Re: [PATCH 00/14] introduce the BFQ-v0 I/O scheduler as an extra scheduler

[Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>]

On Wed 26-10-16 10:12:38, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On 10/26/2016 10:04 AM, Paolo Valente wrote:
> >
> >>Il giorno 26 ott 2016, alle ore 17:32, Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> ha scritto:
> >>
> >>On 10/26/2016 09:29 AM, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> >>>On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 05:13:07PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> >>>>The question to ask first is whether to actually have pluggable
> >>>>schedulers on blk-mq at all, or just have one that is meant to
> >>>>do the right thing in every case (and possibly can be bypassed
> >>>>completely).
> >>>
> >>>That would be my preference.  Have a BFQ-variant for blk-mq as an
> >>>option (default to off unless opted in by the driver or user), and
> >>>not other scheduler for blk-mq.  Don't bother with bfq for non
> >>>blk-mq.  It's not like there is any advantage in the legacy-request
> >>>device even for slow devices, except for the option of having I/O
> >>>scheduling.
> >>
> >>It's the only right way forward. blk-mq might not offer any substantial
> >>advantages to rotating storage, but with scheduling, it won't offer a
> >>downside either. And it'll take us towards the real goal, which is to
> >>have just one IO path.
> >
> >ok
> >
> >>Adding a new scheduler for the legacy IO path
> >>makes no sense.
> >
> >I would fully agree if effective and stable I/O scheduling would be
> >available in blk-mq in one or two months.  But I guess that it will
> >take at least one year optimistically, given the current status of the
> >needed infrastructure, and given the great difficulties of doing
> >effective scheduling at the high parallelism and extreme target speeds
> >of blk-mq.  Of course, this holds true unless little clever scheduling
> >is performed.
> >
> >So, what's the point in forcing a lot of users wait another year or
> >more, for a solution that has yet to be even defined, while they could
> >enjoy a much better system, and then switch an even better system when
> >scheduling is ready in blk-mq too?
> 
> That same argument could have been made 2 years ago. Saying no to a new
> scheduler for the legacy framework goes back roughly that long. We could
> have had BFQ for mq NOW, if we didn't keep coming back to this very
> point.
> 
> I'm hesistant to add a new scheduler because it's very easy to add, very
> difficult to get rid of. If we do add BFQ as a legacy scheduler now,
> it'll take us years and years to get rid of it again. We should be
> moving towards LESS moving parts in the legacy path, not more.
> 
> We can keep having this discussion every few years, but I think we'd
> both prefer to make some actual progress here. It's perfectly fine to
> add an interface for a single queue interface for an IO scheduler for
> blk-mq, since we don't care too much about scalability there. And that
> won't take years, that should be a few weeks. Retrofitting BFQ on top of
> that should not be hard either. That can co-exist with a real multiqueue
> scheduler as well, something that's geared towards some fairness for
> faster devices.

OK, so some solution like having a variant of blk_sq_make_request() that
will consume requests, do IO scheduling decisions on them, and feed them
into the HW queue is it sees fit would be acceptable? That will provide the
IO scheduler a global view that it needs for complex scheduling decisions
so it should indeed be relatively easy to port BFQ to work like that.

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
SUSE Labs, CR