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Btrfs + compression = slow performance and high cpu usage

DISCUSSION Konstantin V. Gavrilenko 6 participants 17 messages Jul 28, 2017 – Aug 31, 2017 1 message not in the archive Btrfs file system

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#1 lore raw

Hello list,

I am stuck with a problem of btrfs slow performance when using compression.

when the compress-force=lzo mount flag is enabled, the performance drops to 30-40 mb/s and one of the btrfs processes utilises 100% cpu time. mount options: btrfs relatime,discard,autodefrag,compress=lzo,compress-force,space_cache=v2,commit=10

The command I am testing the write throughput is

# pv -tpreb /dev/sdb | dd of=./testfile bs=1M oflag=direct
# top -d 1 
top - 15:49:13 up  1:52,  2 users,  load average: 5.28, 2.32, 1.39
Tasks: 320 total,   2 running, 318 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu0  :  0.0 us,  2.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 77.0 id, 21.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu1  :  0.0 us,  1.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 90.0 id,  9.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu2  :  0.0 us,  1.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 72.0 id, 27.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu3  :  0.0 us,100.0 sy,  0.0 ni,  0.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu4  :  0.0 us,  1.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 57.0 id, 42.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu5  :  0.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 96.0 id,  4.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu6  :  0.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 94.0 id,  6.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu7  :  0.0 us,  1.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 95.1 id,  3.9 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu8  :  1.0 us,  2.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 24.0 id, 73.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu9  :  0.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 81.8 id, 18.2 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu10 :  1.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 98.0 id,  1.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu11 :  0.0 us,  2.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 83.3 id, 14.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem : 32934136 total, 10137496 free,   602244 used, 22194396 buff/cache
KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 free,        0 used. 30525664 avail Mem 
  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                                                               
37017 root      20   0       0      0      0 R 100.0  0.0   0:32.42 kworker/u49:8                                                                                                                         
36732 root      20   0       0      0      0 D   4.0  0.0   0:02.40 btrfs-transacti                                                                                                                       
40105 root      20   0    8388   3040   2000 D   4.0  0.0   0:02.88 dd       

The keyworker process that causes the high cpu usage is most likely searching for the free space.

# echo l > /proc/sysrq-trigger
# dmest -T
Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] CPU: 1 PID: 36430 Comm: kworker/u49:2 Not tainted 4.10.0-28-generic #32~16.04.2-Ubuntu
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] Hardware name: Supermicro X8DTL/X8DTL, BIOS 2.1b       11/16/2012
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] Workqueue: btrfs-delalloc btrfs_delalloc_helper [btrfs]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] task: ffff9ddce6206a40 task.stack: ffffaa9121f6c000
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] RIP: 0010:rb_next+0x1e/0x40
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] RSP: 0018:ffffaa9121f6fb40 EFLAGS: 00000282
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] RAX: ffff9dddc34df1b0 RBX: 0000000000010000 RCX: 0000000000001000
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] RDX: ffff9dddc34df708 RSI: ffff9ddccaf470a4 RDI: ffff9dddc34df2d0
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] RBP: ffffaa9121f6fb40 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: 0000000000003000
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000020000 R12: ffff9ddccaf47080
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] R13: 0000000000001000 R14: ffffaa9121f6fc50 R15: ffff9dddc34df2d0
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] FS:  0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff9ddcefa40000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017] Call Trace:_space_for_alloc+0xde/0x270 [btrfs]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  btrfs_find_space_for_alloc+0xde/0x270 [btrfs]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  find_free_extent.isra.68+0x3c6/0x1040 [btrfs]s]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  btrfs_reserve_extent+0xab/0x210 [btrfs]btrfs]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  submit_compressed_extents+0x154/0x580 [btrfs]s]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  ? submit_compressed_extents+0x580/0x580 [btrfs]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  async_cow_submit+0x82/0x90 [btrfs]00 [btrfs]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  btrfs_scrubparity_helper+0x1fe/0x300 [btrfs]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  btrfs_delalloc_helper+0xe/0x10 [btrfs]
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  process_one_work+0x16b/0x4a0a0
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  worker_thread+0x4b/0x500+0x60/0x60
[Fri Jul 28 15:57:51 2017]  kthread+0x109/0x1400x4a0/0x4a0

When the compression is turned off, I am able to get the maximum 500-600 mb/s write speed on this disk (raid array) with minimal cpu usage.

mount options: relatime,discard,autodefrag,space_cache=v2,commit=10

# iostat -m 1 
avg-cpu:  %user   %nice %system %iowait  %steal   %idle
           0.08    0.00    7.74   10.77    0.00   81.40

Device: tps MB_read/s MB_wrtn/s MB_read MB_wrtn
sda 2376.00 0.00 594.01 0 594

I have tried deleting mounting with nospace_cache, clear_cache, and then rebuilding with space_cache=v2 but it doesn't make any difference. The same sluggish performance is experienced when I try to write over the NFS.

Any ideas why the compression makes such a big difference and causes a bottleneck?

# uname -a
Linux backup1 4.10.0-28-generic #32~16.04.2-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jul 20 10:19:48 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# btrfs --version
btrfs-progs v4.8.1
# cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS \n \l
# btrfs fi show
Label: none  uuid: f56bdc4a-239d-4268-81d8-01cdd7a3c1c9
        Total devices 1 FS bytes used 9.32TiB
        devid    2 size 21.83TiB used 9.33TiB path /dev/sda
# btrfs fi df /mnt/arh-backup1/
Data, single: total=9.28TiB, used=9.28TiB
System, single: total=32.00MiB, used=1.00MiB
Metadata, single: total=46.00GiB, used=44.20GiB
GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B
# btrfs device usage /mnt/arh-backup1/
/dev/sda, ID: 2
   Device size:            21.83TiB
   Device slack:              0.00B
   Data,single:             9.29TiB
   Metadata,single:        46.00GiB
   System,single:          32.00MiB
   Unallocated:            12.49TiB

thanks in advance.
kos

#2 lore raw
Quoted 6 lines · On Fri, 28 Jul 2017 17:40:50 +0100 (BST) "Konstantin V. Gavrilenko"…

Hello list,

I am stuck with a problem of btrfs slow performance when using compression.

when the compress-force=lzo mount flag is enabled, the performance drops to 30-40 mb/s and one of the btrfs processes utilises 100% cpu time. mount options: btrfs relatime,discard,autodefrag,compress=lzo,compress-force,space_cache=v2,commit=10

It does not work like that, you need to set compress-force=lzo (and remove compress=).

With your setup I believe you currently use compress-force[=zlib](default), overriding compress=lzo, since it's later in the options order.

Secondly,

Quoted 1 line

autodefrag

This sure sounded like a good thing to enable? on paper? right?...

The moment you see anything remotely weird about btrfs, this is the first thing you have to disable and retest without. Oh wait, the first would be qgroups, this one is second.

Finally, what is the reasoning behind "commit=10", and did you check with the default value of 30?

Signature · 2 lines
With respect,
Roman
#3 lore raw

Hi Roman,

Quoted 1 line

autodefrag

This sure sounded like a good thing to enable? on paper? right?...

The moment you see anything remotely weird about btrfs, this is the first thing you have to disable and retest without. Oh wait, the first would be qgroups, this one is second.

What's the problem with autodefrag? I am also using it, so you caught my attention when you implied that it shouldn't be used. According to docs, it seem like one of the very mature feature of the filesystem. See below for the doc I am referring to

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Status

I am using it as I assumed it could prevent the filesystem being too fragmented long term, but never thought there was price to pay for using it

Regards,
William

#4 lore raw
Quoted 6 lines · William Muriithi

Hi Roman,

Quoted 1 line

autodefrag

This sure sounded like a good thing to enable? on paper? right?...

Quoted 7 lines

The moment you see anything remotely weird about btrfs, this is the first thing you have to disable and retest without. Oh wait, the first would be qgroups, this one is second.

What's the problem with autodefrag? I am also using it, so you caught my attention when you implied that it shouldn't be used. According to docs, it seem like one of the very mature feature of the filesystem. See below for the doc I am referring to

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Status

I am using it as I assumed it could prevent the filesystem being too fragmented long term, but never thought there was price to pay for using it

It introduces additional I/O on writes, as it modifies a small area
surrounding any write or cluster of writes.

I'm not aware of it causing massive slowdowns, in the way the
qgroups does in some situations.

If your system is already marginal in terms of being able to
support the I/O required, then turning on autodefrag will make things worse (but you may be heading for _much_ worse performance in the future as the FS becomes more fragmented -- depending on your write patterns and use case).

