atom feed45 messages in org.freebsd.freebsd-fsRe: Areca vs. ZFS performance testing.
FromSent OnAttachments
Jeremy ChadwickOct 30, 2008 8:31 pm 
Danny CarrollOct 30, 2008 9:07 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickOct 30, 2008 9:33 pm 
Andrew SnowOct 30, 2008 9:43 pm 
Danny CarrollOct 30, 2008 9:47 pm 
Danny CarrollOct 30, 2008 9:49 pm 
Danny CarrollOct 30, 2008 9:54 pm 
Simun MikecinOct 31, 2008 2:20 am 
Simun MikecinOct 31, 2008 4:56 am 
Peter SchullerNov 2, 2008 7:08 am 
Simun MikecinNov 3, 2008 12:31 am 
DieterNov 12, 2008 2:57 pm 
Danny CarrollNov 12, 2008 9:46 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickNov 12, 2008 11:42 pm 
Willem Jan WithagenNov 13, 2008 12:32 am 
Danny CarrollNov 13, 2008 3:09 am 
Danny CarrollNov 13, 2008 5:58 am 
Nikolay DenevNov 13, 2008 7:05 am 
Scott LongNov 13, 2008 8:49 am 
Danny CarrollNov 13, 2008 12:46 pm 
Danny CarrollNov 13, 2008 12:59 pm 
Eirik ØverbyNov 16, 2008 12:26 pm 
Danny CarrollNov 16, 2008 7:15 pm 
Matt SimersonNov 16, 2008 10:06 pm 
Jeremy ChadwickNov 16, 2008 11:07 pm 
Wes MorganNov 17, 2008 3:26 am 
Danny CarrollNov 17, 2008 3:42 am 
Matt SimersonNov 17, 2008 1:04 pm 
Matt SimersonNov 17, 2008 2:07 pm 
Danny CarrollNov 17, 2008 3:45 pm 
Jan MikkelsenDec 2, 2008 2:38 am 
Wes MorganDec 2, 2008 4:04 am 
Danny CarrollJan 7, 2009 4:33 pm 
Zaphod BeeblebroxJan 7, 2009 11:40 pm 
Koen SmitsJan 7, 2009 11:48 pm 
Nikolay DenevJan 8, 2009 1:19 am 
Danny CarrollJan 8, 2009 6:29 pm 
Koen SmitsJan 9, 2009 12:46 am 
Danny CarrollJan 9, 2009 1:02 am 
Koen SmitsJan 9, 2009 7:57 am 
Andrew SnowJan 9, 2009 6:38 pm 
Danny CarrollJan 9, 2009 8:58 pm 
Danny CarrollJan 20, 2009 10:40 pm 
Koen SmitsJan 21, 2009 1:15 am 
Danny CarrollJan 21, 2009 5:14 am 
Subject:Re: Areca vs. ZFS performance testing.
From:Jeremy Chadwick (koi@FreeBSD.org)
Date:Oct 30, 2008 8:31:45 pm
List:org.freebsd.freebsd-fs

Cross-posting this to freebsd-fs, as I'm sure people there will have other recommendations. (This is one of those rare cross-posting situations.....)

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 01:14:55PM +1000, Danny Carroll wrote:

I've just become the proud new owner of an Areca 1231-ML which I plan to use to set up an office server.

I'm very curious as to how ZFS compares to a hardware solution so I plan to run some tests before I put this thing to work.

The purpose of this email is to find out if anyone would like to see specific things tested as well as perhaps get some advice on how to get the most information out of the tests.

My setup: Supermicro X7SBE board with 2Gb ram and an E6550 Core 2 Duo. FreeBSD 7.0-Stable compiled with amd64 sources from mid August. 1 x ST9120822AS 120gb disk (for the OS) For the array(s) 9 x ST31000340AS 1tb disks 1 x ST31000333AS 1tb disk (trying to swap this for a ST31000340AS)

My thoughts are to do the following tests with bonnie++: 1 5 disk Areca Raid5 2 5 Disk ZFS RaidZ1 (Connected to Areca in JBOD mode) 3 5 Disk ZFS RaidZ1 (Connected to ICH9 On board SATA controller) 4 5 disk Areca Raid6 5 5 Disk ZFS RaidZ2 (Connected to Areca in JBOD mode) 6 5 Disk ZFS RaidZ2 (Connected to ICH9 On board SATA controller) 7 10 disk Areca Raid5 8 10 Disk ZFS RaidZ1 (Connected to Areca in JBOD mode) 9 10 disk Areca Raid6 10 10 Disk ZFS RaidZ2 (Connected to Areca in JBOD mode)

My aim is to see what sort of performance gain you get by buying an Areca card for use in JBOD as well as seeing how ZFS compares to the hardware solution which offers write caching etc. I'm really only interested in testing ZFS's volume management performance, so for that reason I will also put ZFS on the Areca Raid drives. Not sure if it's a good idea to create 2 Raid drives and stripe them or simply use 1 large disk and give it to ZFS.

Any thoughts on this setup as well as advice on what options to give to bonnie++ (or suggestions on another disk testing package) are very welcome.

I think these sets of tests are good. There are some others I'd like to see, but they'd only be applicable if the 1231-ML has hardware cache. I can mention what those are if the card does have hardware caching.

I do have some concern about the size of the eventual array and ZFS' use of system memory. Are there guidelines available that give advice on how much memory a box should have with large ZFS arrays?

The general concept is: "the more RAM the better". However, if you're using RELENG_7, then there's not much point (speaking solely about ZFS) to getting more than maybe 3 or 4GB; you're still limited to a 2GB kmap maximum.

Regarding size of the array vs. memory usage: as long as you tune kmem and ZFS ARC, you shouldn't have much trouble. There have been some key people reporting lately that they run very large ZFS arrays without issue, with proper tuning.

Also, just a reminder: do not pick a value of 2048M for kmem_size or kmem_size_max; the machine won't boot/work. You shouldn't go above something like 1536M, although some have tuned slightly above that with success. (You need to remember that there is more to kernel memory allocation than just this, so you don't want to exhaust it all assigning it to kmap. Hope that makes sense...)

Can an AMD64 kernel make use of memory above 2g?

Only on CURRENT; 7.x cannot, and AFAIK, will never be able to, as the engineering efforts required to fix it are too great.

I look forward to seeing your numbers. Someone here might be able to compile them into some graphs and other whatnots to make things easier for future readers.

Thanks for doing all of this!

-- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

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