Version 2.6.1
Simulating workloads with wtperf

The WiredTiger distribution includes a tool that can be used to simulate workloads in WiredTiger, in the directory bench/wtperf.

The wtperf utility generally has two phases, the populate phase which creates a database and then populates an object in that database, and a workload phase, that does some set of operations on the object.

For example, the following configuration uses a single thread to populate a file object with 500,000 records in a 500MB cache. The workload phase consists of 8 threads running for two minutes, all reading from the file.

conn_config="cache_size=500MB"
table_config="type=file"
icount=500000
run_time=120
populate_threads=1
threads=((count=8,reads=1))

In most cases, where the workload is the only interesting phase, the populate phase can be performed once and the workload phase run repeatedly (for more information, see the wtperf create configuration variable).

The conn_config configuration supports setting any WiredTiger connection configuration value. This is commonly used to configure statistics with regular reports, to obtain more information from the run:

conn_config="cache_size=20G,statistics=(fast,clear),statistics_log=(wait=600)"
report_interval=5

Note quoting must be used when passing values to Wiredtiger configuration, as opposed to configuring the wtperf utility itself.

The table_config configuration supports setting any WiredTiger object creation configuration value, for example, the above test can be converted to using an LSM store instead of a B+tree store, with additional LSM configuration, by changing conn_config to:

table_config="lsm=(chunk_size=5MB),type=lsm,os_cache_dirty_max=16MB"

More complex workloads can be configured by creating more threads doing inserts and updates as well as reads. For example, to configure two inserting threads two threads doing a mixture of inserts, reads and updates:

threads=((count=2,inserts=1),(count=2,inserts=1,reads=1,updates=1))

Example wtperf configuration files can be found in the bench/wtperf/runners/ directory.

There are also a number of command line arguments that can be passed to wtperf:

-C config
Specify configuration strings for the wiredtiger_open function. This argument is additive to the conn_config parameter in the configuration file.
-h directory
Specify a database home directory. The default is ./WT_TEST.
-m monitor_directory
Specify a directory for all monitoring related files. The default is the database home directory.
-O config_file
Specify the configuration file to run.
-o config
Specify configuration strings for the wtperf program. This argument will override settings in the configuration file.
-T config
Specify configuration strings for the WT_SESSION::create function. This argument is additive to the table_config parameter in the configuration file.

Monitoring wtperf

Like all WiredTiger applications, the wtperf command can be configured with statistics logging, and the resulting output displayed using the wtstats visualization tool. For more information, see Visualizing performance with wtstats.

In addition to statistics logging, wtperf can monitor performance and operation latency times. Monitoring is enabled using the sample_interval configuration. For example to record information every 10 seconds, set the following on the command line or add it to the wtperf configuration file:

sample_interval=10

Enabling monitoring causes wtperf to create a file monitor in the database home directory (or another directory as specified using the -m option to wtperf).

The same visualization tool, wtstats, can be used to view a combined chart with both the monitor output and the statistics logging output at the same time.

The following example shows how to run the medium-btree.wtperf configuration with monitoring enabled, and then generate a graph.

# Change into the WiredTiger directory.
cd wiredtiger
# Configure and build WiredTiger if not already built.
./configure && make
# Remove and re-create the run directory.
rm -rf WTPERF_RUN && mkdir WTPERF_RUN
# Run the medium-btree.wtperf workload, sampling performance every 5 seconds.
bench/wtperf/wtperf \
-h WTPERF_RUN \
-o sample_interval=5 \
-O bench/wtperf/runners/medium-btree.wtperf
# Use the visualization tool to create HTML graph output; the output file is
# named wtstats.html.
python tools/wtstats/wtstats.py WTPERF_RUN/monitor
# Possible alternatives if statistics logging also enabled:
# python tools/wtstats/wtstats.py WTPERF_RUN/monitor WTPERF_RUN/WiredTigerStat*
# python tools/wtstats/wtstats.py WTPERF_RUN

The python command creates a file named wtstats.html in the current working directory. You can open the generated HTML document in your browser and see the generated statistics.