Hugo.

Signature · 4 lines
Hugo Mills             | Great oxymorons of the world, no. 6:
hugo@... carfax.org.uk | Mature Student
http://carfax.org.uk/  |
PGP: E2AB1DE4          |
#5 lore raw
In reply to Konstantin V. Gavrilenko
Quoted 2 lines

I am stuck with a problem of btrfs slow performance when using compression. [ ... ]

That to me looks like an issue with speed, not performance, and in particular with PEBCAK issues.

As to high CPU usage, when you find a way to do both compression and checksumming without using much CPU time, please send patches urgently :-).

In your case the increase in CPU time is bizarre. I have the Ubuntu 4.4 "lts-xenial" kernel and what you report does not happen here (with a few little changes):

soft# grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u
model name : AMD FX(tm)-6100 Six-Core Processor
soft# cpufreq-info | grep 'current CPU frequency'
current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware).

soft# lsscsi | grep 'sd[ae]'

  [0:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      HFS256G32MNB-220 3L00  /dev/sda
  [5:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      ST2000DM001-1CH1 CC44  /dev/sde

soft# mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/sde3
[ ... ]
soft# mount -t btrfs -o discard,autodefrag,compress=lzo,compress-force,commit=10 /dev/sde3 /mnt/sde3

soft# df /dev/sda6 /mnt/sde3
Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 90048 76046 14003 85% /
/dev/sde3 237568 19 235501 1% /mnt/sde3

The above is useful context information that was "amazingly" omitted from your reported.

In dmesg I see (not the "force zlib compression"):

  [327730.917285] BTRFS info (device sde3): turning on discard
  [327730.917294] BTRFS info (device sde3): enabling auto defrag
  [327730.917300] BTRFS info (device sde3): setting 8 feature flag
  [327730.917304] BTRFS info (device sde3): force zlib compression
  [327730.917313] BTRFS info (device sde3): disk space caching is enabled
  [327730.917315] BTRFS: has skinny extents
  [327730.917317] BTRFS: flagging fs with big metadata feature
  [327730.920740] BTRFS: creating UUID tree

and the result is:

soft# pv -tpreb /dev/sda6 | time dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/sde3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 oflag=direct
10000+0 records in17MB/s] [==> ] 11% ETA 0:15:06
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 112.845 s, 92.9 MB/s
0.05user 9.93system 1:53.20elapsed 8%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3016maxresident)k 120inputs+20496000outputs (1major+346minor)pagefaults 0swaps
9.77GB 0:01:53 [88.3MB/s] [==> ]
11%

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/sde3/
Data, single: total=10.01GiB, used=9.77GiB System, DUP: total=8.00MiB, used=16.00KiB Metadata, DUP: total=1.00GiB, used=11.66MiB GlobalReserve, single: total=16.00MiB, used=0.00B

As it was running system CPU time was under 20% of one CPU:

top - 18:57:29 up 3 days, 19:27, 4 users, load average: 5.44, 2.82, 1.45
Tasks: 325 total, 1 running, 324 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

  %Cpu0  :  0.0 us,  2.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 91.3 id,  6.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu1  :  0.0 us,  1.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 78.5 id, 20.2 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu2  :  0.3 us,  5.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 81.0 id, 12.5 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.3 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu3  :  0.3 us,  3.4 sy,  0.0 ni, 91.9 id,  4.4 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu4  :  0.3 us, 10.6 sy,  0.0 ni, 55.4 id, 33.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu5  :  0.0 us,  0.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 99.7 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st

KiB Mem: 8120660 total, 5162236 used, 2958424 free, 4440100 buffers
KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 used, 0 free. 351848 cached Mem

    PID  PPID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    DATA  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ TTY      COMMAND
  21047 21046 root      20   0    8872   2616    1364  12.9  0.0   0:02.31 pts/3    dd iflag=fullblo+
  21045  3535 root      20   0    7928   1948     460  12.3  0.0   0:00.72 pts/3    pv -tpreb /dev/s+
  21019     2 root      20   0       0      0       0   1.3  0.0   0:42.88 ?        [kworker/u16:1]

Of course "oflag=direct" is a rather "optimistic" option in this context, so I tried again with something more sensible:

soft# pv -tpreb /dev/sda6 | time dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/sde3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync
10000+0 records in.4MB/s] [==> ] 11% ETA 0:14:41
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 110.523 s, 94.9 MB/s
0.03user 8.94system 1:50.71elapsed 8%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3024maxresident)k 136inputs+20499648outputs (1major+348minor)pagefaults 0swaps
9.77GB 0:01:50 [90.3MB/s] [==> ] 11%

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/sde3/
Data, single: total=7.01GiB, used=6.35GiB System, DUP: total=8.00MiB, used=16.00KiB Metadata, DUP: total=1.00GiB, used=15.81MiB GlobalReserve, single: total=16.00MiB, used=0.00B

As it was running system as expected CPU time was around 55-60% of each of 6 CPUs:

top - 18:56:03 up 3 days, 19:26, 4 users, load average: 2.31, 1.39, 0.90
Tasks: 325 total, 5 running, 320 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

  %Cpu0  :  0.0 us, 57.9 sy,  0.0 ni, 28.3 id, 13.8 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu1  :  0.0 us, 46.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 36.9 id, 16.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu2  :  0.0 us, 72.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 13.4 id, 12.8 wa,  0.0 hi,  1.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu3  :  0.3 us, 63.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 17.4 id, 17.4 wa,  0.0 hi,  1.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu4  :  0.0 us, 53.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 29.7 id, 17.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu5  :  0.0 us, 54.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 32.7 id, 13.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st

KiB Mem: 8120660 total, 7988368 used, 132292 free, 3646496 buffers
KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 used, 0 free. 3967692 cached Mem

    PID  PPID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    DATA  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ TTY      COMMAND
  21022     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  45.2  0.0   0:19.69 ?        [kworker/u16:5]
  21028     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  39.9  0.0   0:27.84 ?        [kworker/u16:11]
  21043     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  39.9  0.0   0:04.26 ?        [kworker/u16:19]
  21009     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  38.2  0.0   0:24.50 ?        [kworker/u16:0]
  21037     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  34.2  0.0   0:17.94 ?        [kworker/u16:17]
  21021     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  19.9  0.0   0:14.83 ?        [kworker/u16:3]
  21019     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  19.3  0.0   0:29.98 ?        [kworker/u16:1]
  21034     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  19.3  0.0   0:28.18 ?        [kworker/u16:14]
  21030     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  17.9  0.0   0:24.85 ?        [kworker/u16:13]
  21035     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  17.6  0.0   0:20.75 ?        [kworker/u16:15]
  21023     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  15.0  0.0   0:28.20 ?        [kworker/u16:6]
  21020     2 root      20   0       0      0       0   9.6  0.0   0:27.02 ?        [kworker/u16:2]
  21040  3535 root      20   0    7928   1872     460   8.6  0.0   0:04.11 pts/3    pv -tpreb /dev/s+
  21042 21041 root      20   0    8872   2628    1364   8.3  0.0   0:05.19 pts/3    dd iflag=fullblo+
#6 lore raw

Thanks for the comments. Initially the system performed well, I don't have the benchmark details written, but the compressed vs non compressed speeds were more or less similar. However, after several weeks of usage, the system started experiencing the described slowdowns, thus I started investigating the problem. This indeed is a backup drive, but it predominantly contains large files.

# ls -lahR | awk '/^-/ {print $5}' | sort | uniq -c  | sort -n | tail -n 15
      5 322
      5 396
      5 400
      6 1000G
      6 11
      6 200G
      8 24G
      8 48G
     13 500G
     20 8.0G
     25 165G
     32 20G
     57 100G
    103 50G
    201 10G
# grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u 
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5645  @ 2.40GHz
# lsscsi | grep 'sd[ae]'
[4:2:0:0]    disk    LSI      MR9260-8i        2.13  /dev/sda 

The sda device is a hardware RAID5 consisting of 4x8TB drives.

