[Lustre-devel] mmp unplug patch

Nathan Rutman nathan_rutman at xyratex.com
Fri Jun 29 14:11:28 PDT 2012


Thanks Johann.  I think we're going to experiment with removing it...


On Jun 29, 2012, at 1:43 PM, Johann Lombardi wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 11:58:53AM -0700, Nathan Rutman wrote:
>> Can anyone explain the purpose of unplug call in this patch?
> 
> I guess the intent is to make sure that the MMP block updates aren't delayed by the underlying I/O scheduler and make it to the storage system in a timely manner.
> 
>> The first part of the patch I get, but why do we need to drop the existing queued items?
> 
> The issue is that some I/O schedulers might not support BIO_RW_SYNC and the ones that do might still delay the request a bit, hoping to merge it with a forthcoming request. Therefore, the only way to make sure that the I/O is issued straight away is to unplug the queue.
> 
> All in all, it depends on whether the I/O scheduler delay is negligible compared to the MMP update interval.
> 
>> Doesn't this simply result in more fragmented IO?
> 
> Yes, it might.
> 
> HTH
> 
> Cheers,
> Johann
> -- 
> Johann Lombardi
> Whamcloud, Inc.
> www.whamcloud.com




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