Support for Fusion IO drives?

2012-08-28 Thread Andy Young
We are investigating adding SSDs as ZIL devices to boost our ZFS write
performance. I read an article a while ago about iX Systems teaming up with
Fusion IO to integrate their hardware with FreeBSD. Does anyone know
anything about supported drivers for Fusion IO's iodrives?

Thanks!

Andy
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Re: Support for Fusion IO drives?

2012-08-28 Thread Josh Paetzel
  Original Message 
 Subject: Support for Fusion IO drives?
 Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:46:00 -0400
 From: Andy Young ayo...@mosaicarchive.com
 To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org


 We are investigating adding SSDs as ZIL devices to boost our ZFS write
 performance. I read an article a while ago about iX Systems teaming up
 with
 Fusion IO to integrate their hardware with FreeBSD. Does anyone know
 anything about supported drivers for Fusion IO's iodrives?

 Thanks!

 Andy
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I'll put on my iXsystems hat here, as well as my fast storage, ZFS and
Fusion-I/O hat.

The ZFS filesystem supports dedicated ZIL devices, which can accelerate
certain types of write requests, notably related to fsync.  The VMWare
NFS client issues a sync with every write, and most databases do as
well.  In those types of environments having a fast dedicated ZIL device
is almost essential.  In other environments the benefits of a dedicated
ZIL range from non-existent to substantial.

A good dedicated ZIL device is all about latency.  It doesn't need to be
large, in fact it will only ever handle 10 seconds of writes, so 10x
network bandwidth is worst case. (In most environments this means 20GB
is larger than needed).

Fusion-I/O cards are far too large to be cost effective ZIL devices.
Even though they do rock at I/O latency, the really fast ones are also
fairly large, so the $/GB on them isn't so attractive.  There are better
options for ZIL devices.

Another consideration is the Fusion-I/O driver is fairly memory hungry,
which competes with memory ZFS wants to use for read caching.

Now as an L2ARC device, that's a whole different can of worms.

Command line used: iozone -r 4k -s 96g -i 0 -i 1 -i 2 -t 8
Parent sees throughput for  8 readers   = 1712399.95 KB/sec
L2 ARC Breakdown:   197.45m
Hit Ratio:  98.61%  194.71m
L2 ARC Size: (Adaptive) 771.13  GiB
ARC Efficiency: 683.40m
Actual Hit Ratio:   71.09%  485.82m

~ 800GB test data, all served from cache.

If you are considering Fusion-I/O, the FreeBSD driver is generally not
released to the general public by Fusion-I/O, but can be obtained from
various partners. (I believe iXsystems is the only FreeBSD friendly
fusion-i/o partner but could be wrong about that)


-- 
Thanks,

Josh Paetzel

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Re: Support for Fusion IO drives?

2012-08-28 Thread Andrew Young
Thanks for the great feedback Josh! The optimum size for an ssd zil device was 
still an open question for us. I'm really glad to hear that they don't need to 
be that big.

What does zfs do with the zil if there is no dedicated zil device? Our servers 
consist of a small sata drive that holds the OS and a boatload of larger drives 
on a sas bus. What I'm wondering is if I simply replace the OS disk with an ssd 
will I get the same performance boost as if I added a dedicated ssd zil? 

Thanks!
Andy

On Aug 28, 2012, at 7:07 PM, Josh Paetzel j...@tcbug.org wrote:

  Original Message 
 Subject: Support for Fusion IO drives?
 Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:46:00 -0400
 From: Andy Young ayo...@mosaicarchive.com
 To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
 
 
 We are investigating adding SSDs as ZIL devices to boost our ZFS write
 performance. I read an article a while ago about iX Systems teaming up
 with
 Fusion IO to integrate their hardware with FreeBSD. Does anyone know
 anything about supported drivers for Fusion IO's iodrives?
 
 Thanks!
 
 Andy
 ___
 freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list
 http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware
 To unsubscribe, send any mail to
 freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
 
 
 
 
 
 I'll put on my iXsystems hat here, as well as my fast storage, ZFS and
 Fusion-I/O hat.
 
 The ZFS filesystem supports dedicated ZIL devices, which can accelerate
 certain types of write requests, notably related to fsync.  The VMWare
 NFS client issues a sync with every write, and most databases do as
 well.  In those types of environments having a fast dedicated ZIL device
 is almost essential.  In other environments the benefits of a dedicated
 ZIL range from non-existent to substantial.
 
 A good dedicated ZIL device is all about latency.  It doesn't need to be
 large, in fact it will only ever handle 10 seconds of writes, so 10x
 network bandwidth is worst case. (In most environments this means 20GB
 is larger than needed).
 
 Fusion-I/O cards are far too large to be cost effective ZIL devices.
 Even though they do rock at I/O latency, the really fast ones are also
 fairly large, so the $/GB on them isn't so attractive.  There are better
 options for ZIL devices.
 