Virtual Drive: 0 (Target Id: 0)

Name                :
RAID Level          : Primary-5, Secondary-0, RAID Level Qualifier-3
Size                : 21.830 TB
Sector Size         : 512
Is VD emulated      : Yes
Parity Size         : 7.276 TB
State               : Optimal
Strip Size          : 256 KB
Number Of Drives    : 4
Span Depth          : 1

Default Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU Current Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU Default Access Policy: Read/Write
Current Access Policy: Read/Write
Disk Cache Policy : Disk's Default
Encryption Type : None
Bad Blocks Exist: No
Is VD Cached: No
Number of Spans: 1
Span: 0 - Number of PDs: 4

I have changed the mount flags as suggested, and I don't see the previously reported behaviour of one of the kworker consuming 100% of the cputime, but the write speed difference between the compression ON vs OFF is pretty large. Have run several tests under with zlib, lzo and no compression and the results are rather strange.

mountflags: (rw,relatime,compress-force=zlib,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/) dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 93.3418 s, 57.5 MB/s

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress oflag=direct 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 26.0685 s, 206 MB/s

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 77.4845 s, 69.3 MB/s

mountflags: (rw,relatime,compress-force=lzo,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/) dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 116.246 s, 46.2 MB/s

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress oflag=direct 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 14.704 s, 365 MB/s

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 122.321 s, 43.9 MB/s

mountflags: (rw,relatime,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 32.2551 s, 166 MB/s

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress oflag=direct 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 19.9464 s, 269 MB/s

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 10.1033 s, 531 MB/s

The CPU usage is pretty low as well. For example when the force-compress=zlib is in effect, the cpu usage is pretty low now.

Linux 4.10.0-28-generic (ais-backup1) 30/07/17 _x86_64_ (12 CPU)

14:31:27        CPU     %user     %nice   %system   %iowait    %steal     %idle
14:31:28        all      0.00      0.00      1.50      0.00      0.00     98.50
14:31:29        all      0.00      0.00      4.78      3.52      0.00     91.69
14:31:30        all      0.08      0.00      4.92      3.75      0.00     91.25
14:31:31        all      0.00      0.00      4.76      3.76      0.00     91.49
14:31:32        all      0.00      0.00      4.76      3.76      0.00     91.48
14:31:33        all      0.08      0.00      4.67      3.76      0.00     91.49
14:31:34        all      0.00      0.00      4.76      3.68      0.00     91.56
14:31:35        all      0.08      0.00      4.76      3.76      0.00     91.40
14:31:36        all      0.00      0.00      4.60      3.77      0.00     91.63
14:31:37        all      0.00      0.00      4.68      3.68      0.00     91.64
14:31:38        all      0.08      0.00      4.52      3.76      0.00     91.64
14:31:39        all      0.08      0.00      4.68      3.76      0.00     91.48
14:31:40        all      0.08      0.00      4.52      3.76      0.00     91.64
14:31:41        all      0.00      0.00      4.61      3.77      0.00     91.62
14:31:42        all      0.08      0.00      5.07      3.74      0.00     91.10
14:31:43        all      0.00      0.00      4.68      3.68      0.00     91.64
14:31:44        all      0.00      0.00      4.84      5.09      0.00     90.08
14:31:45        all      0.17      0.00      4.67      4.75      0.00     90.42
14:31:46        all      0.00      0.00      4.60      3.76      0.00     91.64
14:31:47        all      0.08      0.00      5.07      3.66      0.00     91.18
14:31:48        all      0.00      0.00      5.01      3.68      0.00     91.31
14:31:49        all      0.00      0.00      4.76      3.68      0.00     91.56
14:31:50        all      0.08      0.00      4.59      3.59      0.00     91.73
14:31:51        all      0.00      0.00      2.67      1.92      0.00     95.41

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Grandi" <[email protected]>
To: "Linux fs Btrfs" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, 28 July, 2017 8:08:47 PM
Subject: Re: Btrfs + compression = slow performance and high cpu usage

Quoted 2 lines

I am stuck with a problem of btrfs slow performance when using compression. [ ... ]

That to me looks like an issue with speed, not performance, and in particular with PEBCAK issues.

As to high CPU usage, when you find a way to do both compression and checksumming without using much CPU time, please send patches urgently :-).

In your case the increase in CPU time is bizarre. I have the Ubuntu 4.4 "lts-xenial" kernel and what you report does not happen here (with a few little changes):

soft# grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u
model name : AMD FX(tm)-6100 Six-Core Processor
soft# cpufreq-info | grep 'current CPU frequency'
current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware).

soft# lsscsi | grep 'sd[ae]'

  [0:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      HFS256G32MNB-220 3L00  /dev/sda
  [5:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      ST2000DM001-1CH1 CC44  /dev/sde

soft# mkfs.btrfs -f /dev/sde3
[ ... ]
soft# mount -t btrfs -o discard,autodefrag,compress=lzo,compress-force,commit=10 /dev/sde3 /mnt/sde3

soft# df /dev/sda6 /mnt/sde3
Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 90048 76046 14003 85% /
/dev/sde3 237568 19 235501 1% /mnt/sde3

The above is useful context information that was "amazingly" omitted from your reported.

In dmesg I see (not the "force zlib compression"):

  [327730.917285] BTRFS info (device sde3): turning on discard
  [327730.917294] BTRFS info (device sde3): enabling auto defrag
  [327730.917300] BTRFS info (device sde3): setting 8 feature flag
  [327730.917304] BTRFS info (device sde3): force zlib compression
  [327730.917313] BTRFS info (device sde3): disk space caching is enabled
  [327730.917315] BTRFS: has skinny extents
  [327730.917317] BTRFS: flagging fs with big metadata feature
  [327730.920740] BTRFS: creating UUID tree

and the result is:

soft# pv -tpreb /dev/sda6 | time dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/sde3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 oflag=direct
10000+0 records in17MB/s] [==> ] 11% ETA 0:15:06
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 112.845 s, 92.9 MB/s
0.05user 9.93system 1:53.20elapsed 8%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3016maxresident)k 120inputs+20496000outputs (1major+346minor)pagefaults 0swaps
9.77GB 0:01:53 [88.3MB/s] [==> ]
11%

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/sde3/
Data, single: total=10.01GiB, used=9.77GiB System, DUP: total=8.00MiB, used=16.00KiB Metadata, DUP: total=1.00GiB, used=11.66MiB GlobalReserve, single: total=16.00MiB, used=0.00B

As it was running system CPU time was under 20% of one CPU:

top - 18:57:29 up 3 days, 19:27, 4 users, load average: 5.44, 2.82, 1.45
Tasks: 325 total, 1 running, 324 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

  %Cpu0  :  0.0 us,  2.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 91.3 id,  6.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu1  :  0.0 us,  1.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 78.5 id, 20.2 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu2  :  0.3 us,  5.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 81.0 id, 12.5 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.3 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu3  :  0.3 us,  3.4 sy,  0.0 ni, 91.9 id,  4.4 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu4  :  0.3 us, 10.6 sy,  0.0 ni, 55.4 id, 33.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu5  :  0.0 us,  0.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 99.7 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st

KiB Mem: 8120660 total, 5162236 used, 2958424 free, 4440100 buffers
KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 used, 0 free. 351848 cached Mem

    PID  PPID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    DATA  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ TTY      COMMAND
  21047 21046 root      20   0    8872   2616    1364  12.9  0.0   0:02.31 pts/3    dd iflag=fullblo+
  21045  3535 root      20   0    7928   1948     460  12.3  0.0   0:00.72 pts/3    pv -tpreb /dev/s+
  21019     2 root      20   0       0      0       0   1.3  0.0   0:42.88 ?        [kworker/u16:1]

Of course "oflag=direct" is a rather "optimistic" option in this context, so I tried again with something more sensible:

soft# pv -tpreb /dev/sda6 | time dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/sde3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync
10000+0 records in.4MB/s] [==> ] 11% ETA 0:14:41
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 110.523 s, 94.9 MB/s
0.03user 8.94system 1:50.71elapsed 8%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3024maxresident)k 136inputs+20499648outputs (1major+348minor)pagefaults 0swaps
9.77GB 0:01:50 [90.3MB/s] [==> ] 11%

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/sde3/
Data, single: total=7.01GiB, used=6.35GiB System, DUP: total=8.00MiB, used=16.00KiB Metadata, DUP: total=1.00GiB, used=15.81MiB GlobalReserve, single: total=16.00MiB, used=0.00B

As it was running system as expected CPU time was around 55-60% of each of 6 CPUs:

top - 18:56:03 up 3 days, 19:26, 4 users, load average: 2.31, 1.39, 0.90
Tasks: 325 total, 5 running, 320 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

  %Cpu0  :  0.0 us, 57.9 sy,  0.0 ni, 28.3 id, 13.8 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu1  :  0.0 us, 46.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 36.9 id, 16.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu2  :  0.0 us, 72.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 13.4 id, 12.8 wa,  0.0 hi,  1.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu3  :  0.3 us, 63.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 17.4 id, 17.4 wa,  0.0 hi,  1.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu4  :  0.0 us, 53.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 29.7 id, 17.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu5  :  0.0 us, 54.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 32.7 id, 13.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st

