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Comment by ryao

4 days ago

I am generally happy with the write performance of ZFS. I have not noticed slow system updates on ZFS (although I run Gentoo, so slow is relative here). In what ways is the write performance bad?

I am one of the OpenZFS contributors (although I am less active as late). If you bring some deficiency to my attention, there is a chance I might spend the time needed to improve upon it.

By the way, ZFS limits the outstanding IO queue depth to try to keep latencies down as a type of QoS, but you can tune it to allow larger IO queue depths, which should improve write performance. If your issue is related to that, it is an area that is known to be able to use improvement in certain situations:

https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Performance%20and%20T...

https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Performance%20and%20T...

https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Performance%20and%20T...

7 comments

ryao

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bayindirh  4 days ago

What I see with CoW filesystems is, when you force the FS to sync a lot (like apt does to keep immunity against power losses to a maximum), the write performance slouches visibly. This also means that when you're writing a lot of small files with a lot of processes and flood the FS with syncs, you get the same slouching, making everything slower in the process. This effect is better controlled in simpler filesystems, namely XFS and EXT4. This is why I keep backups elsewhere and keep my single disk rootfs on "simple" filesystems.

I'll be installing a 2 disk OpenZFS RAID1 volume on a SBC for high value files soon-ish, and I might be doing some tests on that when it's up. Honestly, I don't expect stellar performance since I'll be already putting it on constrained hardware, but let you know if I experience anything that doesn't feel right.

Thanks for the doc links, I'll be devouring them when my volume is up and running.

Where do you prefer your (bug and other) reports? GitHub? E-mail? IP over Avian Carriers?

  • ryao  4 days ago

    Heavy synchronous IO from incredibly frequent fsync is a weak point. You can make it better using SLOG devices. I realize what I am about to say is not what you want to hear, but any application doing excessive fsync operations is probably doing things wrong. This is a view that you will find prevalent among all filesystem developers (i.e. the ext4 and XFS guys will have this view too). That is because all filesystems run significantly faster when fsync() is used sparingly.

    In the case of APT, it should install all of the files and then call sync() once. This is equivalent of calling fsync on every file like APT currently does, but aggregates it for efficiency. The reason APT does not use sync() is probably a portability thing, because the standard does not require sync() to be blocking, but on Linux it is:

    https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/sync.2.html

    From a power loss perspective, if power is lost when installing a package into the filesystem, you need to repair the package. Thus it does not really matter for power loss protection if you are using fsync() on all files or sync() once for all files, since what must happen next to fix it is the same. However, from a performance perspective, it really does matter.

    That said, slow fsync performance generally is not an issue for desktop workloads because they rarely ever use fsync. APT is the main exception. You are the first to complain about APT performance in years as far as I know (there were fixes to improve APT performance 10 years ago, when its performance was truly horrendous).

    You can file bug reports against ZFS here:

    https://github.com/openzfs/zfs

    I suggest filing a bug report against APT. There is no reason for it to be doing fsync calls on every file it installs in the filesystem. It is inefficient.

    • bayindirh  4 days ago

      Actually this was discussed recently [0]. While everybody knows it's not efficient, it's required to keep update process resilient against unwanted shutdowns (like power losses which corrupt the filesystem due to uncommitted work left on the filesystem).

      > From a power loss perspective, if power is lost when installing a package into the filesystem, you need to repair the package.

      Yes, but at least you have all the files, otherwise you can have 0 length files which can prevent you from booting your system. In this case, your system boots, all files are in place, but some packages are in semi-configured state. Believe me, apt can recover from many nasty corners without any ill effects as long as all files are there. I used to be a tech-lead for a Debian derivative back in the day, so I lived in the trenches in Debian for a long time, so I have seen things.

      Again it's decided that the massive sync will stay in place for now, because the risks involved in the wild doesn't justify the performance difference yet. If you prefer to be reckless, there's "eatmydata" and "--force-unsafe-io" options baked in already.

      Thanks for the links, I'll let you know if I find something. I just need to build the machine from the parts I have, then I'll be off to the races.

      [0]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/12/msg00533.html [warning, long thread]

      1 reply →

  • gf000  4 days ago

    Hi! I am quite a beginner when it comes to file systems. Would this sync effect not be helped by direct IO in ZFS's case?

    Also, given that you seem quite knowledgeable of the topic, what is your go-to backup solution?

    I initially thought about storing `zfs send` files into backblaze (as backup at a different location), but without recv-ing these, I don't think the usual checksumming works properly. I can checksum the whole before and after updating, but I'm not convinced if this is the best solution.