From owner-freebsd-stable Sun Jun 10 20:21:48 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from point.osg.gov.bc.ca (point.osg.gov.bc.ca [142.32.102.44]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AB0AD37B401 for ; Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:21:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by point.osg.gov.bc.ca (8.8.7/8.8.8) id UAA17139; Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:21:18 -0700 Received: from passer.osg.gov.bc.ca(142.32.110.29) via SMTP by point.osg.gov.bc.ca, id smtpda17137; Sun Jun 10 20:21:10 2001 Received: (from uucp@localhost) by passer.osg.gov.bc.ca (8.11.4/8.9.1) id f5B3L6h02591; Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:21:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from UNKNOWN(10.1.2.1), claiming to be "cwsys.cwsent.com" via SMTP by passer9.cwsent.com, id smtpdeN2589; Sun Jun 10 20:20:50 2001 Received: (from uucp@localhost) by cwsys.cwsent.com (8.11.4/8.9.1) id f5B3KnU20896; Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:20:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200106110320.f5B3KnU20896@cwsys.cwsent.com> Received: from localhost.cwsent.com(127.0.0.1), claiming to be "cwsys" via SMTP by localhost.cwsent.com, id smtpdd20881; Sun Jun 10 20:20:21 2001 X-Mailer: exmh version 2.3.1 01/18/2001 with nmh-1.0.4 Reply-To: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group From: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group X-Sender: schubert To: franco@extreme-ware.com Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 4.x stable & large NFS services In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:13:32 PDT." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:20:21 -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message , "Franco Gasp erino" writes: > > Hello list, > > I'm in the process of creating a large NFS system for exporting mail > spools (Maildir) to several frontend mail servers, and wanted to know about > potential issues to look for. The system will be a dual p3 with a lot of ram > and hardware raid, and i'm testing fbsd 4.3 vs linux 2.4 for NFS sharing. > I'm concerned about SMP (not speed, but stability) on fbsd, and am looking > for honest advice on which use. I will be running my own tests on each, but > look forward to input from the list. Linux mounts its filesystems async so to keep the comparison fair you will either have to mount your NFS exported filesystems async or use softupdates. Softupdates will give you the reliability of Synchronous Metadata (SMD) writes with almost the performance (3% loss) as async mounts. Linux breaks the NFS protocol by notifying the client that writes have completed even though they have not, i.e. the write has been completed to the buffer cache but not the disk. This can greatly improve performance. To perform the same asynchronous NFS writes on FreeBSD you will need to set sysctl MIB vfs.nfs.async to 1. Additionally, levelling the playing field by using the same hardware configurations on both machines and networks should give you data you can analyse. Regards, Phone: (250)387-8437 Cy Schubert Fax: (250)387-5766 Team Leader, Sun/Alpha Team Internet: Cy.Schubert@osg.gov.bc.ca Open Systems Group, ITSD, ISTA Province of BC To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message