KiB Mem: 8120660 total, 7988368 used, 132292 free, 3646496 buffers
KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 used, 0 free. 3967692 cached Mem

    PID  PPID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    DATA  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ TTY      COMMAND
  21022     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  45.2  0.0   0:19.69 ?        [kworker/u16:5]
  21028     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  39.9  0.0   0:27.84 ?        [kworker/u16:11]
  21043     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  39.9  0.0   0:04.26 ?        [kworker/u16:19]
  21009     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  38.2  0.0   0:24.50 ?        [kworker/u16:0]
  21037     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  34.2  0.0   0:17.94 ?        [kworker/u16:17]
  21021     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  19.9  0.0   0:14.83 ?        [kworker/u16:3]
  21019     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  19.3  0.0   0:29.98 ?        [kworker/u16:1]
  21034     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  19.3  0.0   0:28.18 ?        [kworker/u16:14]
  21030     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  17.9  0.0   0:24.85 ?        [kworker/u16:13]
  21035     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  17.6  0.0   0:20.75 ?        [kworker/u16:15]
  21023     2 root      20   0       0      0       0  15.0  0.0   0:28.20 ?        [kworker/u16:6]
  21020     2 root      20   0       0      0       0   9.6  0.0   0:27.02 ?        [kworker/u16:2]
  21040  3535 root      20   0    7928   1872     460   8.6  0.0   0:04.11 pts/3    pv -tpreb /dev/s+
  21042 21041 root      20   0    8872   2628    1364   8.3  0.0   0:05.19 pts/3    dd iflag=fullblo+

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#7 lore raw

[ ... ]

Quoted 2 lines

grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz

Good, contemporary CPU with all accelerations.

Quoted 1 line

The sda device is a hardware RAID5 consisting of 4x8TB drives.

[ ... ]

Quoted 1 line

Strip Size : 256 KB

So the full RMW data stripe length is 768KiB.

Quoted 3 lines

[ ... ] don't see the previously reported behaviour of one of the kworker consuming 100% of the cputime, but the write speed difference between the compression ON vs OFF is pretty large.

That's weird; of course 'lzo' is a lot cheaper than 'zlib', but in my test the much higher CPU time of the latter was spread across many CPUs, while in your case it wasn't, even if the E5645 has 6 CPUs and can do 12 threads. That seemed to point to some high cost of finding free blocks, that is a very fragmented free list, or something else.

Quoted 2 lines

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress oflag=direct 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 26.0685 s, 206 MB/s

The results with 'oflag=direct' are not relevant, because Btrfs behaves "differently" with that.

Quoted 1 line

mountflags: (rw,relatime,compress-force=zlib,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

[ ... ]

Quoted 3 lines

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 77.4845 s, 69.3 MB/s
mountflags: (rw,relatime,compress-force=lzo,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

[ ... ]

Quoted 2 lines

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 122.321 s, 43.9 MB/s

That's pretty good for a RAID5 with 128KiB writes and a 768KiB stripe size, on a 3ware, and looks like that the hw host adapter does not have a persistent cache (battery backed usually). My guess that watching transfer rates and latencies with 'iostat -dk -zyx 1' did not happen.

Quoted 1 line

mountflags: (rw,relatime,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

[ ... ]

Quoted 2 lines

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 10.1033 s, 531 MB/s

I had mentioned in my previous reply the output of 'filefrag'. That to me seems relevant here, because of RAID5 RMW and maximum extent size with Brfs compression and strip/stripe size.

Perhaps redoing the tests with a 128KiB 'bs' *without* compression would be interesting, perhaps even with 'oflag=sync' instead of 'conv=fsync'.

It is hard for me to see a speed issue here with Btrfs: for comparison I have done a simple test with a both a 3+1 MD RAID5 set with a 256KiB chunk size and a single block device on "contemporary" 1T/2TB drives, capable of sequential transfer rates of 150-190MB/s:

soft# grep -A2 sdb3 /proc/mdstat
md127 : active raid5 sde3[4] sdd3[2] sdc3[1] sdb3[0]

	729808128 blocks super 1.0 level 5, 256k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/4] [UUUU]

with compression:

  soft#  mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/md/test5 /mnt/test5                                                       
  soft#  mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/sdg3 /mnt/sdg3
  soft#  rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 94.3605 s, 111 MB/s
0.01user 12.59system 1:34.36elapsed 13%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2932maxresident)k 13042144inputs+20482144outputs (3major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 93.5885 s, 112 MB/s
0.03user 12.35system 1:33.59elapsed 13%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2940maxresident)k 13042144inputs+20482400outputs (3major+346minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# filefrag /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile /mnt/test5/testfile: 48945 extents found /mnt/sdg3/testfile: 49029 extents found

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/test5/ | grep Data
Data, single: total=7.00GiB, used=6.55GiB

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/sdg3 | grep Data
Data, single: total=7.00GiB, used=6.55GiB

soft# sysctl vm/drop_caches=3
vm.drop_caches = 3
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=10000 of=/dev/zero 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 23.2975 s, 450 MB/s
0.01user 7.59system 0:23.32elapsed 32%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2932maxresident)k 13759624inputs+0outputs (3major+344minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# sysctl vm/drop_caches=3
vm.drop_caches = 3
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 of=/dev/zero 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 35.0032 s, 300 MB/s
0.01user 8.46system 0:35.03elapsed 24%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2924maxresident)k 13750568inputs+0outputs (3major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

and without compression:

soft# mount -t btrfs -o commit=10 /dev/sdg3 /mnt/sdg3 soft# rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 74.7256 s, 140 MB/s
0.02user 13.31system 1:14.72elapsed 17%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2936maxresident)k 13047640inputs+20483808outputs (3major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 102.002 s, 103 MB/s
0.02user 14.49system 1:42.00elapsed 14%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2972maxresident)k 13030592inputs+20484032outputs (3major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# filefrag /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile /mnt/test5/testfile: 23 extents found /mnt/sdg3/testfile: 13 extents found

Quoted 3 lines

The CPU usage is pretty low as well. For example when the force-compress=zlib is in effect, the cpu usage is pretty low now.

That's 24 threads around 4-5% CPU each, that's around a 100% CPU of system time spread around, for 70MB/s.

That's quite low. My report, which is mirrored by using 'pigz' at the user level (very similar algorithms), was that 90MB/s took 300% of an FX-6100 CPU at 3.3Ghz, and it is not that much less efficient than a Xeon-E5645 at 2.4Ghz.

I have redone the test on a faster CPU:

base# grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u
model name : AMD FX-8370E Eight-Core Processor
base# cpufreq-info | grep 'current CPU frequency'
current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware).

And the result is (from a fast flash Samsung SSD to a fast 2TB Toshiba drive):

base# mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/sdb6 /mnt/sdb6
base# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sde6 of=/mnt/sdb6/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 41.7702 s, 251 MB/s
0.00user 11.41system 0:43.41elapsed 26%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3132maxresident)k 20482288inputs+20503368outputs (1major+339minor)pagefaults 0swaps

With CPU usage as:

top - 09:20:38 up 20:48, 4 users, load average: 5.04, 2.03, 2.06
Tasks: 576 total, 10 running, 566 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

  %Cpu0  :  0.0 us, 94.0 sy,  0.7 ni,  0.0 id,  2.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  3.3 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu1  :  0.3 us, 97.0 sy,  0.0 ni,  2.0 id,  0.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu2  :  3.0 us, 94.4 sy,  0.0 ni,  1.7 id,  1.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu3  :  0.7 us, 95.4 sy,  0.0 ni,  2.3 id,  1.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.3 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu4  :  1.0 us, 95.7 sy,  0.3 ni,  2.6 id,  0.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu5  :  0.3 us, 94.7 sy,  0.0 ni,  4.3 id,  0.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu6  :  1.7 us, 94.3 sy,  0.0 ni,  3.0 id,  1.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu7  :  0.0 us, 97.3 sy,  0.0 ni,  2.3 id,  0.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  KiB Mem:  16395076 total, 15987476 used,   407600 free,  5206304 buffers

KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 used, 0 free. 8392648 cached Mem

so around 7 CPUs for 250MB/s, or around 35MB/s per CPU (more or less what I also get user-level with 'pigz'), and it is hard for me to imagine the Xeon-E5745 being twice as fast per-CPU for "integer" work, but that's another discussion.

