NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMPATIBILITY | PERFORMANCE IMPLICATIONS | SUBCOMMAND | FILTERS | ENOSPC | EXAMPLES | EXIT STATUS | AVAILABILITY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

BTRFS-BALANCE(8)                Btrfs Manual                BTRFS-BALANCE(8)

NAME         top

       btrfs-balance - balance block groups on a btrfs filesystem

SYNOPSIS         top

       btrfs balance <subcommand> <args>

DESCRIPTION         top

       The primary purpose of the balance feature is to spread block groups
       across all devices so they match constraints defined by the
       respective profiles. See mkfs.btrfs(8) section PROFILES for more
       details. The scope of the balancing process can be further tuned by
       use of filters that can select the block groups to process. Balance
       works only on a mounted filesystem.
       The balance operation is cancellable by the user. The on-disk state
       of the filesystem is always consistent so an unexpected interruption
       (eg. system crash, reboot) does not corrupt the filesystem. The
       progress of the balance operation is temporarily stored and will be
       resumed upon mount, unless the mount option skip_balance is
       specified.
           Warning
           running balance without filters will take a lot of time as it
           basically rewrites the entire filesystem and needs to update all
           block pointers.
       The filters can be used to perform following actions:
       ·   convert block group profiles (filter convert)
       ·   make block group usage more compact (filter usage)
       ·   perform actions only on a given device (filters devid, drange)
       The filters can be applied to a combination of block group types
       (data, metadata, system). Note that changing system needs the force
       option.
           Note
           the balance operation needs enough work space, ie. space that is
           completely unused in the filesystem, otherwise this may lead to
           ENOSPC reports. See the section ENOSPC for more details.

COMPATIBILITY         top

           Note
           The balance subcommand also exists under the btrfs filesystem
           namespace. This still works for backward compatibility but is
           deprecated and should not be used anymore.
           Note
           A short syntax btrfs balance <path> works due to backward
           compatibility but is deprecated and should not be used anymore.
           Use btrfs balance start command instead.

PERFORMANCE IMPLICATIONS         top

       Balance operation is intense namely in the IO respect, but can be
       also CPU intense. It affects other actions on the filesystem. There
       are typically lots of data being copied from one location to another,
       and lots of metadata get updated.
       Depending on the actual block group layout, it can be also
       seek-heavy. The performance on rotational devices is noticeably worse
       than on SSDs or fast arrays.

SUBCOMMAND         top

       cancel <path>
           cancel running or paused balance, the command will block and wait
           until the actually processed blockgroup is finished
       pause <path>
           pause running balance operation, this will store the state of the
           balance progress and used filters to the filesystem
       resume <path>
           resume interrupted balance, the balance status must be stored on
           the filesystem from previous run, eg. after it was forcibly
           interrupted and mounted again with skip_balance
       start [options] <path>
           start the balance operation according to the specified filters,
           no filters will rewrite the entire filesystem. The process runs
           in the foreground.
               Note
               the balance command without filters will basically rewrite
               everything in the filesystem. The run time is potentially
               very long, depending on the filesystem size. To prevent
               starting a full balance by accident, the user is warned and
               has a few seconds to cancel the operation before it starts.
               The warning and delay can be skipped with --full-balance
               option.
           Please note that the filters must be written together with the
           -d, -m and -s options, because they’re optional and bare -d etc
           also work and mean no filters.
           Options
           -d[<filters>]
               act on data block groups, see FILTERS section for details
               about filters
           -m[<filters>]
               act on metadata chunks, see FILTERS section for details about
               filters
           -s[<filters>]
               act on system chunks (requires -f), see FILTERS section for
               details about filters.
           -v
               be verbose and print balance filter arguments
           -f
               force reducing of metadata integrity, eg. when going from
               raid1 to single
           --background|--bg
               run the balance operation asynchronously in the background,
               uses fork(2) to start the process that calls the kernel ioctl
       status [-v] <path>
           Show status of running or paused balance.
           If -v option is given, output will be verbose.

