file-posix: Mitigate file fragmentation with extent size hints

Especially when O_DIRECT is used with image files so that the page cache
indirection can't cause a merge of allocating requests, the file will
fragment on the file system layer, with a potentially very small
fragment size (this depends on the requests the guest sent).

On Linux, fragmentation can be reduced by setting an extent size hint
when creating the file (at least on XFS, it can't be set any more after
the first extent has been allocated), basically giving raw files a
"cluster size" for allocation.

This adds a create option to set the extent size hint, and changes the
default from not setting a hint to setting it to 1 MB. The main reason
why qcow2 defaults to smaller cluster sizes is that COW becomes more
expensive, which is not an issue with raw files, so we can choose a
larger size. The tradeoff here is only potentially wasted disk space.

For qcow2 (or other image formats) over file-posix, the advantage should
even be greater because they grow sequentially without leaving holes, so
there won't be wasted space. Setting even larger extent size hints for
such images may make sense. This can be done with the new option, but
let's keep the default conservative for now.

The effect is very visible with a test that intentionally creates a
badly fragmented file with qemu-img bench (the time difference while
creating the file is already remarkable) and then looks at the number of
extents and the time a simple "qemu-img map" takes.

Without an extent size hint:

    $ ./qemu-img create -f raw -o extent_size_hint=0 ~/tmp/test.raw 10G
    Formatting '/home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw', fmt=raw size=10737418240 extent_size_hint=0
    $ ./qemu-img bench -f raw -t none -n -w ~/tmp/test.raw -c 1000000 -S 8192 -o 0
    Sending 1000000 write requests, 4096 bytes each, 64 in parallel (starting at offset 0, step size 8192)
    Run completed in 25.848 seconds.
    $ ./qemu-img bench -f raw -t none -n -w ~/tmp/test.raw -c 1000000 -S 8192 -o 4096
    Sending 1000000 write requests, 4096 bytes each, 64 in parallel (starting at offset 4096, step size 8192)
    Run completed in 19.616 seconds.
    $ filefrag ~/tmp/test.raw
    /home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw: 2000000 extents found
    $ time ./qemu-img map ~/tmp/test.raw
    Offset          Length          Mapped to       File
    0               0x1e8480000     0               /home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw

    real    0m1,279s
    user    0m0,043s
    sys     0m1,226s

With the new default extent size hint of 1 MB:

    $ ./qemu-img create -f raw -o extent_size_hint=1M ~/tmp/test.raw 10G
    Formatting '/home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw', fmt=raw size=10737418240 extent_size_hint=1048576
    $ ./qemu-img bench -f raw -t none -n -w ~/tmp/test.raw -c 1000000 -S 8192 -o 0
    Sending 1000000 write requests, 4096 bytes each, 64 in parallel (starting at offset 0, step size 8192)
    Run completed in 11.833 seconds.
    $ ./qemu-img bench -f raw -t none -n -w ~/tmp/test.raw -c 1000000 -S 8192 -o 4096
    Sending 1000000 write requests, 4096 bytes each, 64 in parallel (starting at offset 4096, step size 8192)
    Run completed in 10.155 seconds.
    $ filefrag ~/tmp/test.raw
    /home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw: 178 extents found
    $ time ./qemu-img map ~/tmp/test.raw
    Offset          Length          Mapped to       File
    0               0x1e8480000     0               /home/kwolf/tmp/test.raw

    real    0m0,061s
    user    0m0,040s
    sys     0m0,014s

Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>
Message-Id: <20200707142329.48303-1-kwolf@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/qapi/block-core.json b/qapi/block-core.json
index b20332e592..463ffd83da 100644
--- a/qapi/block-core.json
+++ b/qapi/block-core.json
@@ -4185,14 +4185,17 @@
 #                 falloc (if defined CONFIG_POSIX_FALLOCATE),
 #                 full (if defined CONFIG_POSIX))
 # @nocow: Turn off copy-on-write (valid only on btrfs; default: off)
+# @extent-size-hint: Extent size hint to add to the image file; 0 for not
+#                    adding an extent size hint (default: 1 MB, since 5.1)
 #
 # Since: 2.12
 ##
 { 'struct': 'BlockdevCreateOptionsFile',
-  'data': { 'filename':         'str',
-            'size':             'size',
-            '*preallocation':   'PreallocMode',
-            '*nocow':           'bool' } }
+  'data': { 'filename':             'str',
+            'size':                 'size',
+            '*preallocation':       'PreallocMode',
+            '*nocow':               'bool',
+            '*extent-size-hint':    'size'} }
 
 ##
 # @BlockdevCreateOptionsGluster: