Viewing I/O Statistics for ZFS Storage Pools

To request I/O statistics for a pool or specific virtual devices, use the zpool iostat command. Similar to the iostat command, this command can display a static snapshot of all I/O activity, as well as updated statistics for every specified interval. The following statistics are reported:

alloc capacity

The amount of data currently stored in the pool or device. This amount differs from the amount of disk space available to actual file systems by a small margin due to internal implementation details.

For more information about the differences between pool space and dataset space, see ZFS Disk Space Accounting.

free capacity

The amount of disk space available in the pool or device. As with the used statistic, this amount differs from the amount of disk space available to datasets by a small margin.

read operations

The number of read I/O operations sent to the pool or device, including metadata requests.

write operations

The number of write I/O operations sent to the pool or device.

read bandwidth

The bandwidth of all read operations (including metadata), expressed as units per second.

write bandwidth

The bandwidth of all write operations, expressed as units per second.

Listing Pool-Wide I/O Statistics

With no options, the zpool iostat command displays the accumulated statistics since boot for all pools on the system. For example:

# zpool iostat
               capacity     operations    bandwidth
pool        alloc   free   read  write   read  write
----------  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
rpool       6.05G  61.9G      0      0    786    107
tank        31.3G  36.7G      4      1   296K  86.1K
----------  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----

Because these statistics are cumulative since boot, bandwidth might appear low if the pool is relatively idle. You can request a more accurate view of current bandwidth usage by specifying an interval. For example:

# zpool iostat tank 2
               capacity     operations    bandwidth
pool        alloc   free   read  write   read  write
----------  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
tank        18.5G  49.5G      0    187      0  23.3M
tank        18.5G  49.5G      0    464      0  57.7M
tank        18.5G  49.5G      0    457      0  56.6M
tank        18.8G  49.2G      0    435      0  51.3M

In this example, the command displays usage statistics for the pool tank every two seconds until you type Control-C. Alternately, you can specify an additional count argument, which causes the command to terminate after the specified number of iterations. For example, zpool iostat 2 3 would print a summary every two seconds for three iterations, for a total of six seconds. If there is only a single pool, then the statistics are displayed on consecutive lines. If more than one pool exists, then an additional dashed line delineates each iteration to provide visual separation.

Listing Virtual Device I/O Statistics

In addition to pool-wide I/O statistics, the zpool iostat command can display I/O statistics for virtual devices. This command can be used to identify abnormally slow devices or to observe the distribution of I/O generated by ZFS. To request the complete virtual device layout as well as all I/O statistics, use the zpool iostat -v command. For example:

# zpool iostat -v
               capacity     operations    bandwidth
pool        alloc   free   read  write   read  write
----------  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
rpool       6.05G  61.9G      0      0    785    107
  mirror    6.05G  61.9G      0      0    785    107
    c1t0d0s0    -      -      0      0    578    109
    c1t1d0s0    -      -      0      0    595    109
----------  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
tank        36.5G  31.5G      4      1   295K   146K
  mirror    36.5G  31.5G    126     45  8.13M  4.01M
    c1t2d0      -      -      0      3   100K   386K
    c1t3d0      -      -      0      3   104K   386K
----------  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----

Note two important points when viewing I/O statistics for virtual devices:

• First, disk space usage statistics are only available for top-level virtual devices. The way in which disk space is allocated among mirror and RAID-Z virtual devices is particular to the implementation and not easily expressed as a single number.

• Second, the numbers might not add up exactly as you would expect them to. In particular, operations across RAID-Z and mirrored devices will not be exactly equal. This difference is particularly noticeable immediately after a pool is created, as a significant amount of I/O is done directly to the disks as part of pool creation, which is not accounted for at the mirror level. Over time, these numbers gradually equalize. However, broken, unresponsive, or offline devices can affect this symmetry as well.

You can use the same set of options (interval and count) when examining virtual device statistics.