From owner-freebsd-performance@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 30 05:19:24 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: performance@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-performance@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5128616A412 for ; Mon, 30 Oct 2006 05:19:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: from ext-gw.lemis.com (ext-gw.lemis.com [150.101.14.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F0DB243D49 for ; Mon, 30 Oct 2006 05:19:22 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.135]) by ext-gw.lemis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C82B91323F1; Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:49:13 +1030 (CST) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id B48CA9C277; Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:49:13 +1030 (CST) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:49:13 +1030 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey To: Petri Helenius Message-ID: <20061030051913.GG1052@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <6.2.3.4.0.20061027180329.020bed68@localhost> <4542D941.2070204@centtech.com> <6.2.3.4.0.20061028124559.02105930@localhost> <4543AD35.30205@he.iki.fi> <20061030013211.GC1052@wantadilla.lemis.com> <45458981.8010302@he.iki.fi> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="xjyYRNSh/RebjC6o" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <45458981.8010302@he.iki.fi> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Organization: The FreeBSD Project Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 VoIP: sip:0871270137@sip.internode.on.net WWW-Home-Page: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ X-PGP-Fingerprint: 9A1B 8202 BCCE B846 F92F 09AC 22E6 F290 507A 4223 Cc: Steve Peterson , performance@freebsd.org Subject: Re: gvinum raid5 performance seems slow X-BeenThere: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Performance/tuning List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 05:19:24 -0000 --xjyYRNSh/RebjC6o Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline On Monday, 30 October 2006 at 7:11:29 +0200, Petri Helenius wrote: > Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >> >> Single stream tests aren't very good examples for RAID-5, because it >> performs writes in two steps: first it reads the old data, then it >> writes the new data. > > If it really does it this way, instead doing write-only when writing > sufficiently large blocks, that would explain the performance due to > double rotational latency wait for each stripe size. No, this works at the bio layer, where everything is cushioned on buffer cache. > Most implementations also use read/write caches to optimize this > even further. "Sufficiently large data blocks" equates to several megabytes. Currently MAXPHYS, the largest transfer request that would get to the bio layer, is 131072 bytes. This would imply a stripe size of not more than 32 kB for a five disk array, which is unrealistically small. I did consider this optimization, but it would only work if Vinum were first to buffer multiple requests, and there are all sorts of reliability issues there. For example, you'd have to lie about the first few requests that were only buffered and not actually sent out to disk. Possibly it should be done anyway. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers. --xjyYRNSh/RebjC6o Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFFRYtRIubykFB6QiMRAsL3AJ93edVFQOlzRExsHe3X7nsqLn3qqQCfanSO Ri9z3PrrDgWp2j/O8+yMhCM= =opGf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --xjyYRNSh/RebjC6o--