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Disk I/O abuse?
KernelPanic
Member
Hi,
I have a VPS with a LEB provider & it was being used for private torrent purpose. I was running rtorrent on it. Yesterday, I got an email from the provider that the VPS has been suspended for disk I/O abuse & this is the top output they sent me in the email:
Cpu(s): 0.3%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 52.5%id, 46.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Does this mean that my VPS was the cause of this I/O wait?
By the way, at the time of suspension, the rtorrent should've been downloading at about ~200KB/s at max & the upload would not have been more than ~500KB/s. These are approximate figures, judging by the health of torrent that I checked couple of minutes before the suspension. Also, there were multiple torrents running at that time, but the overall speed wouldn't have increased the above figures.
As I'm new to this VPS stuff, I was under the impression that the disk I/O would be around Down+up speed & adding some system related operations using the disk I/O.
So, before asking the provider for un-suspension, I wanted to know if the top output they sent really signifies that my VPS abused the system?
EDIT:
Forgot to mention, It's on OpenVZ platform.
rtorrent default settings:
Upload slots: 50
Min peers: 100
Max peers: 200
Max open files: 128
Max http connections: 32
Bandwidth settings were limited to 10MB/s on a 1Gbps network. On average it was using less than 1MB/s.
Thanks.
Comments
Based on the output you provided there's definitely some I/O usage but if you're running OpenVZ it does not prove you're the cause of it. The output from iotop would have been better.
its as simple as that... torrent leads to disk i/o abuse. If your provider DOES allow torrents then ask their limits and set your vps to honour them. else its time to pack your bags. running a torrent unrestricted( it seems like you never set a limit on bandwidth or number of connections) is like opening a bank vault in a crowded market place.
@KuJoe
Sorry, I forgot to mention. Yes, it's on OpenVZ.
But, that's the only thing that they sent to me, top output. Should I ask them for some more stats?
@peppr
Thanks.
It's on 1Gbps network. So, I've set the limit to 10MB/s. But it hardly crosses 2MB/s. Only once it was around 4MB/s when I added two parallel downloads. But, on average it has always been less than 1MB/s.
Regarding the connections, I'm running the default settings:
Upload slots: 50
Min peers: 100
Max peers: 200
Max open files: 128
Max http connections: 32
Are you doing a single torrent? Or many torrents? Many torrents at once will cause high disk i/o, since it's needing to read/write many blocks from multiple sources/destinations.
@Damian You are right. I remember some time ago when i was downloading rainbow tables (some 33 GB of data) I was more curious about the I/O of the torrent since that was quite big and had the time to study the problem for longer. It has been at around 5-6 MB up and down (so like 10+ total) running on a VPS on (at the time) D510 Atom computer with a lazy 2 TB Samsung HDD. I/O was just at about 10%, rarely above 12.
Now, it is true that the other VPSes were not generating much I/O at that time, I mostly have routers on it and the FreeNAS one was probably idle as most of the time, however, the machine only had that 2 TB HDD, as such any swap of the OS was done there (my current main home server has a dedicated 2.5" HDD for the OS). I run VMWare server, that is not known to be too nice on the HDD...
M
When you use torrents please keep in mind this:
In some places it is legal (or not-so-illegal) to download torrents, for your own use. However almost everywhere it is illegal to distribute/seed torrents.
I regularly download off torrents the ISOs I use and I use lots and install them in VMs all the time without upgrade unless I test the upgrading process itself. I seed them till the disk is full and then I delete the older ones that are more frequently updated and each time there is a new version I download.
Ppl that pay for mirrors should be happy, and it is not illegal to seed/distribute torrents, unless the files are illegal.
M
HarrySingh - Fastvps.co, right?
They have more potential to, but 100 quiet torrents with no leechers won't use more disk IO than 1 quiet torrent with no leechers.
BuyVM is not hard on torrents if i recall correct
I'm running rtorrent with similar configuration on BuyVM too, so far it hasn't caused any such issue there.
@Damian
On average I run 1-2 downloads (~100MB each). At the time of suspension there was only 1 download (4GB+), that too wouldn't have been downloading at more than 100KB/s, because there was only 1 seeder & about 200 leechers stuck at 40%.
But, there are about 10-15 torrents in seeding state, out of those around 4-5 would have been active at given moment.
@Maounique
So, it is wrong to assume that if we download at about 1MB/s then the Disk I/O should be somewhere around it (on the higher side).
In actual, it causes much more I/O than that?
@Gary
Yes, it's on FastVPS.co.
Any particular reason you asked?
@Everyone
Thanks for the response. But, let's just not get into the legal/illegal part of torrents here.
The node that you were on may have been overloaded on disk I/O. For example, on one of our nodes, there are 7 clients with torrent programs seeding at the moment, and combined, they're using a total of 2.3% disk i/o.
Well judging by their pricing, the nodes are definitely being oversold.
