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  • Mikulas Patocka's avatar
    dm: ignore merge_bvec for snapshots when safe · d5b9dd04
    Mikulas Patocka authored
    
    
    Add a new flag DMF_MERGE_IS_OPTIONAL to struct mapped_device to indicate
    whether the device can accept bios larger than the size its merge
    function returns.  When set, use this to send large bios to snapshots
    which can split them if necessary.  Snapshot I/O may be significantly
    fragmented and this approach seems to improve peformance.
    
    Before the patch, dm_set_device_limits restricted bio size to page size
    if the underlying device had a merge function and the target didn't
    provide a merge function.  After the patch, dm_set_device_limits
    restricts bio size to page size if the underlying device has a merge
    function, doesn't have DMF_MERGE_IS_OPTIONAL flag and the target doesn't
    provide a merge function.
    
    The snapshot target can't provide a merge function because when the merge
    function is called, it is impossible to determine where the bio will be
    remapped.  Previously this led us to impose a 4k limit, which we can
    now remove if the snapshot store is located on a device without a merge
    function.  Together with another patch for optimizing full chunk writes,
    it improves performance from 29MB/s to 40MB/s when writing to the
    filesystem on snapshot store.
    
    If the snapshot store is placed on a non-dm device with a merge function
    (such as md-raid), device mapper still limits all bios to page size.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarMikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAlasdair G Kergon <agk@redhat.com>
    d5b9dd04