#8 lore raw
Quoted 5 lines

[ ... ] It is hard for me to see a speed issue here with
Btrfs: for comparison I have done a simple test with a both a 3+1 MD RAID5 set with a 256KiB chunk size and a single block device on "contemporary" 1T/2TB drives, capable of sequential transfer rates of 150-190MB/s: [ ... ]

The figures after this are a bit on the low side because I realized looking at 'vmstat' that the source block device 'sda6' was being a bottleneck, as the host has only 8GiB instead of the 16GiB I misremembered, and also 'sda' is a relatively slow flash SSD that reads are most at around 220MB/s. So I have redone the simple tests with a transfer size of 3GB, which ensures that all reads are from memory cache:

with compression:

  soft#  mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/md/test5 /mnt/test5
  soft#  mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/sdg3 /mnt/sdg3
  soft#  rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile                                                                                   

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=3000 conv=fsync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 15.8869 s, 198 MB/s
0.00user 2.80system 0:15.88elapsed 17%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3056maxresident)k 0inputs+6148256outputs (0major+346minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M count=3000 conv=fsync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 16.9663 s, 185 MB/s
0.00user 2.61system 0:16.96elapsed 15%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3056maxresident)k 0inputs+6144672outputs (0major+346minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/test5/ | grep Data
Data, single: total=3.00GiB, used=2.28GiB
soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/sdg3 | grep Data
Data, single: total=3.00GiB, used=2.28GiB

soft# filefrag /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile /mnt/test5/testfile: 8811 extents found /mnt/sdg3/testfile: 8759 extents found

Slightly weird that with a 3GB size the number of extents is almost double that for the 10GB, but I guess that depends on speed.

Then without compression:

  soft#  mount -t btrfs -o commit=10 /dev/md/test5 /mnt/test5
  soft#  mount -t btrfs -o commit=10 /dev/sdg3 /mnt/sdg3
  soft#  rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=3000 conv=fsync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 8.06841 s, 390 MB/s
0.00user 3.90system 0:08.80elapsed 44%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2880maxresident)k 0inputs+6153856outputs (0major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M count=3000 conv=fsync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 30.215 s, 104 MB/s
0.00user 4.82system 0:30.93elapsed 15%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2888maxresident)k 0inputs+6152128outputs (0major+347minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# filefrag /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile /mnt/test5/testfile: 5 extents found /mnt/sdg3/testfile: 3 extents found

Also added:

soft# rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 bs=128k count=3000 | dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=128k oflag=sync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
393216000 bytes (393 MB) copied, 160.315 s, 2.5 MB/s
0.02user 0.46system 2:40.31elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1992maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+124minor)pagefaults 0swaps
3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
393216000 bytes (393 MB) copied, 160.365 s, 2.5 MB/s

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 bs=128k count=3000 | dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=128k oflag=sync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
393216000 bytes (393 MB) copied, 113.51 s, 3.5 MB/s
0.02user 0.56system 1:53.51elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2156maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+120minor)pagefaults 0swaps
3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
393216000 bytes (393 MB) copied, 113.544 s, 3.5 MB/s

soft# filefrag /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile /mnt/test5/testfile: 1 extent found /mnt/sdg3/testfile: 22 extents found

soft# rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 bs=1M count=1000 | dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M oflag=sync 1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 68.5037 s, 15.3 MB/s
0.00user 1.16system 1:08.50elapsed 1%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2888maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+347minor)pagefaults 0swaps
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 68.5859 s, 15.3 MB/s

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 bs=1M count=1000 | dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M oflag=sync 1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 56.6714 s, 18.5 MB/s
0.00user 1.21system 0:56.67elapsed 2%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3056maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 56.7116 s, 18.5 MB/s

#9 lore raw

[ ... ]

Quoted 1 line

Also added:

Feeling very generous :-) today, adding these too:

soft# mkfs.btrfs -mraid10 -draid10 -L test5 /dev/sd{b,c,d,e}3 [ ... ]
soft# mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/sdb3 /mnt/test5

soft# rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=3000 conv=fsync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 14.2166 s, 221 MB/s
0.00user 2.54system 0:14.21elapsed 17%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3056maxresident)k 0inputs+6144768outputs (0major+346minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=128k count=3000 conv=fsync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
393216000 bytes (393 MB) copied, 2.05933 s, 191 MB/s
0.00user 0.32system 0:02.06elapsed 15%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1996maxresident)k 0inputs+772512outputs (0major+124minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 bs=1M count=1000 | dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M oflag=sync 1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 60.6019 s, 17.3 MB/s
0.01user 1.04system 1:00.60elapsed 1%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2888maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+348minor)pagefaults 0swaps
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 60.4116 s, 17.4 MB/s

soft# rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 bs=128k count=3000 | dd iflag=fullblock of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=128k oflag=sync 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
393216000 bytes (393 MB) copied, 148.04 s, 2.7 MB/s
0.00user 0.62system 2:28.04elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 1996maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+125minor)pagefaults 0swaps
3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
393216000 bytes (393 MB) copied, 148.083 s, 2.7 MB/s

soft# sysctl vm/drop_caches=3
vm.drop_caches = 3
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=128k count=3000 of=/dev/zero 3000+0 records in
3000+0 records out
393216000 bytes (393 MB) copied, 1.09729 s, 358 MB/s
0.00user 0.24system 0:01.10elapsed 23%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2164maxresident)k 459768inputs+0outputs (3major+121minor)pagefaults 0swaps

#10 lore raw
In reply to Peter Grandi

Peter, I don't think the filefrag is showing the correct fragmentation status of the file when the compression is used. At least the one that is installed by default in Ubuntu 16.04 - e2fsprogs | 1.42.13-1ubuntu1

So for example, fragmentation of compressed file is 320 times more then uncompressed one.

root@homenas:/mnt/storage/NEW# filefrag test5g-zeroes
test5g-zeroes: 40903 extents found
root@homenas:/mnt/storage/NEW# filefrag test5g-data 
test5g-data: 129 extents found

I am currently defragmenting that mountpoint, ensuring that everrything is compressed with zlib.

# btrfs fi defragment -rv -czlib /mnt/arh-backup 

my guess is that it will take another 24-36 hours to complete and then I will redo the test to see if that has helped. will keep the list posted.

p.s. any other suggestion that might help with the fragmentation and data allocation. Should I try and rebalance the data on the drive?

kos

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Grandi" <[email protected]>
To: "Linux fs Btrfs" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, 31 July, 2017 1:41:07 PM
Subject: Re: Btrfs + compression = slow performance and high cpu usage

[ ... ]

Quoted 2 lines

grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @ 2.40GHz

Good, contemporary CPU with all accelerations.

Quoted 1 line

The sda device is a hardware RAID5 consisting of 4x8TB drives.

[ ... ]

Quoted 1 line

Strip Size : 256 KB

So the full RMW data stripe length is 768KiB.

Quoted 3 lines

[ ... ] don't see the previously reported behaviour of one of the kworker consuming 100% of the cputime, but the write speed difference between the compression ON vs OFF is pretty large.

That's weird; of course 'lzo' is a lot cheaper than 'zlib', but in my test the much higher CPU time of the latter was spread across many CPUs, while in your case it wasn't, even if the E5645 has 6 CPUs and can do 12 threads. That seemed to point to some high cost of finding free blocks, that is a very fragmented free list, or something else.

Quoted 2 lines

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress oflag=direct 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 26.0685 s, 206 MB/s

The results with 'oflag=direct' are not relevant, because Btrfs behaves "differently" with that.

Quoted 1 line

mountflags: (rw,relatime,compress-force=zlib,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

[ ... ]

Quoted 3 lines

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 77.4845 s, 69.3 MB/s
mountflags: (rw,relatime,compress-force=lzo,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

[ ... ]

Quoted 2 lines

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 122.321 s, 43.9 MB/s

That's pretty good for a RAID5 with 128KiB writes and a 768KiB stripe size, on a 3ware, and looks like that the hw host adapter does not have a persistent cache (battery backed usually). My guess that watching transfer rates and latencies with 'iostat -dk -zyx 1' did not happen.

Quoted 1 line

mountflags: (rw,relatime,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

[ ... ]

Quoted 2 lines

dd if=/dev/sdb of=./testing count=5120 bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync 5368709120 bytes (5.4 GB, 5.0 GiB) copied, 10.1033 s, 531 MB/s

I had mentioned in my previous reply the output of 'filefrag'. That to me seems relevant here, because of RAID5 RMW and maximum extent size with Brfs compression and strip/stripe size.

