Config Settings

See Block Device for additional details.

Cache Settings

Kernel Caching

The kernel driver for Ceph block devices can use the Linux page cache toimprove performance.

The user space implementation of the Ceph block device (i.e., librbd) cannottake advantage of the Linux page cache, so it includes its own in-memorycaching, called “RBD caching.” RBD caching behaves just like well-behaved harddisk caching. When the OS sends a barrier or a flush request, all dirty data iswritten to the OSDs. This means that using write-back caching is just as safe asusing a well-behaved physical hard disk with a VM that properly sends flushes(i.e. Linux kernel >= 2.6.32). The cache uses a Least Recently Used (LRU)algorithm, and in write-back mode it can coalesce contiguous requests forbetter throughput.

The librbd cache is enabled by default and supports three different cachepolicies: write-around, write-back, and write-through. Writes returnimmediately under both the write-around and write-back policies, unless thereare more than rbd cache max dirty unwritten bytes to the storage cluster.The write-around policy differs from the write-back policy in that it doesnot attempt to service read requests from the cache, unlike the write-backpolicy, and is therefore faster for high performance write workloads. Under thewrite-through policy, writes return only when the data is on disk on allreplicas, but reads may come from the cache.

Prior to receiving a flush request, the cache behaves like a write-through cacheto ensure safe operation for older operating systems that do not send flushes toensure crash consistent behavior.

If the librbd cache is disabled, writes andreads go directly to the storage cluster, and writes return only when the datais on disk on all replicas.

Note

The cache is in memory on the client, and each RBD image hasits own. Since the cache is local to the client, there’s no coherencyif there are others accessing the image. Running GFS or OCFS on top ofRBD will not work with caching enabled.

The ceph.conf file settings for RBD should be set in the [client]section of your configuration file. The settings include:

rbd cache

  • Description

  • Enable caching for RADOS Block Device (RBD).

  • Type

  • Boolean

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • true

rbd cache policy

  • Description

  • Select the caching policy for librbd.

  • Type

  • Enum

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • writearound

  • Values

  • writearound, writeback, writethrough

rbd cache writethrough until flush

  • Description

  • Start out in write-through mode, and switch to write-back after the first flush request is received. Enabling this is a conservative but safe setting in case VMs running on rbd are too old to send flushes, like the virtio driver in Linux before 2.6.32.

  • Type

  • Boolean

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • true

rbd cache size

  • Description

  • The RBD cache size in bytes.

  • Type

  • 64-bit Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 32 MiB

  • Policies

  • write-back and write-through

rbd cache max dirty

  • Description

  • The dirty limit in bytes at which the cache triggers write-back. If 0, uses write-through caching.

  • Type

  • 64-bit Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Constraint

  • Must be less than rbd cache size.

  • Default

  • 24 MiB

  • Policies

  • write-around and write-back

rbd cache target dirty

  • Description

  • The dirty target before the cache begins writing data to the data storage. Does not block writes to the cache.

  • Type

  • 64-bit Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Constraint

  • Must be less than rbd cache max dirty.

  • Default

  • 16 MiB

  • Policies

  • write-back

rbd cache max dirty age

  • Description

  • The number of seconds dirty data is in the cache before writeback starts.

  • Type

  • Float

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 1.0

  • Policies

  • write-back

Read-ahead Settings

librbd supports read-ahead/prefetching to optimize small, sequential reads.This should normally be handled by the guest OS in the case of a VM,but boot loaders may not issue efficient reads. Read-ahead is automaticallydisabled if caching is disabled or if the policy is write-around.

rbd readahead trigger requests

  • Description

  • Number of sequential read requests necessary to trigger read-ahead.

  • Type

  • Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 10

rbd readahead max bytes

  • Description

  • Maximum size of a read-ahead request. If zero, read-ahead is disabled.

  • Type

  • 64-bit Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 512 KiB

rbd readahead disable after bytes

  • Description

  • After this many bytes have been read from an RBD image, read-ahead is disabled for that image until it is closed. This allows the guest OS to take over read-ahead once it is booted. If zero, read-ahead stays enabled.

  • Type

  • 64-bit Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 50 MiB

Image Features

RBD supports advanced features which can be specified via the command line when creating images or the default features can be specified via Ceph config file via ‘rbd_default_features = <sum of feature numeric values>’ or ‘rbd_default_features = <comma-delimited list of CLI values>’

Layering

  • Description

  • Layering enables you to use cloning.

