Linux buffer cache effect on IO writes?

I'm copying large files (3 x 30G) between 2 filesystems on a Linux server (kernel 2.6.37, 16 cores, 32G RAM) and I'm getting poor performance. I suspect that the usage of the buffer cache is killing the I/O performance.

To try and narrow down the problem I used fio directly on the SAS disk to monitor the performance.

Here is the output of 2 fio runs (the first with direct=1, the second one direct=0):

Config:

[test]
rw=write
blocksize=32k
size=20G
filename=/dev/sda
# direct=1

Run 1:

test: (g=0): rw=write, bs=32K-32K/32K-32K, ioengine=sync, iodepth=1
Starting 1 process
Jobs: 1 (f=1): [W] [100.0% done] [0K/205M /s] [0/6K iops] [eta 00m:00s]
test: (groupid=0, jobs=1): err= 0: pid=4667
  write: io=20,480MB, bw=199MB/s, iops=6,381, runt=102698msec
    clat (usec): min=104, max=13,388, avg=152.06, stdev=72.43
    bw (KB/s) : min=192448, max=213824, per=100.01%, avg=204232.82, stdev=4084.67
  cpu          : usr=3.37%, sys=16.55%, ctx=655410, majf=0, minf=29
  IO depths    : 1=100.0%, 2=0.0%, 4=0.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
     submit    : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
     complete  : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
     issued r/w: total=0/655360, short=0/0
     lat (usec): 250=99.50%, 500=0.45%, 750=0.01%, 1000=0.01%
     lat (msec): 2=0.01%, 4=0.02%, 10=0.01%, 20=0.01%

Run status group 0 (all jobs):
  WRITE: io=20,480MB, aggrb=199MB/s, minb=204MB/s, maxb=204MB/s, mint=102698msec,    maxt=102698msec

Disk stats (read/write):
  sda: ios=0/655238, merge=0/0, ticks=0/79552, in_queue=78640, util=76.55%

Run 2:

test: (g=0): rw=write, bs=32K-32K/32K-32K, ioengine=sync, iodepth=1
Starting 1 process
Jobs: 1 (f=1): [W] [100.0% done] [0K/0K /s] [0/0 iops] [eta 00m:00s]     
test: (groupid=0, jobs=1): err= 0: pid=4733
  write: io=20,480MB, bw=91,265KB/s, iops=2,852, runt=229786msec
    clat (usec): min=16, max=127K, avg=349.53, stdev=4694.98
    bw (KB/s) : min=56013, max=1390016, per=101.47%, avg=92607.31, stdev=167453.17
  cpu          : usr=0.41%, sys=6.93%, ctx=21128, majf=0, minf=33
  IO depths    : 1=100.0%, 2=0.0%, 4=0.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
     submit    : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
     complete  : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0%
     issued r/w: total=0/655360, short=0/0
     lat (usec): 20=5.53%, 50=93.89%, 100=0.02%, 250=0.01%, 500=0.01%
     lat (msec): 2=0.01%, 4=0.01%, 10=0.01%, 20=0.01%, 50=0.12%
     lat (msec): 100=0.38%, 250=0.04%

Run status group 0 (all jobs):
  WRITE: io=20,480MB, aggrb=91,265KB/s, minb=93,455KB/s, maxb=93,455KB/s, mint=229786msec, maxt=229786msec

Disk stats (read/write):
  sda: ios=8/79811, merge=7/7721388, ticks=9/32418456, in_queue=32471983, util=98.98%

I'm not knowledgeable enough with fio to interpret the results, but I don't expect the overall performance using the buffer cache to be 50% less than with O_DIRECT.

Can someone help me interpret the fio output?
Are there any kernel tunings that could fix/minimize the problem?

Thanks a lot,

With O_DIRECT, the kernel bypasses all the usual caching mechanisms, and writes directly to the disk. Since you're not using O_SYNC, if caching is enabled (not using O_DIRECT), then the kernel could lie back to you that "yeah, yeah, I've written it, don't worry!", even tho it did not write it to the disk, it's only been written to some cache (disk cache/page cache/...).

Linux buffer cache effect on IO writes?

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