Wtperf configuration options

The following is a list of the currently available wtperf configuration options:

async_threads (unsigned int, default=0)
number of async worker threads
checkpoint_interval (unsigned int, default=120)
checkpoint every interval seconds during the workload phase.
checkpoint_stress_rate (unsigned int, default=0)
checkpoint every rate operations during the populate phase in the populate thread(s), 0 to disable
checkpoint_threads (unsigned int, default=0)
number of checkpoint threads
conn_config (string, default=create)
connection configuration string
compact (boolean, default=false)
post-populate compact for LSM merging activity
compression (string, default=none)
compression extension. Allowed configuration values are: 'none', 'bzip', 'lz4', 'snappy', 'zlib'
create (boolean, default=true)
do population phase; false to use existing database
database_count (unsigned int, default=1)
number of WiredTiger databases to use. Each database will execute the workload using a separate home directory and complete set of worker threads
drop_tables (unsigned int, default=0)
Whether to drop all tables at the end of the run, and report time taken to do the drop.
icount (unsigned int, default=5000)
number of records to initially populate. If multiple tables are configured the count is spread evenly across all tables.
index (boolean, default=false)
Whether to create an index on the value field.
insert_rmw (boolean, default=false)
execute a read prior to each insert in workload phase
key_sz (unsigned int, default=20)
key size
log_partial (boolean, default=false)
perform partial logging on first table only.
min_throughput (unsigned int, default=0)
abort if any throughput measured is less than this amount. Requires sample_interval to be configured
max_latency (unsigned int, default=0)
abort if any latency measured exceeds this number of milliseconds.Requires sample_interval to be configured
pareto (unsigned int, default=0)
use pareto distribution for random numbers. Zero to disable, otherwise a percentage indicating how aggressive the distribution should be.
populate_ops_per_txn (unsigned int, default=0)
number of operations to group into each transaction in the populate phase, zero for auto-commit
populate_threads (unsigned int, default=1)
number of populate threads, 1 for bulk load
random_range (unsigned int, default=0)
if non zero choose a value from within this range as the key for insert operations
random_value (boolean, default=false)
generate random content for the value
report_interval (unsigned int, default=2)
output throughput information every interval seconds, 0 to disable
run_ops (unsigned int, default=0)
total read, insert and update workload operations
run_time (unsigned int, default=0)
total workload seconds
sample_interval (unsigned int, default=0)
performance logging every interval seconds, 0 to disable
sample_rate (unsigned int, default=50)
how often the latency of operations is measured. One for every operation,two for every second operation, three for every third operation etc.
sess_config (string, default=)
session configuration string
table_config (string, default=key_format=S,value_format=S,type=lsm,exclusive=true,allocation_size=4kb,internal_page_max=64kb,leaf_page_max=4kb,split_pct=100)
table configuration string
table_count (unsigned int, default=1)
number of tables to run operations over. Keys are divided evenly over the tables. Cursors are held open on all tables. Default 1, maximum 99999.
table_count_idle (unsigned int, default=0)
number of tables to create, that won't be populated. Default 0.
threads (string, default=)
workload configuration: each 'count' entry is the total number of threads, and the 'insert', 'read' and 'update' entries are the ratios of insert, read and update operations done by each worker thread; If a throttle value is provided each thread will do a maximum of that number of operations per second; multiple workload configurations may be specified; for example, a more complex threads configuration might be 'threads=((count=2,reads=1)(count=8,reads=1,inserts=2,updates=1))' which would create 2 threads doing nothing but reads and 8 threads each doing 50% inserts and 25% reads and updates. Allowed configuration values are 'count', 'throttle', 'reads', 'inserts', 'updates'. There are also behavior modifiers, supported modifiers are 'ops_per_txn'
transaction_config (string, default=)
transaction configuration string, relevant when populate_opts_per_txn is nonzero
table_name (string, default=test)
table name
value_sz (unsigned int, default=100)
value size
verbose (unsigned int, default=1)
verbosity
warmup (unsigned int, default=0)
How long to run the workload phase before starting measurements