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diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/knfsd-stats.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/knfsd-stats.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..64ced5149d37 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/knfsd-stats.txt @@ -0,0 +1,159 @@ + +Kernel NFS Server Statistics +============================ + +This document describes the format and semantics of the statistics +which the kernel NFS server makes available to userspace. These +statistics are available in several text form pseudo files, each of +which is described separately below. + +In most cases you don't need to know these formats, as the nfsstat(8) +program from the nfs-utils distribution provides a helpful command-line +interface for extracting and printing them. + +All the files described here are formatted as a sequence of text lines, +separated by newline '\n' characters. Lines beginning with a hash +'#' character are comments intended for humans and should be ignored +by parsing routines. All other lines contain a sequence of fields +separated by whitespace. + +/proc/fs/nfsd/pool_stats +------------------------ + +This file is available in kernels from 2.6.30 onwards, if the +/proc/fs/nfsd filesystem is mounted (it almost always should be). + +The first line is a comment which describes the fields present in +all the other lines. The other lines present the following data as +a sequence of unsigned decimal numeric fields. One line is shown +for each NFS thread pool. + +All counters are 64 bits wide and wrap naturally. There is no way +to zero these counters, instead applications should do their own +rate conversion. + +pool + The id number of the NFS thread pool to which this line applies. + This number does not change. + + Thread pool ids are a contiguous set of small integers starting + at zero. The maximum value depends on the thread pool mode, but + currently cannot be larger than the number of CPUs in the system. + Note that in the default case there will be a single thread pool + which contains all the nfsd threads and all the CPUs in the system, + and thus this file will have a single line with a pool id of "0". + +packets-arrived + Counts how many NFS packets have arrived. More precisely, this + is the number of times that the network stack has notified the + sunrpc server layer that new data may be available on a transport + (e.g. an NFS or UDP socket or an NFS/RDMA endpoint). + + Depending on the NFS workload patterns and various network stack + effects (such as Large Receive Offload) which can combine packets + on the wire, this may be either more or less than the number + of NFS calls received (which statistic is available elsewhere). + However this is a more accurate and less workload-dependent measure + of how much CPU load is being placed on the sunrpc server layer + due to NFS network traffic. + +sockets-enqueued + Counts how many times an NFS transport is enqueued to wait for + an nfsd thread to service it, i.e. no nfsd thread was considered + available. + + The circumstance this statistic tracks indicates that there was NFS + network-facing work to be done but it couldn't be done immediately, + thus introducing a small delay in servicing NFS calls. The ideal + rate of change for this counter is zero; significantly non-zero + values may indicate a performance limitation. + + This can happen either because there are too few nfsd threads in the + thread pool for the NFS workload (the workload is thread-limited), + or because the NFS workload needs more CPU time than is available in + the thread pool (the workload is CPU-limited). In the former case, + configuring more nfsd threads will probably improve the performance + of the NFS workload. In the latter case, the sunrpc server layer is + already choosing not to wake idle nfsd threads because there are too + many nfsd threads which want to run but cannot, so configuring more + nfsd threads will make no difference whatsoever. The overloads-avoided + statistic (see below) can be used to distinguish these cases. + +threads-woken + Counts how many times an idle nfsd thread is woken to try to + receive some data from an NFS transport. + + This statistic tracks the circumstance where incoming + network-facing NFS work is being handled quickly, which is a good + thing. The ideal rate of change for this counter will be close + to but less than the rate of change of the packets-arrived counter. + +overloads-avoided + Counts how many times the sunrpc server layer chose not to wake an + nfsd thread, despite the presence of idle nfsd threads, because + too many nfsd threads had been recently woken but could not get + enough CPU time to actually run. + + This statistic counts a circumstance where the sunrpc layer + heuristically avoids overloading the CPU scheduler with too many + runnable nfsd threads. The ideal rate of change for this counter + is zero. Significant non-zero values indicate that the workload + is CPU limited. Usually this is associated with heavy CPU usage + on all the CPUs in the nfsd thread pool. + + If a sustained large overloads-avoided rate is detected on a pool, + the top(1) utility should be used to check for the following + pattern of CPU usage on all the CPUs associated with the given + nfsd thread pool. + + - %us ~= 0 (as you're *NOT* running applications on your NFS server) + + - %wa ~= 0 + + - %id ~= 0 + + - %sy + %hi + %si ~= 100 + + If this pattern is seen, configuring more nfsd threads will *not* + improve the performance of the workload. If this patten is not + seen, then something more subtle is wrong. + +threads-timedout + Counts how many times an nfsd thread triggered an idle timeout, + i.e. was not woken to handle any incoming network packets for + some time. + + This statistic counts a circumstance where there are more nfsd + threads configured than can be used by the NFS workload. This is + a clue that the number of nfsd threads can be reduced without + affecting performance. Unfortunately, it's only a clue and not + a strong indication, for a couple of reasons: + + - Currently the rate at which the counter is incremented is quite + slow; the idle timeout is 60 minutes. Unless the NFS workload + remains constant for hours at a time, this counter is unlikely + to be providing information that is still useful. + + - It is usually a wise policy to provide some slack, + i.e. configure a few more nfsds than are currently needed, + to allow for future spikes in load. + + +Note that incoming packets on NFS transports will be dealt with in +one of three ways. An nfsd thread can be woken (threads-woken counts +this case), or the transport can be enqueued for later attention +(sockets-enqueued counts this case), or the packet can be temporarily +deferred because the transport is currently being used by an nfsd +thread. This last case is not very interesting and is not explicitly +counted, but can be inferred from the other counters thus: + +packets-deferred = packets-arrived - ( sockets-enqueued + threads-woken ) + + +More +---- +Descriptions of the other statistics file should go here. + + +Greg Banks <gnb@sgi.com> +26 Mar 2009 |