Demonstrations of zfsdist, the Linux eBPF/bcc version. zfsdist traces ZFS reads, writes, opens, and fsyncs, and summarizes their latency as a power-of-2 histogram. It has been written to work on ZFS on Linux (http://zfsonlinux.org). For example: # ./zfsdist Tracing ZFS operation latency... Hit Ctrl-C to end. ^C operation = 'read' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 0 | | 4 -> 7 : 4479 |****************************************| 8 -> 15 : 1028 |********* | 16 -> 31 : 14 | | 32 -> 63 : 1 | | 64 -> 127 : 2 | | 128 -> 255 : 6 | | 256 -> 511 : 1 | | 512 -> 1023 : 1256 |*********** | 1024 -> 2047 : 9 | | 2048 -> 4095 : 1 | | 4096 -> 8191 : 2 | | operation = 'write' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 0 | | 4 -> 7 : 0 | | 8 -> 15 : 0 | | 16 -> 31 : 0 | | 32 -> 63 : 0 | | 64 -> 127 : 0 | | 128 -> 255 : 75 |****************************************| 256 -> 511 : 11 |***** | 512 -> 1023 : 0 | | 1024 -> 2047 : 0 | | 2048 -> 4095 : 0 | | 4096 -> 8191 : 0 | | 8192 -> 16383 : 0 | | 16384 -> 32767 : 0 | | 32768 -> 65535 : 0 | | 65536 -> 131071 : 13 |****** | 131072 -> 262143 : 1 | | operation = 'open' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 2 |****************************************| This output shows a bimodal distribution for read latency, with a faster mode of around 5 thousand reads that took between 4 and 15 microseconds, and a slower mode of 1256 reads that took between 512 and 1023 microseconds. It's likely that the faster mode was a hit from the in-memory file system cache, and the slower mode is a read from a storage device (disk). The write latency is also bimodal, with a faster mode between 128 and 511 us, and the slower mode between 65 and 131 ms. This "latency" is measured from when the operation was issued from the VFS interface to the file system (via the ZFS POSIX layer), to when it completed. This spans everything: block device I/O (disk I/O), file system CPU cycles, file system locks, run queue latency, etc. This is a better measure of the latency suffered by applications reading from the file system than measuring this down at the block device interface. Note that this only traces the common file system operations previously listed: other file system operations (eg, inode operations including getattr()) are not traced. An optional interval and a count can be provided, as well as -m to show the distributions in milliseconds. For example: # ./zfsdist 1 5 Tracing ZFS operation latency... Hit Ctrl-C to end. 06:55:41: operation = 'read' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 0 | | 4 -> 7 : 3976 |****************************************| 8 -> 15 : 1181 |*********** | 16 -> 31 : 18 | | 32 -> 63 : 4 | | 64 -> 127 : 17 | | 128 -> 255 : 16 | | 256 -> 511 : 0 | | 512 -> 1023 : 1275 |************ | 1024 -> 2047 : 36 | | 2048 -> 4095 : 3 | | 4096 -> 8191 : 0 | | 8192 -> 16383 : 1 | | 16384 -> 32767 : 1 | | 06:55:42: operation = 'read' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 0 | | 4 -> 7 : 12751 |****************************************| 8 -> 15 : 1190 |*** | 16 -> 31 : 38 | | 32 -> 63 : 7 | | 64 -> 127 : 85 | | 128 -> 255 : 47 | | 256 -> 511 : 0 | | 512 -> 1023 : 1010 |*** | 1024 -> 2047 : 49 | | 2048 -> 4095 : 12 | | 06:55:43: operation = 'read' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 0 | | 4 -> 7 : 80925 |****************************************| 8 -> 15 : 1645 | | 16 -> 31 : 251 | | 32 -> 63 : 24 | | 64 -> 127 : 16 | | 128 -> 255 : 12 | | 256 -> 511 : 0 | | 512 -> 1023 : 80 | | 1024 -> 2047 : 1 | | 06:55:44: operation = 'read' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 0 | | 4 -> 7 : 81207 |****************************************| 8 -> 15 : 2075 |* | 16 -> 31 : 2005 | | 32 -> 63 : 177 | | 64 -> 127 : 3 | | 06:55:45: operation = 'read' usecs : count distribution 0 -> 1 : 0 | | 2 -> 3 : 0 | | 4 -> 7 : 74364 |****************************************| 8 -> 15 : 865 | | 16 -> 31 : 4960 |** | 32 -> 63 : 625 | | 64 -> 127 : 2 | | This workload was randomly reading from a file that became cached. The slower mode can be seen to disappear by the final summaries. USAGE message: # ./zfsdist -h usage: zfsdist [-h] [-T] [-m] [-p PID] [interval] [count] Summarize ZFS operation latency positional arguments: interval output interval, in seconds count number of outputs optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -T, --notimestamp don't include timestamp on interval output -m, --milliseconds output in milliseconds -p PID, --pid PID trace this PID only examples: ./zfsdist # show operation latency as a histogram ./zfsdist -p 181 # trace PID 181 only ./zfsdist 1 10 # print 1 second summaries, 10 times ./zfsdist -m 5 # 5s summaries, milliseconds