From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 16 10:58:37 2011 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 EE29A1065672 for ; Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:58:37 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@top-consulting.net) Received: from smtp3.emailarray.com (smtp3.emailarray.com [65.39.216.17]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 854248FC22 for ; Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:58:37 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 31383 invoked by uid 89); 16 Sep 2011 10:31:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO localhost) (freebsd@top-consulting.net@192.168.1.6) (POLARISLOCAL) by smtp3.emailarray.com with (DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA encrypted) SMTP; 16 Sep 2011 10:31:54 -0000 Received: from modemcable238.94-200-24.mc.videotron.ca (modemcable238.94-200-24.mc.videotron.ca [24.200.94.238]) by mail.top-consulting.net (Horde Framework) with HTTP; Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:31:53 -0400 Message-ID: <20110916063153.200375qdq59crf8c@mail.top-consulting.net> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:31:53 -0400 From: freebsd@top-consulting.net To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) H3 (4.3.7) X-Originating-IP: 24.200.94.238 X-DSPAM-Result: Innocent X-DSPAM-Processed: Fri Sep 16 06:31:55 2011 X-DSPAM-Confidence: 0.7501 X-DSPAM-Improbability: 1 in 301 chance of being spam X-DSPAM-Probability: 0.0000 X-DSPAM-Signature: 1,4e73259b11841871514974 X-DSPAM-Factors: 27, NFS, 0.01000, /data, 0.01000, /data, 0.01000, 2+93, 0.99000, tests+with, 0.05795, )+I, 0.06572, system+but, 0.07370, server, 0.07822, FreeBSD, 0.09467, FreeBSD, 0.09467, setup, 0.09893, file+system, 0.09916, Subject*(, 0.10954, installed, 0.11134, ?, 0.11976, ?, 0.11976, I+can't, 0.12002, when+doing, 0.13232, options+for, 0.13406, I'm+looking, 0.13513, to+boot, 0.86252, best+choice, 0.13858, I+only, 0.14079, max, 0.14362, the+box, 0.14473, back+end, 0.14841, to+configure, 0.14841 X-PolarisMail-Flags: x Subject: FS of choice for max random iops ( Maildir ) 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: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:58:38 -0000 I have a new server that I would like to use as a back-end Maildir storage shared through NFS. The specs are: FreeBSD 9.0 Beta 2 Xeon x3470 @ 2.93 quad-core CPU 4 GB Ram @ 1333mhz ( upgrading to 12GB tomorrow ) 3WARE 9650SE-16LP card with write cache enabled ( battery is installed ) 16 x WD RE3 1TB drives RAID 10 setup Right now I defined an entire array of 8TB ( all 16 disks ) separated in two pieces. 50 GB for FreeBSD to boot and the rest available to configure as storage. I've tried three options for the storage file system but I'm not sure which one is the best option since I can't really reproduce production conditions. I only ran tests with dd and bonnie and here's what I found: A. TEST1: dd bs=1024 if=/dev/zero of=/data/t1 count=1M 1. ZFS performed the worst, averaging 67MB/sec 2. UFS + gjournal did around 130MB/sec 3. UFS did around 190MB/sec B. TEST2 ( random file creation ): bonnie++ -d /data -c 10 -s 0 -n 50 -u 0 1. UFS + gjournal performed the worst 2. ZFS performed somewhat better 3. UFS performed the best again ( about 50% better ) C. TEST3 ( sequential writing ): bonnie++ -d /data -c 10 -s 8088 -n 0 -u 0 1. UFS + gjournal crashed the box 2. ZFS performed average 3. UFS performed better than ZFS ( about 50% better ) I really like the concepts behind ZFS and UFS + Journaling but the performance hit is quite drastic when compared to UFS. What I'm looking for here is max IOPS when doing random read/writes. Is UFS the best choice for this ? Do my results make sense ?