Hi! > We currently have a AoE SAN running in production that needs several > refinements, which I'll tackle in individual mails over the coming > days. [SNIP] > My next question is on leveraging multiple gigabit connections, which > leads me to the following questions: > > Since vblade uses a specified device, should I use channel bonding to > aggregate multiple links together for more performance ? If yes, is > 802.3ad the best bonding method since the switch is involved in > deciding down which link the ethernet frames are sent, or am I missing > the plot on this one. I currently have 4 GBE ports per storage > controller that I can leverage, and am considering jumping to dual 10 > GBE interfaces to the switch. Hmm... I think the main issue is caused by using vblade. I'd consider vblade kind of a reference implementation. Starting multiple vblade processes will not help either because it will just eat up available iops be introducing unnecessary, uncoordinated reads and writes. When talking about performance you have two options: Buy Coraid hardware -- as already suggested or choose a different implementation like ggaoed[1]. There you may specify multiple interfaces so you will get automatic load balancing and so on.
Using link aggregation (802.3ad or linux bonding drivers) will not help in any way to improve performance between a storage server and a single frontend: only one lane will be used, based on source and destination mac (though it might work when using 2 different nics on the frontend -- but this will lead to endless issues when the switch decides to choose a different link). -- Adi [1] http://code.google.com/p/ggaoed/ PS: Just in case you find the time, it would be great if you could post a review of the different aoe implementations! :-) -- There is qaoed as well, for example... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb _______________________________________________ Aoetools-discuss mailing list Aoetools-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/aoetools-discuss
