Re: [PATCH 21/25] io-controller: Per cgroup request descriptor support

From: Gui Jianfeng
Date: Tue Jul 21 2009 - 01:39:01 EST


Vivek Goyal wrote:
> o Currently a request queue has got fixed number of request descriptors for
> sync and async requests. Once the request descriptors are consumed, new
> processes are put to sleep and they effectively become serialized. Because
> sync and async queues are separate, async requests don't impact sync ones
> but if one is looking for fairness between async requests, that is not
> achievable if request queue descriptors become bottleneck.
>
> o Make request descriptor's per io group so that if there is lots of IO
> going on in one cgroup, it does not impact the IO of other group.
>
> o This is just one relatively simple way of doing things. This patch will
> probably change after the feedback. Folks have raised concerns that in
> hierchical setup, child's request descriptors should be capped by parent's
> request descriptors. May be we need to have per cgroup per device files
> in cgroups where one can specify the upper limit of request descriptors
> and whenever a cgroup is created one needs to assign request descritor
> limit making sure total sum of child's request descriptor is not more than
> of parent.
>
> I guess something like memory controller. Anyway, that would be the next
> step. For the time being, we have implemented something simpler as follows.
>
> o This patch implements the per cgroup request descriptors. request pool per
> queue is still common but every group will have its own wait list and its
> own count of request descriptors allocated to that group for sync and async
> queues. So effectively request_list becomes per io group property and not a
> global request queue feature.
>
> o Currently one can define q->nr_requests to limit request descriptors
> allocated for the queue. Now there is another tunable q->nr_group_requests
> which controls the requests descriptr limit per group. q->nr_requests
> supercedes q->nr_group_requests to make sure if there are lots of groups
> present, we don't end up allocating too many request descriptors on the
> queue.
>

Hi Vivek,

In order to prevent q->nr_requests from becoming the bottle-neck of allocating
requests, whether we can update nr_requests accordingly when allocating or removing
a cgroup?

--
Regards
Gui Jianfeng

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