Perhaps redoing the tests with a 128KiB 'bs' *without* compression would be interesting, perhaps even with 'oflag=sync' instead of 'conv=fsync'.

It is hard for me to see a speed issue here with Btrfs: for comparison I have done a simple test with a both a 3+1 MD RAID5 set with a 256KiB chunk size and a single block device on "contemporary" 1T/2TB drives, capable of sequential transfer rates of 150-190MB/s:

soft# grep -A2 sdb3 /proc/mdstat
md127 : active raid5 sde3[4] sdd3[2] sdc3[1] sdb3[0]

	729808128 blocks super 1.0 level 5, 256k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/4] [UUUU]

with compression:

  soft#  mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/md/test5 /mnt/test5                                                       
  soft#  mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/sdg3 /mnt/sdg3
  soft#  rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 94.3605 s, 111 MB/s
0.01user 12.59system 1:34.36elapsed 13%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2932maxresident)k 13042144inputs+20482144outputs (3major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 93.5885 s, 112 MB/s
0.03user 12.35system 1:33.59elapsed 13%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2940maxresident)k 13042144inputs+20482400outputs (3major+346minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# filefrag /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile /mnt/test5/testfile: 48945 extents found /mnt/sdg3/testfile: 49029 extents found

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/test5/ | grep Data
Data, single: total=7.00GiB, used=6.55GiB

soft# btrfs fi df /mnt/sdg3 | grep Data
Data, single: total=7.00GiB, used=6.55GiB

soft# sysctl vm/drop_caches=3
vm.drop_caches = 3
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=10000 of=/dev/zero 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 23.2975 s, 450 MB/s
0.01user 7.59system 0:23.32elapsed 32%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2932maxresident)k 13759624inputs+0outputs (3major+344minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# sysctl vm/drop_caches=3
vm.drop_caches = 3
soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 of=/dev/zero 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 35.0032 s, 300 MB/s
0.01user 8.46system 0:35.03elapsed 24%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2924maxresident)k 13750568inputs+0outputs (3major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

and without compression:

soft# mount -t btrfs -o commit=10 /dev/sdg3 /mnt/sdg3 soft# rm -f /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/test5/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 74.7256 s, 140 MB/s
0.02user 13.31system 1:14.72elapsed 17%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2936maxresident)k 13047640inputs+20483808outputs (3major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/sdg3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 102.002 s, 103 MB/s
0.02user 14.49system 1:42.00elapsed 14%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2972maxresident)k 13030592inputs+20484032outputs (3major+345minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# filefrag /mnt/test5/testfile /mnt/sdg3/testfile /mnt/test5/testfile: 23 extents found /mnt/sdg3/testfile: 13 extents found

Quoted 3 lines

The CPU usage is pretty low as well. For example when the force-compress=zlib is in effect, the cpu usage is pretty low now.

That's 24 threads around 4-5% CPU each, that's around a 100% CPU of system time spread around, for 70MB/s.

That's quite low. My report, which is mirrored by using 'pigz' at the user level (very similar algorithms), was that 90MB/s took 300% of an FX-6100 CPU at 3.3Ghz, and it is not that much less efficient than a Xeon-E5645 at 2.4Ghz.

I have redone the test on a faster CPU:

base# grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u
model name : AMD FX-8370E Eight-Core Processor
base# cpufreq-info | grep 'current CPU frequency'
current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). current CPU frequency is 3.30 GHz (asserted by call to hardware).

And the result is (from a fast flash Samsung SSD to a fast 2TB Toshiba drive):

base# mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress-force=zlib /dev/sdb6 /mnt/sdb6
base# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sde6 of=/mnt/sdb6/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 41.7702 s, 251 MB/s
0.00user 11.41system 0:43.41elapsed 26%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3132maxresident)k 20482288inputs+20503368outputs (1major+339minor)pagefaults 0swaps

With CPU usage as:

top - 09:20:38 up 20:48, 4 users, load average: 5.04, 2.03, 2.06
Tasks: 576 total, 10 running, 566 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie

  %Cpu0  :  0.0 us, 94.0 sy,  0.7 ni,  0.0 id,  2.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  3.3 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu1  :  0.3 us, 97.0 sy,  0.0 ni,  2.0 id,  0.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu2  :  3.0 us, 94.4 sy,  0.0 ni,  1.7 id,  1.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu3  :  0.7 us, 95.4 sy,  0.0 ni,  2.3 id,  1.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.3 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu4  :  1.0 us, 95.7 sy,  0.3 ni,  2.6 id,  0.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu5  :  0.3 us, 94.7 sy,  0.0 ni,  4.3 id,  0.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu6  :  1.7 us, 94.3 sy,  0.0 ni,  3.0 id,  1.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  %Cpu7  :  0.0 us, 97.3 sy,  0.0 ni,  2.3 id,  0.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
  KiB Mem:  16395076 total, 15987476 used,   407600 free,  5206304 buffers

KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 used, 0 free. 8392648 cached Mem

so around 7 CPUs for 250MB/s, or around 35MB/s per CPU (more or less what I also get user-level with 'pigz'), and it is hard for me to imagine the Xeon-E5745 being twice as fast per-CPU for "integer" work, but that's another discussion.
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#11 lore raw
Quoted 13 lines

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:linux-btrfs- [email protected]] On Behalf Of Konstantin V. Gavrilenko
Sent: Tuesday, 1 August 2017 7:58 PM
To: Peter Grandi <[email protected]>
Cc: Linux fs Btrfs <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Btrfs + compression = slow performance and high cpu usage

Peter, I don't think the filefrag is showing the correct fragmentation status of the file when the compression is used.
At least the one that is installed by default in Ubuntu 16.04 - e2fsprogs | 1.42.13-1ubuntu1

Quoted 8 lines

So for example, fragmentation of compressed file is 320 times more then uncompressed one.

root@homenas:/mnt/storage/NEW# filefrag test5g-zeroes
test5g-zeroes: 40903 extents found
root@homenas:/mnt/storage/NEW# filefrag test5g-data
test5g-data: 129 extents found

Compressed extents are about 128kb, uncompressed extents are about 128Mb. (can't remember the exact numbers.) I've had trouble with slow filesystems when using compression. The problem seems to go away when removing compression.

Paul.

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#12 lore raw
In reply to Konstantin V. Gavrilenko
Quoted 2 lines

Peter, I don't think the filefrag is showing the correct fragmentation status of the file when the compression is used.

As reported on a previous message the output of 'filefrag -v' which can be used to see what is going on:

Quoted 21 lines
Quoted 20 lines
Quoted 20 lines
Quoted 20 lines

filefrag /mnt/sde3/testfile
/mnt/sde3/testfile: 49287 extents found

Most the latter extents are mercifully rather contiguous, their size is just limited by the compression code, here is an extract from 'filefrag -v' from around the middle:

  24757:  1321888.. 1321919:   11339579..  11339610:     32:   11339594:
  24758:  1321920.. 1321951:   11339597..  11339628:     32:   11339611:
  24759:  1321952.. 1321983:   11339615..  11339646:     32:   11339629:
  24760:  1321984.. 1322015:   11339632..  11339663:     32:   11339647:
  24761:  1322016.. 1322047:   11339649..  11339680:     32:   11339664:
  24762:  1322048.. 1322079:   11339667..  11339698:     32:   11339681:
  24763:  1322080.. 1322111:   11339686..  11339717:     32:   11339699:
  24764:  1322112.. 1322143:   11339703..  11339734:     32:   11339718:
  24765:  1322144.. 1322175:   11339720..  11339751:     32:   11339735:
  24766:  1322176.. 1322207:   11339737..  11339768:     32:   11339752:
  24767:  1322208.. 1322239:   11339754..  11339785:     32:   11339769:
  24768:  1322240.. 1322271:   11339771..  11339802:     32:   11339786:
  24769:  1322272.. 1322303:   11339789..  11339820:     32:   11339803:
Quoted 1 line
Quoted 1 line
Quoted 1 line
Quoted 1 line

But again this is on a fresh empty Btrfs volume.

As I wrote, "their size is just limited by the compression code" which results in "128KiB writes". On a "fresh empty Btrfs volume" the compressed extents limited to 128KiB also happen to be pretty physically contiguous, but on a more fragmented free space list they can be more scattered.

