The dmioscope script provides a simple tool to track and visualise the distribution of IO requests across a device's address space by maintaining a histogram that counts IO requests by location.
The device can either be split into a fixed number of equally sized regions (the same set of regions will be reported in each successive update), or the script can attempt to adapt the number, and size, of bins to the observed IO volumes: in this case the set of bins (and their sizes) may change between updates.
The static mode is useful in order to obtain fixed, repeatable statistics for measurement purposes: adaptive mode is best suited to interactive use where the user is trying to get a rough sense of the current IO distribution on the device, or where the distribution is expected to shift significantly during a run.
The command accepts count and interval arguments to allow reports to be continually generated from current data, and switches and options to control histogram adaptation and display properties.
To use dmioscope you will need a Linux installation with one or more
device-mapper devices to monitor, and an installed copy of the
device-mapper tools and libraries that includes the dmstats command
(at least device-mapper 1.02.104 - included in the lvm2 v2.02.127
tarball and any later distribution packages).
The dmioscope command displays graphical representations of the quantity of IO reaching different regions of a device-mapper device. This allows an estimate of the IO distribution to be shown for the device, both for short and long-term observations.
The display presents a histogram with its bins occupying successive lines of the display, and with bin values plotted horizontally across rows.
Axis labels indicate the quantity of disk space represented by each bin and the frequency of IO to each region (expressed as values proportional to the number of events per unit disk space).
Each bin in an ioscope histogram corresponds to a fixed range of device sectors. For example, consider an 8MiB device divided into eight bins:
Bin: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
Count: | 0 | 10 | 0 | 50 | 15 | 0 | 90 | 77 |
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
In this case, each bin is of equal size (1MiB), although this need not be the case generally.
The count for each bin indicates the number of matching IO events that were observed in that bin for the current interval.
When plotted graphically, the area of each bin's plotted region is proportional to the count of IOs observed in that region:
0.0 20.0 40.0 60.0 80.0 100.0
+-------------------------------------------------------------
0.0B |
1.1MiB |########
2.1MiB |
3.1MiB |################################
4.1MiB |##########
5.1MiB |
6.1MiB |#######################################################
7.1MiB |##################################################
If all bin sizes are uniform then the height of each bar corresponds to the number of IOs observed in that region during the last interval.
If bin sizes are non-uniform then the height of the bar represents the frequency of IO observed in that region: the absolute count of IOs is proportional to the total area of the bar.
For example, a 300MiB region and a 100MiB region observing 300 IOs and 100 IOs respectively will be plotted as:
0.0 100.0 200.0 300.0 400.0 500.0
+------------------------------------------------------------
0.0B |##############
|##############
|##############
300.1MiB |##############
Although the 300MiB region has three times the absolute number of IOs, it is also three times larger and hence has the same frequency of IOs per unit disk space:
100 IOs / 100MiB
The command is currently a single python script: there is no need to install the file, or make it executable, in order to use it (although adding exec permissions to the file will allow it to be run without explicitly calling the python interpreter).
The command can be run either as:
# python ./dmioscope.py vg00/lvol0Or by first making it executable with chmod:
# chmod +x dmioscope.py
# ./dmioscope.py vg00/lvol0
=====================================
dmioscope.py [-h] [-a] [-b NR_BINS] [--clear] [-C COUNTERS] [-c] [-m]
[-M MERGE_THRESH] [-n] [-r ROWS] [-s] [-t THRESH] [-v]
[-w WIDTH]
[interval] [count] dev [dev ...]
IOScope arguments.
positional arguments:
interval Duration of the report interval in seconds.
count Number of intervals to report.
dev Device(s) to monitor.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-a, --adaptive Adapt the number of bins to observed IO volume.
-b NR_BINS, --bins NR_BINS
Divide devices into nr equally sized bins.
--clear Clear the screen before each update.
-C COUNTERS, --counters COUNTERS
Specify the dmstats counter fields to monitor
(QUEUE_TICKS, READ_TICKS, READS_MERGED, WRITE_TIME,
IN_PROGRESS, READ_SECTORS, WRITE_TICKS, WRITES_MERGES,
WRITES, WRITE_SECTORS, READ_TIME, READS, IO_TICKS)
-c, --current Show the current interval plot.
-m, --merge Allow merging of bins with low IO volume in adaptive
mode.
-M MERGE_THRESH, --merge-threshold MERGE_THRESH
Threshold at which to merge adjacent regions with low
IO.
-n, --no-adaptive Do not adapt the number of bins according to observed
IO volume.
-r ROWS, --rows ROWS Specify the maxumum number of rows to use.
-s, --summary Show the accumulated summary plot.
-t THRESH, --threshold THRESH
Threshold at which to split a bin when using
--adaptive
-v, --verbose Enable verbose debugging messages.
-w WIDTH, --width WIDTH
Specify the maximum terminal width to use.