 Another consideration is the Fusion-I/O driver is fairly memory hungry,
 which competes with memory ZFS wants to use for read caching.
 
 Now as an L2ARC device, that's a whole different can of worms.
 
 Command line used: iozone -r 4k -s 96g -i 0 -i 1 -i 2 -t 8
 Parent sees throughput for  8 readers   = 1712399.95 KB/sec
 L2 ARC Breakdown:   197.45m
 Hit Ratio:  98.61%  194.71m
 L2 ARC Size: (Adaptive) 771.13  GiB
 ARC Efficiency: 683.40m
 Actual Hit Ratio:   71.09%  485.82m
 
 ~ 800GB test data, all served from cache.
 
 If you are considering Fusion-I/O, the FreeBSD driver is generally not
 released to the general public by Fusion-I/O, but can be obtained from
 various partners. (I believe iXsystems is the only FreeBSD friendly
 fusion-i/o partner but could be wrong about that)
 
 
 -- 
 Thanks,
 
 Josh Paetzel
 
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Re: Support for Fusion IO drives?

2012-08-28 Thread Nikolay Denev
Fron the zpool man page:

 By default, the intent log is allocated from blocks within the main pool.
 However, it might be possible to get better performance using separate
 intent log devices such as NVRAM or a dedicated disk.

I was also contemplating the idea of a fast SSD on PCIe as a ZIL and L2ARC.
And given the fact that the SSD will not suffer from the different types and 
locations of IO requests,
maybe it makes sense to go with a big SSD, and partition it for a small ZIL 
partition,
and the rest for L2ARC. Anyone tried that?

Regards,
Nikolay

On Aug 29, 2012, at 2:47 AM, Andrew Young ayo...@mosaicarchive.com wrote:

 Thanks for the great feedback Josh! The optimum size for an ssd zil device 
 was still an open question for us. I'm really glad to hear that they don't 
 need to be that big.
 
 What does zfs do with the zil if there is no dedicated zil device? Our 
 servers consist of a small sata drive that holds the OS and a boatload of 
 larger drives on a sas bus. What I'm wondering is if I simply replace the OS 
 disk with an ssd will I get the same performance boost as if I added a 
 dedicated ssd zil? 
 
 Thanks!
 Andy
 
 On Aug 28, 2012, at 7:07 PM, Josh Paetzel j...@tcbug.org wrote:
 
  Original Message 
 Subject: Support for Fusion IO drives?
 Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:46:00 -0400
 From: Andy Young ayo...@mosaicarchive.com
 To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
 
 
 We are investigating adding SSDs as ZIL devices to boost our ZFS write
 performance. I read an article a while ago about iX Systems teaming up
 with
 Fusion IO to integrate their hardware with FreeBSD. Does anyone know
 anything about supported drivers for Fusion IO's iodrives?
 
 Thanks!
 
 Andy
 ___
 freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list
 http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware
 To unsubscribe, send any mail to
 freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
 
 
 
 
 
 I'll put on my iXsystems hat here, as well as my fast storage, ZFS and
 Fusion-I/O hat.
 
 The ZFS filesystem supports dedicated ZIL devices, which can accelerate
 certain types of write requests, notably related to fsync.  The VMWare
 NFS client issues a sync with every write, and most databases do as
 well.  In those types of environments having a fast dedicated ZIL device
 is almost essential.  In other environments the benefits of a dedicated
 ZIL range from non-existent to substantial.
 
 A good dedicated ZIL device is all about latency.  It doesn't need to be
 large, in fact it will only ever handle 10 seconds of writes, so 10x
 network bandwidth is worst case. (In most environments this means 20GB
 is larger than needed).
 
 Fusion-I/O cards are far too large to be cost effective ZIL devices.
 Even though they do rock at I/O latency, the really fast ones are also
 fairly large, so the $/GB on them isn't so attractive.  There are better
 options for ZIL devices.
 
 Another consideration is the Fusion-I/O driver is fairly memory hungry,
 which competes with memory ZFS wants to use for read caching.
 
 Now as an L2ARC device, that's a whole different can of worms.
 
 Command line used: iozone -r 4k -s 96g -i 0 -i 1 -i 2 -t 8
 Parent sees throughput for  8 readers   = 1712399.95 KB/sec
 L2 ARC Breakdown:   197.45m
 Hit Ratio:  98.61%  194.71m
 L2 ARC Size: (Adaptive) 771.13  GiB
 ARC Efficiency: 683.40m
 Actual Hit Ratio:   71.09%  485.82m
 
 ~ 800GB test data, all served from cache.
 
 If you are considering Fusion-I/O, the FreeBSD driver is generally not
 released to the general public by Fusion-I/O, but can be obtained from
 various partners. (I believe iXsystems is the only FreeBSD friendly
 fusion-i/o partner but could be wrong about that)
 
 
 -- 
 Thanks,
 
 Josh Paetzel
 
 ___
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 To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org

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