FILTERS         top

       From kernel 3.3 onwards, btrfs balance can limit its action to a
       subset of the whole filesystem, and can be used to change the
       replication configuration (e.g. moving data from single to RAID1).
       This functionality is accessed through the -d, -m or -s options to
       btrfs balance start, which filter on data, metadata and system blocks
       respectively.
       A filter has the following structure: type[=params][,type=...]
       The available types are:
       profiles=<profiles>
           Balances only block groups with the given profiles. Parameters
           are a list of profile names separated by "|" (pipe).
       usage=<percent>, usage=<range>
           Balances only block groups with usage under the given percentage.
           The value of 0 is allowed and will clean up completely unused
           block groups, this should not require any new work space
           allocated. You may want to use usage=0 in case balance is
           returning ENOSPC and your filesystem is not too full.
           The argument may be a single value or a range. The single value N
           means at most N percent used, equivalent to ..N range syntax.
           Kernels prior to 4.4 accept only the single value format. The
           minimum range boundary is inclusive, maximum is exclusive.
       devid=<id>
           Balances only block groups which have at least one chunk on the
           given device. To list devices with ids use btrfs filesystem show.
       drange=<range>
           Balance only block groups which overlap with the given byte range
           on any device. Use in conjunction with devid to filter on a
           specific device. The parameter is a range specified as
           start..end.
       vrange=<range>
           Balance only block groups which overlap with the given byte range
           in the filesystem’s internal virtual address space. This is the
           address space that most reports from btrfs in the kernel log use.
           The parameter is a range specified as start..end.
       convert=<profile>
           Convert each selected block group to the given profile name
           identified by parameters.
               Note
               starting with kernel 4.5, the data chunks can be converted
               to/from the DUP profile on a single device.
               Note
               starting with kernel 4.6, all profiles can be converted
               to/from DUP on multi-device filesystems.
       limit=<number>, limit=<range>
           Process only given number of chunks, after all filters are
           applied. This can be used to specifically target a chunk in
           connection with other filters (drange, vrange) or just simply
           limit the amount of work done by a single balance run.
           The argument may be a single value or a range. The single value N
           means at most N chunks, equivalent to ..N range syntax. Kernels
           prior to 4.4 accept only the single value format. The range
           minimum and maximum are inclusive.
       stripes=<range>
           Balance only block groups which have the given number of stripes.
           The parameter is a range specified as start..end. Makes sense for
           block group profiles that utilize striping, ie. RAID0/10/5/6. The
           range minimum and maximum are inclusive.
       soft
           Takes no parameters. Only has meaning when converting between
           profiles. When doing convert from one profile to another and soft
           mode is on, chunks that already have the target profile are left
           untouched. This is useful e.g. when half of the filesystem was
           converted earlier but got cancelled.
           The soft mode switch is (like every other filter) per-type. For
           example, this means that we can convert metadata chunks the
           "hard" way while converting data chunks selectively with soft
           switch.
       Profile names, used in profiles and convert are one of: raid0, raid1,
       raid10, raid5, raid6, dup, single. The mixed data/metadata profiles
       can be converted in the same way, but it’s conversion between mixed
       and non-mixed is not implemented. For the constraints of the profiles
       please refer to mkfs.btrfs(8), section PROFILES.

ENOSPC         top

       The way balance operates, it usually needs to temporarily create a
       new block group and move the old data there. For that it needs work
       space, otherwise it fails for ENOSPC reasons. This is not the same
       ENOSPC as if the free space is exhausted. This refers to the space on
       the level of block groups.
       The free work space can be calculated from the output of the btrfs
       filesystem show command:
              Label: 'BTRFS'  uuid: 8a9d72cd-ead3-469d-b371-9c7203276265
                      Total devices 2 FS bytes used 77.03GiB
                      devid    1 size 53.90GiB used 51.90GiB path /dev/sdc2
                      devid    2 size 53.90GiB used 51.90GiB path /dev/sde1
       size - used = free work space 53.90GiB - 51.90GiB = 2.00GiB
       An example of a filter that does not require workspace is usage=0.
       This will scan through all unused block groups of a given type and
       will reclaim the space. After that it might be possible to run other
       filters.
       CONVERSIONS ON MULTIPLE DEVICES
       Conversion to profiles based on striping (RAID0, RAID5/6) require the
       work space on each device. An interrupted balance may leave partially
       filled block groups that might consume the work space.

