Visualize Fio Logs with fio2gnuplot

Learn about Fio:

1. Fio
2. Fio Basics
3. Compile Fio
4. Visualize Fio Logs with fio2gnuplot

Fio offers the possibility to log the performance values with log files during test runs . At certain intervals, the achieved performance values are written to a file. fio2gnuplot is a script that generates graphs from these log files . It can also generate comparative graphs from multiple logs .

installation

fio2gnuplot since Fio Version 2.1.2 part of Fio. Under Ubuntu 14.04 LTS aka Trusty is Fio 2.1.3 in the repos. The gnuplot package is also installed to generate the graphs:

$ sudo apt-get install fio gnuplot
 [ ... ] 
Setting up fio ( 2.1.3-1 ) ...
Setting up gnuplot ( 4.6.4-2 ) ...
$ dpkg -L fio | grep fio2gnuplot
/usr/share/man/man1/fio2gnuplot.1.gz
/ Usr / bin / fio2gnuplot

Create Fio Logs

To create the log files with Fio, the following options are used:

• write_bw_log
• write_iops_log
• write_lat_log

See the Fio Fundamentals article for more information about the Fio options. In a job file, the options are specified as follows:

[Seq-read]
rw = read
write_bw_log = seq-read
stonewall

After the test run, Fio writes the log files:

$ head seq-read_bw.log 
502, 20908, 0, 65536
1004, 21673, 0, 65536
1512, 8583, 0, 65536
2014, 16191, 0, 65536
2522, 25952, 0, 65536

This file will serve as input for fio2gnuplot . To compare several test runs, use the log files of the respective tests for fio2gnuplot together as input.

Generate graphs

The help of fio2gnuplot provided first information for use: ^[2]

$ fio2gnuplot -h
fio2gnuplot -ghbiodvk -t <title> -o <outputfile> -p <pattern> -G <type> -m <time> -M <time>
-h --help: Print this help 
-p <pattern> or --pattern <pattern>: A pattern in regexp to select fio input files
-b or --bandwidth: A predefined pattern for selecting * _bw.log files
-i or --iops: A predefined pattern for selecting * _iops.log files
-g or -gnuplot: Render gnuplot traces before exiting

The following example uses two logfiles to compare with fio2gnuplot :

$ ls * seq-read_bw.log
512K-seq-read_bw.log default-seq-read_bw.log
$ fio2gnuplot -p '* seq-read_bw.log' -g
 2 files Selected with pattern '* seq-read_bw.log' 
 | -> 512K-seq-read_bw.log
  | -> default-seq-read_bw.log
Running gnuplot rendering
Rendering traces are available in the current directory

The following graphs were created in the current directory:

$ ls * .png
512K-seq-read_bw-2Draw.png compare-seq-read_bw-2Dsmooth.png default-seq-read_bw-2Dtrend.png seq-read_bw.min.png
512K-seq-read_bw-2Dsmooth.png compare-seq-read_bw-2Dtrend.png seq-read_bw-3D.png seq-read_bw.png
512K-seq-read_bw-2Dtrend.png default-seq-read_bw-2Draw.png seq-read_bw.average.png seq-read_bw.stddev.png
compare-seq-read_bw-2Draw.png default-seq-read_bw-2Dsmooth.png seq-read_bw.max.png