Re: Very low disk performance on 5.x

From: Steven Hartland (killing_at_multiplay.co.uk)
Date: 05/02/05

  • Next message: Poul-Henning Kamp: "Re: Very low disk performance on 5.x"
    To: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>
    Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 20:09:39 +0100
    
    

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>

    >>Ok from what your saying it sounds like RAID on FreeBSD is useless
    >>apart to create large disks. Now to the damaging facts the results
    >>from my two days worth of testing:
    >
    > Now, cool down a moment and lets talk about what you _really_ have
    > measured.
    >
    > You have measured the end to end performance: you include /dev/zero,
    > dd(1), filesystem, disk device driver, hardware and disks.
    >
    > As such that is a fair end-user benchmark, but unfortunately it
    > doesn't really tell us anything useful for the purpose of this
    > discussion.

    Yes but the end-user performance is really the only thing that matters.
    There are two killer issues here:
    1. Write performance being nearly 3x that of read performance
    2. Read performance only equalling that of single disk.

    > If you are going to do a high-performance setup, you should not
    > just take the "out-of-box" settings, you should optimize for
    > the configurations particular features.

    I'm quite willing to test and optimise things but so far no one has
    had any concrete suggestions on that to try. As such I've done
    all the benchmarks I've done varying the one key thing I could
    find stripe size. If there are others please do tell and I'll test.
    N.B. I need to get this machine into production so I only have
    a limited time span available, I've already sacrificed a full install
    with 700GB of data to run the previous tests.

    This is just me though I think we do need to strive for good out
    the box performance in these types of senarios

    > Testing end-to-end means that we have very little to go from to
    > find out where things went wrong in any one instance.

    To eliminate various parts of the subsystems I've just tested:
    dd if=/dev/da0 of=/dev/null bs=64k count=100000
    Read: 220Mb/s

    dd if=/dev/da0s1 of=/dev/null bs=64k count=100000
    Read: 220Mb/s

    dd if=/dev/da0s1f of=/dev/null bs=64k count=100000
    Read: 220Mb/s

    Compared with:
    dd if=/usr/testfile of=/dev/null bs=64k count=100000
    Read: 152Mb/s

    So looks like the FS is adding quite an overhead ~70Mb/s ( 60% )
    although from the linux tests we know the disks are capable
    of at least another 40Mb/s

    > But anyway: here are some questions which I wonder about ?

    > Does the linux and FreeBSD filesystem offer the same semantics
    > with respect to integrity ? Ie: if one is asyncronous mode
    > the comparison is not a fair comparison. Just because you
    > chose the default in each case doesn't mean you got the same
    > thing.

    FreeBSD using default UFS no special options in fstab.
    Linux using Reiser again no special options.
    I'm not familiar with the intrecuies of either FS so cant answer
    the direct question here.

    > Does any of the drivers change the settings/modes of the controllers
    > use of cache ? (this may be hard to determine without looking
    > at driver sources.

    FreeBSD used both the downloadable module and the built in
    module. Linux used the downloadable module. If these vary in any
    way I dont know may be Paul could answer that as he did the driver
    port.

    > In particular, are you sure that the RAID-5 logical device was
    > in the same exact state and location for each run ?

    Yep I created the RAID5 logical volume the same way via the BIOS
    for each test the only varient being the stripe size.

    > Did you remember to disable all the debugging in FreeBSD 6-Current ?
    > (see top of src/UPDATING)

    Yep all debugging was disabled on my second run on current. Made
    3MB/s difference IIRC ( reported value was without debugging ).
    FreeBSD was tried with and without SMP no difference Linux was
    SMP for all tests.
    N.B. Current had at least on out of order lock issue while I was using
    it but not while the tests where going on.

        Steve

    ================================================
    This e.mail is private and confidential between Multiplay (UK) Ltd. and the person or entity to whom it is addressed. In the event of misdirection, the recipient is prohibited from using, copying, printing or otherwise disseminating it or any information contained in it.

    In the event of misdirection, illegible or incomplete transmission please telephone (023) 8024 3137
    or return the E.mail to postmaster@multiplay.co.uk.

    _______________________________________________
    freebsd-performance@freebsd.org mailing list
    http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-performance
    To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-performance-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"


  • Next message: Poul-Henning Kamp: "Re: Very low disk performance on 5.x"

    Relevant Pages

    • Cannot boot in PowerPC 9600/300. What should I do?
      ... I tried to use both BootX and floppy disks to install linux, ... Detected ADB keyboard, type ANSI. ... Macintosh non-volatile memory driver v1.0 ...
      (comp.os.linux.powerpc)
    • hard disk not accessable via second ide controller
      ... I have a recently installed Debian with Linux 2.4.18-bf2.4. ... I have not yet moved any data to the 40 Gb disks. ... 00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, ... Serial driver version 5.05c with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ ...
      (Debian-User)
    • Re: Format Hard Disk; Cant Identify Original XP Home Software
      ... | software disks bundled with the new computers in a drawer (along with the ... Dell XP discs are BIOS locked to Dell computers and don't require ... installation purposes. ... The Chipset and driver utilities found on the "Resource and Driver" CD ...
      (microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain)
    • Re: Format Hard Disk; Cant Identify Original XP Home Software
      ... > | Windows XP Home and included the OEM XP software on a CD. ... > | software disks bundled with the new computers in a drawer (along with the ... > Dell XP discs are BIOS locked to Dell computers and don't require ... > The Chipset and driver utilities found on the "Resource and Driver" CD ...
      (microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain)
    • Re: [PATCH] make ide-cd handle non-2kB sector sizes
      ... inadequate name) the driver for all ATAPI disks as opposed to ATA disks ... >> the latter, with sd, not sr being the appropriate driver. ... send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in ...
      (Linux-Kernel)