From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Feb 8 04:46:15 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 30357106566C for ; Mon, 8 Feb 2010 04:46:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from alex@mailinglist.ahhyes.net) Received: from mail05.syd.optusnet.com.au (mail05.syd.optusnet.com.au [211.29.132.186]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BFC588FC15 for ; Mon, 8 Feb 2010 04:46:14 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [172.16.0.1] (c122-106-16-228.rivrw1.nsw.optusnet.com.au [122.106.16.228]) by mail05.syd.optusnet.com.au (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id o184kCQK020563 for ; Mon, 8 Feb 2010 15:46:13 +1100 Message-ID: <4B6F970F.3060909@mailinglist.ahhyes.net> Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:46:07 +1100 From: alex User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090817) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <4B6ED119.2060308@mailinglist.ahhyes.net> <201002080224.01343.pieter@degoeje.nl> In-Reply-To: <201002080224.01343.pieter@degoeje.nl> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: FreeBSD's UFS vs Ext4 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: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:46:15 -0000 Pieter de Goeje wrote: > > The fact that the limit is 86MB/sec (which is very low for a raid0 array) > makes me think the box suffers from sub optimal network performance during a > simple stream test like yours. This could be due to FreeBSD having a poor > network driver for your particular NIC or could be due to insufficient tuning > of the TCP parameters for this particular test. > Hi Pieter. You are right about there being a number of possibilities, however: *The same machine, which over the years has had a number of revisions of freebsd on it (have buildworlded the thing from 7-> 7.1 -> 7.2 -> 8), the performance was always roughly the same amongst the versions, I dont agree with the possibility of the ftp server being 'slow' as I am the only person who copies data to that machine, and the machine is always under a very low (almost non existent) load. * Network card is an Intel Pro 1000, on the server. This is a PCI card (not pci-e), so I believe PCI bus bandwidth limitations may be responsible for me not being able to achieve the maximum 100MB/s network rate (as you mention that 86MB/s is slow for raid0) * The intel network card driver on freebsd and linux are both fairly rock solid and well written. I dont see it being an issue with NIC drivers (they are not vastly different). * Both OS's were stock standard installs, no jumbo frames enabled, no fiddling with sysctl network values. I am happy with 86MB/s anyway, It's a huge improvement of the 60MB/s barrier I could never get past when that machine was running FreeBSD. To get the rest of the speed, I'd probably have to install a pci-e card on the server. I do suspect personally that the ext4 filesystem is the reason for the difference here, since ext4 has a number of features such as deferred disk writes etc. Even deleting a large file off that raid array I can see a difference, prior to reformatting, i deleted a 190GB file off the raid, under UFS the delete took quite some time (well over 10 seconds), under ext4 the deletion of the same size file took about 3 seconds. But what I said with ext4 being faster then the aging UFS still rings true in my mind, look at the recent Phoronix benchmarks for yourself and see (10 pages of benchmarks). http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=freebsd8_benchmarks&num=1 (skip to page 7 of the benchmarks if you want to see the I/O stuff relating to disk performance)