[dm-devel] dm-mpath request merging concerns [was: Re: It's time to put together the schedule]

[Mike Snitzer]

On Mon, Feb 23 2015 at  5:14pm -0500,
Benjamin Marzinski <bmarzins at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 05:46:37PM -0500, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> > 
> > It is blk_queue_bio(), via q->make_request_fn, that is intended to
> > actually do the merging.  What I'm hearing is that we're only getting
> > some small amount of merging if:
> > 1) the 2 path case is used and therefore ->busy hook within
> >    q->request_fn is not taking the request off the queue, so there is
> >    more potential for later merging
> > 2) the 4 path case IFF nr_requests is reduced to induce ->busy, which
> >    only promoted merging as a side-effect like 1) above
> > 
> > The reality is we aren't getting merging where it _should_ be happening
> > (in blk_queue_bio).  We need to understand why that is.
> 
> Huh? I'm confused.  If the merges that are happening (which are more
> likely if either of those two points you mentioned are true) aren't
> happening in blk_queue_bio, then where are they happening?

AFAICT, purely from this discussion and NetApp's BZ, the little merging
that is seen is happening by the ->lld_busy_fn hook.  See the comment
block above blk_lld_busy().
 
> I thought that the issue is that requests are getting pulled off the
> multipath device's request queue and placed on the underlying device's
> request queue too quickly, so that there are no requests on multipth's
> queue to merge with when blk_queue_bio() is called.  In this case, one
> solution would involve keeping multipath from removing these requests
> too quickly when we think that it is likely that another request which
> can get merged will be added soon. That's what all my ideas have been
> about.
> 
> Do you think something different is happening here? 

Requests are being pulled from the DM-multipath's queue if
->lld_busy_fn() is false.  Too quickly is all relative.  The case NetApp
reported is with SSD devices in the backend.  Any increased idling in
the interest of merging could hurt latency; but the merging may improve
IOPS.  So it is trade-off.

So what I said before and am still saying is: we need to understand why
the designed hook for merging, via q->make_request_fn's blk_queue_bio(),
isn't actually meaningful for DM multipath.

Merging should happen _before_ q->request_fn() is called.  Not as a
side-effect of q->request_fn() happening to have intelligence to not
start the request because the underlying device queues are busy.