Before requesting the un-suspension, I just wanted to know if my VPS might have been the cause of this whole I/O. In that case I would have apologized to them, politely asked them to un-suspend the VPS & fixed whatever was causing it. But, it looks like I'll have to ask them for further proofs, that it was actually my VPS which was abusing the disk I/O.
@Damian
The support just replied back to my ticket & they are telling me that those figures were for mine VPS alone & not the whole node.
This was the whole output they sent me:
Does this mean, it was only for my node?
@HarrySingh They are retarded man, and without enough technical knowledge, I think even without your rtorrent running you will get similar stats.
Since it's OpenVZ, that means that 46.8% of your 0.73 load average was due to I/O on your VPS, not the entire hardware node.
As @kujoe mentioned, the output from iotop would be more useful.
You can ask them to move you to a different I/O pool classification.
Yeah, it is yours, but it is conceivable to be that high at any moment since you allow more than one file in the same time and there can be severe spikes.
M
@yomero
LOL.
@Damian
Thanks.
I've asked them for the output of iotop.
Also, I've linked them to this discussion, so they can get a proper idea what I'm asking them. As, I might not understand fully the technical details mentioned in few of the posts here.
@Maounique
Hmm thanks.
I'm running a similar configuration rtorrent on BuyVM. Just to be on the safe side, I will check with them if it is running under limits. Don't want to cause any trouble because of it.
If you have to have more than one download in progress, prioritise and set one, maximum 2 at a time. They will complete one by one and will be much easier on the I/O side, and will probably complete faster and give less fragmentation too.
Take that with a grain of salt, tho, I dont know how it is for torrents with poor seeding, but from what I can think now, better let the poor seeding at the end, if there is only one seeder, it is better to let the others get parts that you will get in turn in a breeze once the other priorities finish, besides, they wont need to get those parts from you, so your I/O will ease even further. It wont be slower, overall, I think.
Best of all, tho, dont let run many int he same time. They get fragmented and the search for uploadable parts is very hard on the I/O. If you have place, copy them in another place, delete the original dl, and move back if you intend to keep on seeding. Linux doesnt fragment as much as windows, but there are situations when it cant be avoided.
M
Yea, we actually use something called a "RAID", imagine that
Francisco
As @maounique and @Francisco have kinda touched on: it makes me think that your host's node is overloaded on disk i/o, either from too many users, an abusive user, or poor hardware selection, and they looked at their process list, saw "rtorrent", made the connection that rtorrent = bad, and then suspended you.
RAID can be of many kinds
It depends on how they set it up. Bad RAIDs can be slower than 1 HDD, sometimes much slower. I prefer lately fast arrays with minimal redundancy and maximal incremental 3+ sets back-up, twice a day in 2 different places. But this is me, my luck proved rotten in the past, so...
M
I would switch providers if I were the OP.
Which is fine when torrents aren't allowed
I'm psychic.
Nah, they hit me with the same shit. They're worthless. Ditch 'em and move onto a better provider.
I thought everyone RAIDs their drives now. lol
I would be scared to be running without raid.
LOL, I expected this to be FastVPS.co. I once purchased a VPS from them, got a 50% recurring discount when they were first listed on LEB. I was only with them for a month because of how SLOW the node was. I couldn't even do yum update without it freezing! They also threatened me to remove my VPS because they said I was abusing I/O... Umm... No, I wasn't. All I did was install OpenPanel on Debian 6 and it was idle 24/7. It wasn't touched after I installed OpenPanel.
Not at all. In fact, without naming names, I've seen quite a few budget hosts who are based in Wholesale Internet and Datashack state that they offer hardware RAID setups... which unless they colo their own equipment is impossible, since neither datacenter offers hardware RAID.
That leaves software RAID as the only option in certain datacenters, which one could easily argue against using at all.
After my last response they un-suspeneded my VPS without providing iotop output & told me that I'll get an email from their system admin shortly.
So, next day they suspended the service again & said that my VPS has a great impact on the host node. Fair enough, they gotta take care of other user's on the node too. To my surprise they even issued the refund for the February payment, which neither did I asked for nor I was going to :P
The reason I didn't switched the host or such is that, I didn't even needed the VPS. Like most of us here, I too, liked to jump (not anymore :P) on a new VPS bandwagon once a new offer is posted, even if it is of no use to me. So, I left rtorrent running on FastVPS & didn't bothered much about the downtime they had (almost everyday)
I've got two VPS with BuyVM. The 128Mb one is being used once in a while (rtorrent), but the 512Mb one is just lying there unused, since the day I purchased it. I guess, as much as hard it is to get a BuyVM VPS, it is even harder to let them go even if it's of no use to you
All in all, it wasn't a bad experience after all with FastVPS, as I wasn't expecting anything from them at those prices. Atleast it'll save me couple of bucks now
@DotVPS
From the IP info, it seems to be hosted at DataShack.
@Gary
LOL. Yea, I just looked at the comments on their LEB offer & got the story
@subigo
What exactly is wrong with SW RAID?