As I already wrote the main issue here seems to be that we are talking about a "RAID5 with 128KiB writes and a 768KiB stripe size". On MD RAID5 the slowdown because of RMW seems only to be around 30-40%, but it looks like that several back-to-back 128KiB writes get merged by the Linux IO subsystem (not sure whether that's thoroughly legal), and perhaps they get merged by the 3ware firmware only if it has a persistent cache, and maybe your 3ware does not have one, but you have kept your counsel as to that.

My impression is that you read the Btrfs documentation and my replies with a lot less attention than I write them. Some of the things you have done and said make me think that you did not read
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Compression and 'man 5 btrfs', for example:

"How does compression interact with direct IO or COW?

Compression does not work with DIO, does work with COW and does not work for NOCOW files. If a file is opened in DIO mode, it will fall back to buffered IO.

Are there speed penalties when doing random access to a compressed file?

Yes. The compression processes ranges of a file of maximum size 128 KiB and compresses each 4 KiB (or page-sized) block separately."

Quoted 2 lines

I am currently defragmenting that mountpoint, ensuring that everrything is compressed with zlib.

Defragmenting the used space might help find more contiguous allocations.

Quoted 3 lines

p.s. any other suggestion that might help with the fragmentation and data allocation. Should I try and rebalance the data on the drive?

Yes, regularly, as that defragments the unused space.

#13 lore raw

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Grandi" <[email protected]>
To: "Linux fs Btrfs" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, 1 August, 2017 3:14:07 PM
Subject: Re: Btrfs + compression = slow performance and high cpu usage

Quoted 2 lines

Peter, I don't think the filefrag is showing the correct fragmentation status of the file when the compression is used.

<SNIP>

As I wrote, "their size is just limited by the compression code" which results in "128KiB writes". On a "fresh empty Btrfs volume" the compressed extents limited to 128KiB also happen to be pretty physically contiguous, but on a more fragmented free space list they can be more scattered.

KOS: Ok, thanks for pointing it out. I have compared the filefrag -v on another btrfs that is not fragmented and see the difference with what is happening on the sluggish one.

5824:   186368..  186399: 2430093383..2430093414:     32: 2430093414: encoded
5825:   186400..  186431: 2430093384..2430093415:     32: 2430093415: encoded
5826:   186432..  186463: 2430093385..2430093416:     32: 2430093416: encoded
5827:   186464..  186495: 2430093386..2430093417:     32: 2430093417: encoded
5828:   186496..  186527: 2430093387..2430093418:     32: 2430093418: encoded
5829:   186528..  186559: 2430093388..2430093419:     32: 2430093419: encoded
5830:   186560..  186591: 2430093389..2430093420:     32: 2430093420: encoded

As I already wrote the main issue here seems to be that we are talking about a "RAID5 with 128KiB writes and a 768KiB stripe size". On MD RAID5 the slowdown because of RMW seems only to be around 30-40%, but it looks like that several back-to-back 128KiB writes get merged by the Linux IO subsystem (not sure whether that's thoroughly legal), and perhaps they get merged by the 3ware firmware only if it has a persistent cache, and maybe your 3ware does not have one, but you have kept your counsel as to that.

KOS: No I don't have persistent cache. Only the 512 Mb cache on board of a controller, that is BBU. If I had additional SSD caching on the controller I would have mentioned it.

I was also under impression, that in a situation where mostly extra large files will be stored on the massive, the bigger strip size would indeed increase the speed, thus I went with with the 256 Kb strip size. Would I be correct in assuming that the RAID strip size of 128 Kb will be a better choice if one plans to use the BTRFS with compression?

thanks,
kos

<SNIP>
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#14 lore raw
Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 4 lines

[ ... ] a "RAID5 with 128KiB writes and a 768KiB stripe size". [ ... ] several back-to-back 128KiB writes [ ... ] get merged by the 3ware firmware only if it has a persistent cache, and maybe your 3ware does not have one,

KOS: No I don't have persistent cache. Only the 512 Mb cache on board of a controller, that is BBU.

If it is a persistent cache, that can be battery-backed (as I wrote, but it seems that you don't have too much time to read replies) then the size of the write, 128KiB or not, should not matter much; the write will be reported complete when it hits the persistent cache (whichever technology it used), and then the HA fimware will spill write cached data to the disks using the optimal operation width.

Unless the 3ware firmware is really terrible (and depending on model and vintage it can be amazingly terrible) or the battery is no longer recharging and then the host adapter switches to write-through.

That you see very different rates between uncompressed and compressed writes, where the main difference is the limitation on the segment size, seems to indicate that compressed writes involve a lot of RMW, that is sub-stripe updates. As I mentioned already, it would be interesting to retry 'dd' with different 'bs' values without compression and with 'sync' (or 'direct' which only makes sense without compression).

Quoted 2 lines

If I had additional SSD caching on the controller I would have mentioned it.

So far you had not mentioned the presence of BBU cache either, which is equivalent, even if in one of your previous message (which I try to read carefully) there were these lines:

Quoted 2 lines
Quoted 2 lines
Quoted 2 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Default Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU Current Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU

So perhaps someone else would have checked long ago the status of the BBU and whether the "No Write Cache if Bad BBU" case has happened. If the BBU is still working and the policy is still "WriteBack" then things are stranger still.

Quoted 4 lines

I was also under impression, that in a situation where mostly extra large files will be stored on the massive, the bigger strip size would indeed increase the speed, thus I went with with the 256 Kb strip size.

That runs counter to this simple story: suppose a program is doing 64KiB IO:

* For *reads*, there are 4 data drives and the strip size is 16KiB: the 64KiB will be read in parallel on 4 drives. If the strip size is 256KiB then the 64KiB will be read sequentially from just one disk, and 4 successive reads will be read sequentially from the same drive.

* For *writes* on a parity RAID like RAID5 things are much, much more extreme: the 64KiB will be written with 16KiB strips on a 5-wide RAID5 set in parallel to 5 drives, with 4 stripes being updated with RMW. But with 256KiB strips it will partially update 5 drives, because the stripe is 1024+256KiB, and it needs to do RMW, and four successive 64KiB drives will need to do that too, even if only one drive is updated. Usually for RAID5 there is an optimization that means that only the specific target drive and the parity drives(s) need RMW, but it is still very expensive.

This is the "storage for beginners" version, what happens in practice however depends a lot on specific workload profile (typical read/write size and latencies and rates), caching and queueing algorithms in both Linux and the HA firmware.

Quoted 3 lines

Would I be correct in assuming that the RAID strip size of 128 Kb will be a better choice if one plans to use the BTRFS with compression?

That would need to be tested, because of "depends a lot on specific workload profile, caching and queueing algorithms", but my expectation is the the lower the better. Given that you have 4 drives giving a 3+1 RAID set, perhaps a 32KiB or 64KiB strip size, given a data stripe size of 96KiB or 192KiB, would be better.

#15 lore raw

[ ... ]

Quoted 4 lines

This is the "storage for beginners" version, what happens in practice however depends a lot on specific workload profile (typical read/write size and latencies and rates), caching and queueing algorithms in both Linux and the HA firmware.

To add a bit of slightly more advanced discussion, the main reason for larger strips ("chunk size) is to avoid the huge latencies of disk rotation using unsynchronized disk drives, as detailed here:

http://www.sabi.co.uk/blog/12-thr.html?120310#120310

That relates weakly to Btrfs.

#16 lore raw
In reply to Peter Grandi

Hello again list. I thought I would clear the things out and describe what is happening with my troubled RAID setup.

So having received the help from the list, I've initially run the full defragmentation of all the data and recompressed everything with zlib. That didn't help. Then I run the full rebalance of the data and that didn't help either.

So I had to take a disk out of the raid, copy all the data onto it, recreate the RAID drive with 32kb chunk size and 96kb stripe and copied the data back. Then added the disk back and resynced the raid.

