Commits on Oct 25, 2023

1. Read prefetched buffers from L2ARC …

   Prefetched buffers are currently read from L2ARC if, and only if,
   l2arc_noprefetch is set to non-default value of 0. This means that
   a streaming read which can be served from L2ARC will instead engage
   the main pool.
   
   For example, consider what happens when a file is sequentially read:
   - application requests contiguous data, engaging the prefetcher;
   - ARC buffers are initially marked as prefetched but, as the calling
   application consumes data, the prefetch tag is cleared;
   - these "normal" buffers become eligible for L2ARC and are copied to it;
   - re-reading the same file will *not* engage L2ARC even if it contains
   the required buffers;
   - main pool has to suffer another sequential read load, which (due to
   most NCQ-enabled HDDs preferring sequential loads) can drammatically
   increase latency for uncached random reads.
   
   In other words, current behavior is to write data to L2ARC (wearing it)
   without using the very same cache when reading back the same data. This
   was probably useful many years ago to preserve L2ARC read bandwidth but,
   with current SSD speed/size/price, it is vastly sub-optimal.
   
   Setting l2arc_noprefetch=1, while enabling L2ARC to serve these reads,
   means that even prefetched but unused buffers will be copied into L2ARC,
   further increasing wear and load for potentially not-useful data.
   
   This patch enable prefetched buffer to be read from L2ARC even when
   l2arc_noprefetch=1 (default), increasing sequential read speed and
   reducing load on the main pool without polluting L2ARC with not-useful
   (ie: unused) prefetched data. Moreover, it clear users confusion about
   L2ARC size increasing but not serving any IO when doing sequential
   reads.
   
   Signed-off-by: Gionatan Danti <g.danti@assyoma.it>

   

   shodanshok committed Oct 25, 2023
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