nfsd using too much CPU when L2ARC is in the pool

[aufalien]

Well, I know others think its over priced but I buy em often, the LSI 9201-16i;

http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/lsi-sas-9201-16i.aspx

That will get you 16 ports to use so you can move all your drives to it, both spinning rust and SSDs.

Its full height but half length. Its like ~$400.

I know others suggest an IBM with some kind of port multiplier or something. But I prefer a cleaner approach. Plus others in your organization will depend on this server and you don't want to let them down.

 

[dniq]

Did you watch wait times on io from your pools/disks ?

I looked at gstat and the latency seemed suspiciously high - at times spiking at 30ms...

 

[dniq]

Well, I know others think its over priced but I buy em often, the LSI 9201-16i;

http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/lsi-sas-9201-16i.aspx

That will get you 16 ports to use so you can move all your drives to it, both spinning rust and SSDs.

Its full height but half length. Its like ~$400.

I know others suggest an IBM with some kind of port multiplier or something. But I prefer a cleaner approach. Plus others in your organization will depend on this server and you don't want to let them down.

The question is, how do I "marry" it to the Dell r720xd's backplane... I'll have to go to the data center tomorrow to see how the back plane is connected. But I suspect Dell did everything in their power to make it as incompatible with other controllers as possible :(

 

[aufalien]

Oh, well not really knowing your Dell, I'm unsure. Dell does I think make a HBA non Raid version of that Raid controller you have. At least I think they do as my old 1U Dell had one of those Percs and I was contemplating getting the Dell non Raid version. But the server was simply too old for my liking.

I'll post the specs if any one wants it, free BTW.

 

[aufalien]

Forgot to mention, don't be afraid to use way more threads. I use 96 but have way more clients.

 

[dniq]

Oh, well not really knowing your Dell, I'm unsure. Dell does I think make a HBA non Raid version of that Raid controller you have. At least I think they do as my old 1U Dell had one of those Percs and I was contemplating getting the Dell non Raid version. But the server was simply too old for my liking.

I'll post the specs if any one wants it, free BTW.

The only non-RAID one they offer for this server is the H310, which, it seems, is crap :( So I'll check if I can replace it with the LSI - hopefully I can connect the Dell's backplane to it.

 

[aufalien]

Well, I really like how well made Dells are and they look cool, but a PITA to upgrade. Supermicro is flexible but there warez is ugly as hell. Sun had some cool looking stuff but I dislike Oracle.

HP makes cool looking gear as well but of all the stuff I've dealt with, SGI had deeee besstttt. I'm digressing here.

 

[dniq]

Well, I really like how well made Dells are and they look cool, but a PITA to upgrade. Supermicro is flexible but there warez is ugly as hell. Sun had some cool looking stuff but I dislike Oracle.

HP makes cool looking gear as well but of all the stuff I've dealt with, SGI had deeee besstttt. I'm digressing here.

Nah... Who cares how the server looks? It's sitting in a rack, in a data center - I don't even know or remember what most of my servers look like :)

And, by the way, FreeNAS is the only server I have that runs on bare metal. All other servers I have are VMs, running under either ESXi 4.1 or 5.5 (in the process of upgrading to 5.5).

 

[dniq]

Speaking of servers, I kinda liked Apple's Xserve and Xsan - I wish they hadn't discontinued them :(

 

[toadman]

And, by the way, FreeNAS is the only server I have that runs on bare metal. All other servers I have are VMs, running under either ESXi 4.1 or 5.5 (in the process of upgrading to 5.5).

Not an insignificant point...

 

[aufalien]

Speaking of servers, I kinda liked Apple's Xserve and Xsan - I wish they hadn't discontinued them :(

Yes the Xserves were very well made indeed. It caused a chink in our armor when they were discontinued and we had to up our MDCs to Mavs. Oh well.

 

[aufalien]

Nah... Who cares how the server looks? It's sitting in a rack, in a data center - I don't even know or remember what most of my servers look like :)

And, by the way, FreeNAS is the only server I have that runs on bare metal. All other servers I have are VMs, running under either ESXi 4.1 or 5.5 (in the process of upgrading to 5.5).

Actually I've 3 small data centers and I walk through em few times a week. I like to see and hear what they are doing first hand but I'm old skewl I guess. Kinda like I prefer talking rather then texting.

 

[L]

Yea, i can't say for sure, but a hop on the controller or minimal latency on a device can make a difference. I am just starting to prepare a class around fault analysis and would love to hear how this turns out. This is an interesting use case.