Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Bob Friesenhahn
On Sat, 19 Apr 2008, michael schuster wrote: > that's true most of the time ... unless free memory gets *really* low, then > Solaris *does* start to swap (ie page out pages by process). IIRC, the > threshold for swapping is minfree (measured in pages), and the value that > needs to fall below t

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread michael schuster
Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Sun, 20 Apr 2008, A Darren Dunham wrote: >> I think these paragraphs are referring to two different concepts with >> "swap". Swapfiles or backing store in the first, and virtual memory >> space in the second. > > The "swap" area is mis-named since Solaris never "swaps"

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Bob Friesenhahn
On Sun, 20 Apr 2008, A Darren Dunham wrote: > > I think these paragraphs are referring to two different concepts with > "swap". Swapfiles or backing store in the first, and virtual memory > space in the second. The "swap" area is mis-named since Solaris never "swaps". Some older operating syste

Re: [zfs-discuss] Solaris 10U5 ZFS features?

2008-04-19 Thread Vincent Fox
I would hope at least it has that giant FSYNC patch for ZFS already present? We ran into this issue and it nearly killed Solaris here in our Data Center as a product it was such a bad experience. Fix was in 127728 (x86) and 127729 (Sparc). Well anyhow good to see U5 is out, hadn't even heard ab

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread A Darren Dunham
On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 10:28:45AM -0700, Richard Elling wrote: > Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > > I don't agree that if swap is used that performance will necessarily > > suck. If swap is available, Solaris will mount /tmp there, which > > helps temporary file performance. It is best to look at syst

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread A Darren Dunham
On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 12:16:11PM -0500, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Sat, 19 Apr 2008, Richard Elling wrote: > > > > Don't worry about swapping on CF. In most cases, you won't be > > using the swap device for normal operations. You can use the > > swap -l command to observe the swap device usage

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Richard Elling
Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Sat, 19 Apr 2008, Richard Elling wrote: > >> Don't worry about swapping on CF. In most cases, you won't be >> using the swap device for normal operations. You can use the >> swap -l command to observe the swap device usage. No usage >> means that you can probably d

Re: [zfs-discuss] how to measure in kernel how much time one operation takes

2008-04-19 Thread Richard Elling
shri wrote: > what call to be used in kernel to measure time taken for a operation if time > quantum i s smaller than tick(frequency). > i tried using ddi_get_lbolt at time t1 and t2.(at time t1 operation started > and t2 it finished) but it always gives me zero(t2-t1). > > Try get hi-res

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Bob Friesenhahn
On Sat, 19 Apr 2008, Richard Elling wrote: > > Don't worry about swapping on CF. In most cases, you won't be > using the swap device for normal operations. You can use the > swap -l command to observe the swap device usage. No usage > means that you can probably do away with it. If you actually

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Richard Elling
Pascal Vandeputte wrote: > I see. I'll only be running a minimal Solaris install with ZFS and samba on > this machine, so I wouldn't expect immediate memory issues with 2 gigabytes > of RAM. OTOH I read that ZFS is a real memory hog so I'll be careful. > Memory usage is completely dependent o

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Richard Elling
Pascal Vandeputte wrote: > Thanks a lot for your input, I understand those numbers a lot better now! > I'll look deeper into hardware issues. It's a pity that I can't get older > BIOS versions flashed. But I've got some other hardware lying around. > > Someone suggested lowering the 35 iops defau

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Pascal Vandeputte
Thanks a lot for your input, I understand those numbers a lot better now! I'll look deeper into hardware issues. It's a pity that I can't get older BIOS versions flashed. But I've got some other hardware lying around. Someone suggested lowering the 35 iops default, but I can't find any informat

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Pascal Vandeputte
Great, superb write speeds with a similar setup, my motivation is growing again ;-) It just occurs to me that I have a spare Silicon Image 3124 SATA card lying around. I was postponing testing of these drives on my desktop because it has an Intel ICH9 SATA controller probably quite similar to t

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Pascal Vandeputte
(the lt and gt symbols are filtered by the forum I guess; replaced with minus signs now) # format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c1t0d0 -DEFAULT cyl 45597 alt 2 hd 255 sec 126- /[EMAIL PROTECTED],0/pci8086,[EMAIL PROTECTED],2/[EMAIL PROTECTED],0

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Pascal Vandeputte
Thanks, I'll try installing Solaris on a 1GB CF card in an CF-to-IDE adapter, so all disks will then be completely available to ZFS. Then I needn't worry about different size block devices either. I also find it weird that the boot disk is displayed differently from the other two disks if I run

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Pascal Vandeputte
I see. I'll only be running a minimal Solaris install with ZFS and samba on this machine, so I wouldn't expect immediate memory issues with 2 gigabytes of RAM. OTOH I read that ZFS is a real memory hog so I'll be careful. I've tested swap on a ZFS volume now, it's really easy so I'll try running

Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS raidz write performance:what to expect from SATA drives on ICH9R

2008-04-19 Thread Marc Bevand
Pascal Vandeputte hotmail.com> writes: > > I'm at a loss, I'm thinking about just settling for the 20MB/s write > speeds with a 3-drive raidz and enjoy life... As Richard Elling pointed out, the ~10ms per IO operation implies seeking, or hardware/firmware problems. The mere fact you observed a l