Add "ashift" property to zpool create

Some disks with internal sectors larger than 512 bytes (e.g., 4k) can
suffer from bad write performance when ashift is not configured
correctly.  This is caused by the disk not reporting its actual sector
size, but a sector size of 512 bytes.  The drive may behave this way
for compatibility reasons.  For example, the WDC WD20EARS disks are
known to exhibit this behavior.

When creating a zpool, ZFS takes that wrong sector size and sets the
"ashift" property accordingly (to 9: 1<<9=512), whereas it should be
set to 12 for 4k sectors (1<<12=4096).

This patch allows an adminstrator to manual specify the known correct
ashift size at 'zpool create' time.  This can significantly improve
performance in certain cases.  However, it will have an impact on your
total pool capacity.  See the updated ashift property description
in the zpool.8 man page for additional details.

Valid values for the ashift property range from 9 to 17 (512B-128KB).
Additionally, you may set the ashift to 0 if you wish to auto-detect
the sector size based on what the disk reports, this is the default
behavior.  The most common ashift values are 9 and 12.

  Example:
  zpool create -o ashift=12 tank raidz2 sda sdb sdc sdd

Closes #280

Original-patch-by: Richard Laager <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Brian Behlendorf <[email protected]>

1 files changed, 17 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/man/man8/zpool.8 b/man/man8/zpool.8
index 2fdc58c14..3dd1c1872 100644
--- a/man/man8/zpool.8
+++ b/man/man8/zpool.8
@@ -502,6 +502,23 @@ Amount of storage space used within the pool.
 .sp
 .LP
 These space usage properties report actual physical space available to the storage pool. The physical space can be different from the total amount of space that any contained datasets can actually use. The amount of space used in a \fBraidz\fR configuration depends on the characteristics of the data being written. In addition, \fBZFS\fR reserves some space for internal accounting that the \fBzfs\fR(8) command takes into account, but the \fBzpool\fR command does not. For non-full pools of a reasonable size, these effects should be invisible. For small pools, or pools that are close to being completely full, these discrepancies may become more noticeable.
+
+.sp
+.LP
+The following property can be set at creation time:
+.sp
+.ne 2
+.mk
+.na
+\fB\fBashift\fR\fR
+.ad
+.sp .6
+.RS 4n
+Pool sector size exponent, to the power of 2 (internally referred to as "ashift"). I/O operations will be aligned to the specified size boundaries. Additionally, the minimum (disk) write size will be set to the specified size, so this represents a space vs. performance trade-off. The typical case for setting this property is when performance is important and the underlying disks use 4KiB sectors but report 512B sectors to the OS (for compatibility reasons); in that case, set \fBashift=12\fR (which is 1<<12 = 4096).
+.LP
+For optimal performance, the pool sector size should be greater than or equal to the sector size of the underlying disks. Since the property cannot be changed after pool creation, if in a given pool, you \fIever\fR want to use drives that \fIreport\fR 4KiB sectors, you must set \fBashift=12\fR at pool creation time.
+.RE
+
 .sp
 .LP
 The following property can be set at creation time and import time: