing workloads. SMQ also does not have any
cumbersome tuning knobs.
Users may switch from "mq" to "smq" simply by appropriately reloading a
DM table that is using the cache target. Doing so will cause all of the
mq policy's hints to be dropped. Also, performance of the cache may
degrade slightly until smq recalculates the origin device's hotspots
that should be cached.
In the future the "mq" policy will just silently make use of "smq" and
the mq code will be removed.
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Before, if the user wanted sequential IO to be promoted to the cache
they'd have to set sequential_threshold to some nebulous large value.
Now, the user may easily disable sequential IO detection (and sequential
IO's implicit bypass of the cache) by setting sequential_threshold to 0.
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Rather than maintaining a separate promote_threshold variable that we
periodically update we now use the hit count of the oldest clean
block. Also add a fudge factor to discourage demoting dirty blocks.
With some tests this has a sizeable difference, because the old code
was too eager to demote blocks. For example, device-mapper-test-suite's
git_extract_cache_quick test goes from taking 190 seconds, to 142
(linear on spindle takes 250).
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
Internally the mq policy maintains a promotion threshold variable. If
the hit count of a block not in the cache goes above this threshold it
gets promoted to the cache.
This patch introduces three new tunables that allow you to tweak the
promotion threshold by adding a small value. These adjustments depend
on the io type:
read_promote_adjustment: READ io, default 4
write_promote_adjustment: WRITE io, default 8
discard_promote_adjustment: READ/WRITE io to a discarded block, default 1
If you're trying to quickly warm a new cache device you may wish to
reduce these to encourage promotion. Remember to switch them back to
their defaults after the cache fills though.
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
There are now two multiqueues for in cache blocks. A clean one and a
dirty one.
writeback_work comes from the dirty one. Demotions come from the clean
one.
There are two benefits:
- Performance improvement, since demoting a clean block is a noop.
- The cache cleans itself when io load is light.
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Heinz Mauelshagen <heinzm@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>
A simple cache policy that writes back all data to the origin.
This is used to decommission a dm cache by emptying it.
Signed-off-by: Heinz Mauelshagen <mauelshagen@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
A cache policy that uses a multiqueue ordered by recent hit
count to select which blocks should be promoted and demoted.
This is meant to be a general purpose policy. It prioritises
reads over writes.
Signed-off-by: Joe Thornber <ejt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Alasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