So currently the RAID device is

Adapter 0 -- Virtual Drive Information:
Virtual Drive: 0 (Target Id: 0)

Name                :
RAID Level          : Primary-5, Secondary-0, RAID Level Qualifier-3
Size                : 21.830 TB
Sector Size         : 512
Is VD emulated      : Yes
Parity Size         : 7.276 TB
State               : Optimal
Strip Size          : 32 KB
Number Of Drives    : 4
Span Depth          : 1

Default Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU Current Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU Default Access Policy: Read/Write
Current Access Policy: Read/Write
Disk Cache Policy : Disk's Default
Encryption Type : None
Bad Blocks Exist: No
Is VD Cached: No

It is about 40% full with compressed data

# btrfs fi usage /mnt/arh-backup1/
Overall:
    Device size:                  21.83TiB
    Device allocated:              8.98TiB
    Device unallocated:           12.85TiB
    Device missing:                  0.00B
    Used:                          8.98TiB
    Free (estimated):             12.85TiB      (min: 6.43TiB)
    Data ratio:                       1.00
    Metadata ratio:                   2.00
    Global reserve:              512.00MiB      (used: 0.00B)

I've decided to run a set of test, where 5 gb file was created using different blocksizes and different flags.
one file with urandom data was generated and another one filled with zeroes. the data was written with compression and without compression, and it seems that without compression it is possible to gain 30-40% speed, while the cpu was running at 50% idle during the highest loads. dd write speeds (mb/s)

flags: conv=fsync
compress-force=zlib compress-force=none

         RAND ZERO    RAND ZERO
bs1024k  387  407     584  577
bs512k   389  414     532  547
bs256k   412  409     558  585
bs128k   412  403     572  583
bs64k    409  419     563  574
bs32k    407  404     569  572

flags: oflag=sync
compress-force=zlib compress-force=none

         RAND  ZERO    RAND  ZERO
bs1024k  86.1  97.0    203   210
bs512k   50.6  64.4    85.0  170
bs256k   25.0  29.8    67.6  67.5
bs128k   13.2  16.4    48.4  49.8
bs64k    7.4   8.3     24.5  27.9
bs32k    3.8   4.1     14.0  13.7

flags: no flags
compress-force=zlib compress-force=none

         RAND  ZERO    RAND  ZERO
bs1024k  480   419     681   595
bs512k   422   412     633   585
bs256k   413   384     707   712
bs128k   414   387     695   704
bs64k    482   467     622   587
bs32k    416   412     610   598

I have also run a test where I filled the array to about 97% capacity and the write speed went down by about 50% compared with the empty RAID.

thanks for the help.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Grandi" <[email protected]>
To: "Linux fs Btrfs" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, 1 August, 2017 10:09:03 PM
Subject: Re: Btrfs + compression = slow performance and high cpu usage

Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 4 lines

[ ... ] a "RAID5 with 128KiB writes and a 768KiB stripe size". [ ... ] several back-to-back 128KiB writes [ ... ] get merged by the 3ware firmware only if it has a persistent cache, and maybe your 3ware does not have one,

KOS: No I don't have persistent cache. Only the 512 Mb cache on board of a controller, that is BBU.

If it is a persistent cache, that can be battery-backed (as I wrote, but it seems that you don't have too much time to read replies) then the size of the write, 128KiB or not, should not matter much; the write will be reported complete when it hits the persistent cache (whichever technology it used), and then the HA fimware will spill write cached data to the disks using the optimal operation width.

Unless the 3ware firmware is really terrible (and depending on model and vintage it can be amazingly terrible) or the battery is no longer recharging and then the host adapter switches to write-through.

That you see very different rates between uncompressed and compressed writes, where the main difference is the limitation on the segment size, seems to indicate that compressed writes involve a lot of RMW, that is sub-stripe updates. As I mentioned already, it would be interesting to retry 'dd' with different 'bs' values without compression and with 'sync' (or 'direct' which only makes sense without compression).

Quoted 2 lines

If I had additional SSD caching on the controller I would have mentioned it.

So far you had not mentioned the presence of BBU cache either, which is equivalent, even if in one of your previous message (which I try to read carefully) there were these lines:

Quoted 2 lines
Quoted 2 lines
Quoted 2 lines
Quoted 2 lines

Default Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU Current Cache Policy: WriteBack, ReadAhead, Direct, No Write Cache if Bad BBU

So perhaps someone else would have checked long ago the status of the BBU and whether the "No Write Cache if Bad BBU" case has happened. If the BBU is still working and the policy is still "WriteBack" then things are stranger still.

Quoted 4 lines

I was also under impression, that in a situation where mostly extra large files will be stored on the massive, the bigger strip size would indeed increase the speed, thus I went with with the 256 Kb strip size.

That runs counter to this simple story: suppose a program is doing 64KiB IO:

* For *reads*, there are 4 data drives and the strip size is 16KiB: the 64KiB will be read in parallel on 4 drives. If the strip size is 256KiB then the 64KiB will be read sequentially from just one disk, and 4 successive reads will be read sequentially from the same drive.

* For *writes* on a parity RAID like RAID5 things are much, much more extreme: the 64KiB will be written with 16KiB strips on a 5-wide RAID5 set in parallel to 5 drives, with 4 stripes being updated with RMW. But with 256KiB strips it will partially update 5 drives, because the stripe is 1024+256KiB, and it needs to do RMW, and four successive 64KiB drives will need to do that too, even if only one drive is updated. Usually for RAID5 there is an optimization that means that only the specific target drive and the parity drives(s) need RMW, but it is still very expensive.

This is the "storage for beginners" version, what happens in practice however depends a lot on specific workload profile (typical read/write size and latencies and rates), caching and queueing algorithms in both Linux and the HA firmware.

Quoted 3 lines

Would I be correct in assuming that the RAID strip size of 128 Kb will be a better choice if one plans to use the BTRFS with compression?

That would need to be tested, because of "depends a lot on specific workload profile, caching and queueing algorithms", but my expectation is the the lower the better. Given that you have 4 drives giving a 3+1 RAID set, perhaps a 32KiB or 64KiB strip size, given a data stripe size of 96KiB or 192KiB, would be better.
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#17 lore raw
In reply to Konstantin V. Gavrilenko

In addition to my previous "it does not happen here" comment, if someone is reading this thread, there are some other interesting details:

Quoted 3 lines

When the compression is turned off, I am able to get the maximum 500-600 mb/s write speed on this disk (raid array) with minimal cpu usage.

No details on whether it is a parity RAID or not.

Quoted 8 lines

btrfs device usage /mnt/arh-backup1/
/dev/sda, ID: 2
Device size: 21.83TiB
Device slack: 0.00B
Data,single: 9.29TiB

   Metadata,single:        46.00GiB
   System,single:          32.00MiB
   Unallocated:            12.49TiB

That's exactly 24TB of "Device size", of which around 45% are used, and the string "backup" may suggest that the content is backups, which may indicate a very fragmented freespace. Of course compression does not help with that, in my freshly created Btrfs volume I get as expected:

soft# umount /mnt/sde3
soft# mount -t btrfs -o commit=10 /dev/sde3 /mnt/sde3

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/sde3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 103.747 s, 101 MB/s
0.00user 11.56system 1:44.86elapsed 11%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3072maxresident)k 20480672inputs+20498272outputs (1major+349minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# filefrag /mnt/sde3/testfile
/mnt/sde3/testfile: 11 extents found

versus:

soft# umount /mnt/sde3
soft# mount -t btrfs -o commit=10,compress=lzo,compress-force /dev/sde3 /mnt/sde3

soft# /usr/bin/time dd iflag=fullblock if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/sde3/testfile bs=1M count=10000 conv=fsync 10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 109.051 s, 96.2 MB/s
0.02user 13.03system 1:49.49elapsed 11%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 3068maxresident)k 20494784inputs+20492320outputs (1major+347minor)pagefaults 0swaps

soft# filefrag /mnt/sde3/testfile
/mnt/sde3/testfile: 49287 extents found

Most the latter extents are mercifully rather contiguous, their size is just limited by the compression code, here is an extract from 'filefrag -v' from around the middle:

  24757:  1321888.. 1321919:   11339579..  11339610:     32:   11339594:
  24758:  1321920.. 1321951:   11339597..  11339628:     32:   11339611:
  24759:  1321952.. 1321983:   11339615..  11339646:     32:   11339629:
  24760:  1321984.. 1322015:   11339632..  11339663:     32:   11339647:
  24761:  1322016.. 1322047:   11339649..  11339680:     32:   11339664:
  24762:  1322048.. 1322079:   11339667..  11339698:     32:   11339681:
  24763:  1322080.. 1322111:   11339686..  11339717:     32:   11339699:
  24764:  1322112.. 1322143:   11339703..  11339734:     32:   11339718:
  24765:  1322144.. 1322175:   11339720..  11339751:     32:   11339735:
  24766:  1322176.. 1322207:   11339737..  11339768:     32:   11339752:
  24767:  1322208.. 1322239:   11339754..  11339785:     32:   11339769:
  24768:  1322240.. 1322271:   11339771..  11339802:     32:   11339786:
  24769:  1322272.. 1322303:   11339789..  11339820:     32:   11339803:

But again this is on a fresh empty Btrfs volume.