From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Dec 12 23: 0:54 2001
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Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 22:59:35 -0800 (PST)
From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
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To: Geoff Mohler <gemohler@www.speedtoys.com>
Cc: Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org>,
	Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.freebsd.org>,
	Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG,
	msmith@mass.dis.org
Subject: Re: NFS: How to make FreeBSD fall on its face in one easy step 
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.10112122306020.11838-100000@speedracer.speedtoys.com>
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:I suppose while were on the topic..
:
:Are there any hidden secrets to eeking out more performance from the BSD
:NFS client (other than version types and the normal fstab tweaks).
:
:Im the CS Labs manager at NetApp..and Im always trying to store away a
:secret here or there when someone comes to me with a problem in the field.
:
:FreeBSD since v2..rock on!

    * Make sure you don't have packet loss in your network (test with larger
      packets, aka ping -s 8192 rather then just ping, and perhaps test with
      a pattern (-p)).

    * Run a sufficient number of nfsd's on the server side, depending on
      load.  4 or 8 is typical.

    * Run nfsiod's on the client side.  I usually run 4.  This will drastically
      improve read-ahead and, for example, can bump linear read speeds on a
      100BaseTX network from 7 MBytes/sec to 11 MBytes/sec (full saturation).

    * Use NFS version 3 when possible (this is the default)

    * Sometimes playing around with the various attribute cache timeouts
      (see 'man mount_nfs') helps.  Sometimes it doesn't.

    For extreme performance there are some zero-copy patches floating around
    which have not been integrated into the main tree.  Generally, though,
    your NFS performance is going to be ultimately limited by your server's
    disk performance.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon@backplane.com>


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