Hardware tuning recommendations

[mangelot]

Hello,

I've setup an freenas 11 (latest) server with FC target..

1x Intel SR25ALLRX (2x Xeon 5420, 64GB RAM maximum memory & 6x Sata2 bays)
2x USB 32GB sandisk - Mirrored (freenas boot)
6x 2TB SATA3 128MB cache WD Black RE4 WD2004FBYZ - Mirror
2x PCIe LSI Warpdrive (4x100GB disk each..)
(2x 3 drives stripe L2ARC - 2x 1 drive mirrored SLOG)
1x Qlogic 2564 (4x 8Gbps ports fiber channel target)

This is my current setup:

mirror-0
WD Black RE4 (on Sata2)
WD Black RE4 (on Sata2)
mirror-1
WD Black RE4 (on Sata2)
WD Black RE4 (on Sata2)
mirror-2
WD Black RE4 (on Sata2)
WD Black RE4 (on Sata2)
logs
mirror-3
first PCIe LSI Warpdrive
second PCIe LSI Warpdrive
cache
first PCIe LSI Warpdrive
first PCIe LSI Warpdrive
first PCIe LSI Warpdrive
second PCIe LSI Warpdrive
second PCIe LSI Warpdrive
second PCIe LSI Warpdrive


Connected 1x 8 Gbps port Fiberchannel (no MPIO/Mulitpath) and tested with Bonnie++ with resulting output:

Without SLOG
Sequential Output 484784 K/sec
Sequential Input 409746 K/sec

With SLOG
Sequential Output 606975 K/sec
Sequential Input 427829 K/sec

My question is this performance acceptable? or can I get more performance with some tuning (tunables)?

 

[Chris Moore]

This all looks like very old hardware from 2010 - 2012 era. The CPU is an LGA771 at 2.5 GHz (launched in 2007) quad core with no hyper-threading. The system board is from 2010, but still hobbled by the 2007 CPU. I would not be shocked to find that you just can't do better with that gear and you certainly can't get better than he 8 Gbps limit imposed by the FC hardware.

What are you trying to do with this?

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. The spec on the WD RE4 drive is 138 MB/s for sustained transfer. You have three vdevs and you do get a little read advantage from having mirrors, but if you figure 3 vdevs times 138 MB/s it would give you 414 MB/s and you are doing better than that on read and almost that good on write, so you can't really complain.

http://products.wdc.com/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701338.pdf

 

[Chris Moore]

My question is this performance acceptable? or can I get more performance with some tuning (tunables)?

No amount of tuning will bypass a hardware limitation. The low drive count and generally slow nature of the drives is your biggest bottleneck. Speed is a function of drive count combined with having very fast drives...

 

[mangelot]

PS. The spec on the WD RE4 drive is 138 MB/s for sustained transfer. You have three vdevs and you do get a little read advantage from having mirrors, but if you figure 3 vdevs times 138 MB/s it would give you 414 MB/s and you are doing better than that on read and almost that good on write, so you can't really complain.

http://products.wdc.com/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701338.pdf

I'm Using second generation RE4 drives type WD2004FBYZ
https://www.wdc.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800066.pdf
200MB/s sustained transfer 3x 600MB/s


But about the tuning...
The reason why I asking, is that I think that the 8Gbps fiber is limited , Because when I try to set 2x LSI warpdrives in Stripe (8x 100GB sata3 SSD)
I would believe to get more than the above speed results for the spinning disks, but infact it's almost the same.. ??
Okey, I know that on a 8Gbps fiber you won't receive the full 800MB/s but half of that doesn't seem right..

Qlogic 2564 is set to fullduplex: hint.isp.0.fullduplex=1