|  |  | 
|  | 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 |