dm kcopyd: Increase default sub-job size to 512KB

dm kcopyd: Increase default sub-job size to 512KB

Currently, kcopyd has a sub-job size of 64KB and a maximum number of 8
sub-jobs. As a result, for any kcopyd job, we have a maximum of 512KB of
I/O in flight.

This upper limit to the amount of in-flight I/O under-utilizes fast
devices and results in decreased throughput, e.g., when writing to a
snapshotted thin LV with I/O size less than the pool's block size (so
COW is performed using kcopyd).

Increase kcopyd's default sub-job size to 512KB, so we have a maximum of
4MB of I/O in flight for each kcopyd job. This results in an up to 96%
improvement of bandwidth when writing to a snapshotted thin LV, with I/O
sizes less than the pool's block size.

Also, add dm_mod.kcopyd_subjob_size_kb module parameter to allow users
to fine tune the sub-job size of kcopyd. The default value of this
parameter is 512KB and the maximum allowed value is 1024KB.

We evaluate the performance impact of the change by running the
snap_breaking_throughput benchmark, from the device mapper test suite
[1].

The benchmark:

  1. Creates a 1G thin LV
  2. Provisions the thin LV
  3. Takes a snapshot of the thin LV
  4. Writes to the thin LV with:

      dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/vg/thin_lv oflag=direct bs=<I/O size>

Running this benchmark with various thin pool block sizes and dd I/O
sizes (all combinations triggering the use of kcopyd) we get the
following results:

+-----------------+-------------+------------------+-----------------+
| Pool block size | dd I/O size | BW before (MB/s) | BW after (MB/s) |
+-----------------+-------------+------------------+-----------------+
|       1 MB      |      256 KB |       242        |       280       |
|       1 MB      |      512 KB |       238        |       295       |
|                 |             |                  |                 |
|       2 MB      |      256 KB |       238        |       354       |
|       2 MB      |      512 KB |       241        |       380       |
|       2 MB      |        1 MB |       245        |       394       |
|                 |             |                  |                 |
|       4 MB      |      256 KB |       248        |       412       |
|       4 MB      |      512 KB |       234        |       432       |
|       4 MB      |        1 MB |       251        |       474       |
|       4 MB      |        2 MB |       257        |       504       |
|                 |             |                  |                 |
|       8 MB      |      256 KB |       239        |       420       |
|       8 MB      |      512 KB |       256        |       431       |
|       8 MB      |        1 MB |       264        |       467       |
|       8 MB      |        2 MB |       264        |       502       |
|       8 MB      |        4 MB |       281        |       537       |
+-----------------+-------------+------------------+-----------------+

[1] https://github.com/jthornber/device-mapper-test-suite

Signed-off-by: Nikos Tsironis <ntsironis@arrikto.com>
Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>