FUSE Adds VirtIO-FS Multi-Queue For ~5x Performance Win With Linux 6.10

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 22 May 2024 at 11:11 AM EDT. 1 Comment
LINUX STORAGE
The FUSE updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.10 kernel in supporting file-system implementations within user-space.

FUSE in Linux 6.10 adds FS-VERITY support as the kernel infrastructure for read-only file-based authenticity protection. FS-VERITY allows for transparent integrity and authenticity protection. FS-VERITY is already supported by the likes of EXT4, F2FS, and Btrfs while now with Linux 6.10+ can also be used by FUSE file-systems. The initial FUSE motivation is on FS-VERITY support for VirtIO-FS.

The other notable addition for FUSE in Linux 6.10 is finally landing initial multi-queue support for VirtIO-FS. There have been efforts dating back years for VirtIO-FS multi-queue support and now it's finally upstream.

With making use of multiple queues, the VirtIO-FS file-system code can be up to 5~5.5x faster for read and write performance. NVIDIA's Peter-Jan Gootzen along with other NVIDIA engineers authored the support and tested with a BlueField-3 DPU on a Dell PowerEdge server. The boost with multi-queue support is huge:

VirtIO-FS multi-queue benchmark


Quite an exciting round of FUSE updates for the Linux 6.10 kernel.

Update: Peter-Jan Gootzen with NVIDIA has clarified that besides the VirtIO-FS driver now having multi-queue support, support is also needed from the VirtIO-FS device. The NVIDIA BlueField DPU does support this when it exposes a file-system as a host through VirtIO-FS. However, virtiofsd as the common software implementation does not support this feature.
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week