From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 1 19:42:13 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D27F416A41F for ; Thu, 1 Dec 2005 19:42:13 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from drew@mykitchentable.net) Received: from relay02.roc.ny.frontiernet.net (relay02.roc.ny.frontiernet.net [66.133.182.165]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8E91A43D60 for ; Thu, 1 Dec 2005 19:42:01 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from drew@mykitchentable.net) Received: from filter07.roc.ny.frontiernet.net (filter07.roc.ny.frontiernet.net [66.133.183.74]) by relay02.roc.ny.frontiernet.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 57F9437065A for ; Thu, 1 Dec 2005 19:40:01 +0000 (UTC) Received: from relay02.roc.ny.frontiernet.net ([66.133.182.165]) by filter07.roc.ny.frontiernet.net (filter07.roc.ny.frontiernet.net [66.133.183.74]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 25646-05-29 for ; Thu, 1 Dec 2005 19:40:01 +0000 (UTC) Received: from blacklamb.mykitchentable.net (67-51-149-163.dsl1.elk.ca.frontiernet.net [67.51.149.163]) by relay02.roc.ny.frontiernet.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id E3702370ED4 for ; Thu, 1 Dec 2005 19:40:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [165.107.42.123] (unknown [165.107.42.123]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by blacklamb.mykitchentable.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9193C154280 for ; Thu, 1 Dec 2005 11:39:58 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <438F518D.4000105@mykitchentable.net> Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 11:39:57 -0800 From: Drew Tomlinson User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Questions Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-2.3.2 (20050629) at filter07.roc.ny.frontiernet.net Subject: geom_stripe and Performance X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 19:42:13 -0000 When using FBSD 4.x, I used vinum to stripe my /usr across two drives. Performance seemed good but I never used any tools to actually measure it. Now I've upgraded to 5.4 (and will upgrade to 6.0 soon) and disk performance doesn't seem very good. When upgrading to 5.4, I ditched vinum in favor of geom_stripe as that seemed to be the way to go from my reading on the lists. My box is a small personal server I use in my home. It provides mail services, personal web space, etc but is not heavily used. The box has two 9GB SCSI drives in it. I set it up with a 500 MB root partition on one drive, 500 MB swap on the other, and then built the /usr stripe with the remaining space on both drives. Other partitions such are /var, /tmp, /home, etc. are symlinked to /usr/var, /usr/tmp, /usr/home, etc. as described in The Complete FreeBSD 3rd edition. When I created the vinum stripes, I followed instructions in the vinum man pages and docs at http://vinum.org. As I recall, those docs suggested a large stripe size that was not a power of 2 to reduce seeking. 'man tuning' also recommends a large stripe under the "STRIPING DISKS" section and suggests a stripe size of 1152 blocks. However when I created the geom_stripes using the instructions in the gstripe man page, I created stripes with a size of 128K as indicated in the example. Performance doesn't seem nearly as good as it did with the vinum stripe. However I don't really know how to test this. So does the recommendation of a larger stripe size from the vinum and tuning docs hold true for geom_stripe? Or is geom_stripe different in some way and the smaller stripe sizes are better. What are some recommended stripe setups for my situation? Thanks for your input, Drew -- Visit The Alchemist's Warehouse Magic Tricks, DVDs, Videos, Books, & More! http://www.alchemistswarehouse.com