Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2013 17:10:57 -0700 From: Scott Long <scott4long@yahoo.com> To: Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> Cc: Karim Fodil-Lemelin <fodillemlinkarim@gmail.com>, "freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Hackers" <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>, "gibbs@FreeBSD.org Gibbs" <gibbs@freebsd.org>, "mjacob@FreeBSD.org Jacob" <mjacob@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: IBM blade server abysmal disk write performances Message-ID: <F19EEB9B-4AA5-447A-A684-597AD214CC3A@yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1301200033080.7875@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> References: <CAA3ZYrBV9f%2BcHx4jvS0UKTr%2Bp7eNUBA0S2%2Bv9oZAHqwm9VBOWw@mail.gmail.com> <6C0B86E6-195C-4D35-AE40-3D2F9F6D28FB@yahoo.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1301182217590.1478@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <1358544287.32417.251.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> <50F9CFEB.5060302@feral.com> <50F9DB9A.9050303@gmail.com> <50FABB71.6050406@freebsd.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1301200033080.7875@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>
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On Jan 19, 2013, at 4:33 PM, Wojciech Puchar = <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> wrote: >> to be enabled to get any speed-up from tagged commands. This was no >> risk with SCSI drives, since the cache did not make the drives lye >=20 > i see no correlation between interface type and possibility of lying = about command completion. >=20 Any interface that enables write cache will lie about write completions. = This is true for SAS, SATA, SCSI, and PATA (and probably FC and iSCSI). = That's the whole point of the write cache =3D-) Where things got interesting was in the days of SCSI vs PATA. There was no tagged queuing for PATA, except for a hack that allowed CDROMs to disconnect from the shared bus. So you only got 1 command at a time, = and you payed a serialized latency penalty. The only way to get reasonable write performance on PATA was to enable the write cache. Meanwhile, SCSI had TCQ and could amortize the latency penalty to the point where performance with TCQ and no WC was almost as good at with WC. This made SCSI the clear choice for performance + data safety. With SATA vs SAS, the gap is much narrower. The TCQ command set (still used by SAS) is still better than the NCQ command set, but the differences are minor enough that it doesn't matter for most = applications. Scott
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