1

Does anybody know of a some sort of (virtual) filesystem that will run as a low priority i.e. All other regular disk activity will take priority?

The reason for this is an application I am developing has a large amount of background disk IO to perform. The IO is not time critical but it currently writes at the maximum possible speed causing high iowait times and slowing down the entire system.

I've thought of spawning a new process and using ionice to set a priority but this seems a bit messy and I'd rather my application was not aware of hardware limitations.

Has anybody come across a fs that will do this or has another suggestion to solve the problem?

Any input much appreciated

Improve this question
3
  • 1
    I don't think this is necessarily a filesystem's responsibility. What are the details of the application (language, framework, etc.)? Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 12:56
  • 2
    Why not just move that filesystem to its own disk so it's not competing for IO with the rest of the system? Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 13:01
  • The application is Java running in Tomcat. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an "application" way of setting an io priority since it's the kernels job (apart from spawning new process and running ionice). A new disk/controller would be a valid but expensive solution. Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 13:31

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

If possible, you can write application run as low priority or set their limit to utilize the CPU utilization under /etc/security/limits.conf

Improve this answer
1
  • Since the IO heavy part of the application is a Java thread I'd have to write an external program to achieve this. Easier to just spawn 'cp' and 'ionice' though Commented Oct 22, 2013 at 13:35

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.