EXAMPLES         top

       A more comprehensive example when going from one to multiple devices,
       and back, can be found in section TYPICAL USECASES of
       btrfs-device(8).
   MAKING BLOCK GROUP LAYOUT MORE COMPACT
       The layout of block groups is not normally visible, most tools report
       only summarized numbers of free or used space, but there are still
       some hints provided.
       Let’s use the following real life example and start with the output:
           $ btrfs filesystem df /path
           Data, single: total=75.81GiB, used=64.44GiB
           System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
           Metadata, RAID1: total=15.87GiB, used=8.84GiB
           GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B
       Roughly calculating for data, 75G - 64G = 11G, the used/total ratio
       is about 85%. How can we can interpret that:
       ·   chunks are filled by 85% on average, ie. the usage filter with
           anything smaller than 85 will likely not affect anything
       ·   in a more realistic scenario, the space is distributed unevenly,
           we can assume there are completely used chunks and the remaining
           are partially filled
       Compacting the layout could be used on both. In the former case it
       would spread data of a given chunk to the others and removing it.
       Here we can estimate that roughly 850 MiB of data have to be moved
       (85% of a 1 GiB chunk).
       In the latter case, targeting the partially used chunks will have to
       move less data and thus will be faster. A typical filter command
       would look like:
           # btrfs balance start -dusage=50 /path
           Done, had to relocate 2 out of 97 chunks
           $ btrfs filesystem df /path
           Data, single: total=74.03GiB, used=64.43GiB
           System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
           Metadata, RAID1: total=15.87GiB, used=8.84GiB
           GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B
       As you can see, the total amount of data is decreased by just 1 GiB,
       which is an expected result. Let’s see what will happen when we
       increase the estimated usage filter.
           # btrfs balance start -dusage=85 /path
           Done, had to relocate 13 out of 95 chunks
           $ btrfs filesystem df /path
           Data, single: total=68.03GiB, used=64.43GiB
           System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
           Metadata, RAID1: total=15.87GiB, used=8.85GiB
           GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B
       Now the used/total ratio is about 94% and we moved about 74G - 68G =
       6G of data to the remaining blockgroups, ie. the 6GiB are now free of
       filesystem structures, and can be reused for new data or metadata
       block groups.
       We can do a similar exercise with the metadata block groups, but this
       should not be typically necessary, unless the used/total ration is
       really off. Here the ratio is roughly 50% but the difference as an
       absolute number is "a few gigabytes", which can be considered normal
       for a workload with snapshots or reflinks updated frequently.
           # btrfs balance start -musage=50 /path
           Done, had to relocate 4 out of 89 chunks
           $ btrfs filesystem df /path
           Data, single: total=68.03GiB, used=64.43GiB
           System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
           Metadata, RAID1: total=14.87GiB, used=8.85GiB
           GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B
       Just 1 GiB decrease, which possibly means there are block groups with
       good utilization. Making the metadata layout more compact would in
       turn require updating more metadata structures, ie. lots of IO. As
       running out of metadata space is a more severe problem, it’s not
       necessary to keep the utilization ratio too high. For the purpose of
       this example, let’s see the effects of further compaction:
           # btrfs balance start -musage=70 /path
           Done, had to relocate 13 out of 88 chunks
           $ btrfs filesystem df .
           Data, single: total=68.03GiB, used=64.43GiB
           System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
           Metadata, RAID1: total=11.97GiB, used=8.83GiB
           GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B
   GETTING RID OF COMPLETELY UNUSED BLOCK GROUPS
       Normally the balance operation needs a work space, to temporarily
       move the data before the old block groups gets removed. If there’s no
       work space, it ends with no space left.
       There’s a special case when the block groups are completely unused,
       possibly left after removing lots of files or deleting snapshots.
       Removing empty block groups is automatic since 3.18. The same can be
       achieved manually with a notable exception that this operation does
       not require the work space. Thus it can be used to reclaim unused
       block groups to make it available.
           # btrfs balance start -dusage=0 /path
       This should lead to decrease in the total numbers in the btrfs
       filesystem df output.

EXIT STATUS         top

       btrfs balance returns a zero exit status if it succeeds. Non zero is
       returned in case of failure.

AVAILABILITY         top

       btrfs is part of btrfs-progs. Please refer to the btrfs wiki
       http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org for further details.

SEE ALSO         top

       mkfs.btrfs(8), btrfs-device(8)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the btrfs-progs (btrfs filesystem tools)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Btrfs_source_repositories⟩.
       If you have a bug report for this manual page, see 
       ⟨https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Problem_FAQ#How_do_I_report_bugs_and_issues.3F⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kdave/btrfs-progs.git⟩
       on 2017-07-05.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
       version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-
       date source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to
       the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
Btrfs v4.6.1                     07/05/2017                 BTRFS-BALANCE(8)

Pages that refer to this page: btrfs(8)btrfs-convert(8)btrfs-device(8)btrfstune(8)