On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 8:27 AM, Dot Yet <dot....@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Everyone, > > I am trying to setup a small size iscsi based storage. Total 16 > spindles in a system, connected to two Solaris 10 hosts through intel > gig nics. The disks are configured in a mirror, and locally they > perform OK. When I try to export them through COMSTAR to those Solaris > 10 hosts, unfortunately, the performance tanks. I can only get around > 70 to 80 MB/s. all the nics running iscsi traffic are connected to the > same unmanaged switch. > > I have read about link aggregation. Do you think adding a quad port > intel NIC and a managed switch can help in getting higher speed over > iscsi. I also read that having a single connection to the target will > always use only one of the linked nics, not more than one, so one will > stay limited to 1 gb throughput only. Right now, I have 4 connections > per target. do you think link aggregation will spread these 4 > connections over the 4 nics and give me higher throughput. I am not > looking for exact 4 gb wire speeds, but still something better than 1 > gb.
Link aggregation will give you higher total throughput but individual transfers will still be limited to the maximum bandwidth of a single NIC. Depending on the port selection policy that you define, more than one client could be using the same NIC. Read dladm(1M) for more details (create-aggr subcommand). You are not going to get more than 1Gbps for each transfer though. Perhaps you should look into 10Gbps NICs if that can't be worked around. As a result of multiple NICs being aggregated, you will get better availability in case one NIC dies. However, the remaining NICs should be sized accordingly to accept the additional load. > > Also, do i really need a managed switch to connect these or can this > be done through a direct cross cable connection? I've never used link aggregation with crossover cables but I suppose it would work if both sides understand how to do it. A managed switch is your best option in the long run. -- Giovanni _______________________________________________ storage-discuss mailing list storage-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/storage-discuss