  • Internal value

  • 1

  • CLI value

  • layering

  • Added in

  • v0.52 (Bobtail)

  • KRBD support

  • since v3.10

  • Default

  • yes

Striping v2

  • Description

  • Striping spreads data across multiple objects. Striping helps with parallelism for sequential read/write workloads.

  • Internal value

  • 2

  • CLI value

  • striping

  • Added in

  • v0.55 (Bobtail)

  • KRBD support

  • since v3.10 (default striping only, “fancy” striping added in v4.17)

  • Default

  • yes

Exclusive locking

  • Description

  • When enabled, it requires a client to get a lock on an object before making a write. Exclusive lock should only be enabled when a single client is accessing an image at the same time.

  • Internal value

  • 4

  • CLI value

  • exclusive-lock

  • Added in

  • v0.92 (Hammer)

  • KRBD support

  • since v4.9

  • Default

  • yes

Object map

  • Description

  • Object map support depends on exclusive lock support. Block devices are thin provisioned—meaning, they only store data that actually exists. Object map support helps track which objects actually exist (have data stored on a drive). Enabling object map support speeds up I/O operations for cloning; importing and exporting a sparsely populated image; and deleting.

  • Internal value

  • 8

  • CLI value

  • object-map

  • Added in

  • v0.93 (Hammer)

  • KRBD support

  • since v5.3

  • Default

  • yes

Fast-diff

  • Description

  • Fast-diff support depends on object map support and exclusive lock support. It adds another property to the object map, which makes it much faster to generate diffs between snapshots of an image, and the actual data usage of a snapshot much faster.

  • Internal value

  • 16

  • CLI value

  • fast-diff

  • Added in

  • v9.0.1 (Infernalis)

  • KRBD support

  • since v5.3

  • Default

  • yes

Deep-flatten

  • Description

  • Deep-flatten makes rbd flatten work on all the snapshots of an image, in addition to the image itself. Without it, snapshots of an image will still rely on the parent, so the parent will not be delete-able until the snapshots are deleted. Deep-flatten makes a parent independent of its clones, even if they have snapshots.

  • Internal value

  • 32

  • CLI value

  • deep-flatten

  • Added in

  • v9.0.2 (Infernalis)

  • KRBD support

  • since v5.1

  • Default

  • yes

Journaling

  • Description

  • Journaling support depends on exclusive lock support. Journaling records all modifications to an image in the order they occur. RBD mirroring utilizes the journal to replicate a crash consistent image to a remote cluster.

  • Internal value

  • 64

  • CLI value

  • journaling

  • Added in

  • v10.0.1 (Jewel)

  • KRBD support

  • no

  • Default

  • no

Data pool

  • Description

  • On erasure-coded pools, the image data block objects need to be stored on a separate pool from the image metadata.

  • Internal value

  • 128

  • Added in

  • v11.1.0 (Kraken)

  • KRBD support

  • since v4.11

  • Default

  • no

Operations

  • Description

  • Used to restrict older clients from performing certain maintenance operations against an image (e.g. clone, snap create).

  • Internal value

  • 256

  • Added in

  • v13.0.2 (Mimic)

  • KRBD support

  • since v4.16

Migrating

  • Description

  • Used to restrict older clients from opening an image when it is in migration state.

  • Internal value

  • 512

  • Added in

  • v14.0.1 (Nautilus)

  • KRBD support

  • no

QOS Settings

librbd supports limiting per image IO, controlled by the followingsettings.

rbd qos iops limit

  • Description

  • The desired limit of IO operations per second.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos bps limit

  • Description

  • The desired limit of IO bytes per second.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos read iops limit

  • Description

  • The desired limit of read operations per second.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos write iops limit

  • Description

  • The desired limit of write operations per second.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos read bps limit

  • Description

  • The desired limit of read bytes per second.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos write bps limit

  • Description

  • The desired limit of write bytes per second.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos iops burst

  • Description

  • The desired burst limit of IO operations.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos bps burst

  • Description

  • The desired burst limit of IO bytes.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos read iops burst

  • Description

  • The desired burst limit of read operations.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos write iops burst

  • Description

  • The desired burst limit of write operations.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos read bps burst

  • Description

  • The desired burst limit of read bytes.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos write bps burst

  • Description

  • The desired burst limit of write bytes.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 0

rbd qos schedule tick min

  • Description

  • The minimum schedule tick (in milliseconds) for QoS.

  • Type

  • Unsigned Integer

  • Required

  • No

  • Default

  • 50