On 10/27/11 07:03 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
From: zfs-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of weiliam.hong
3. All 4 drives are connected to a single HBA, so I assume the mpt_sas
driver
is used. Are SAS and SATA drives handled differently ?
If they're all on the same HBA, they may be all on the same bus. It may be
*because* you're mixing SATA and SAS disks on the same bus. I'll suggest
separating the tests, don't run them concurrently, and see if there's any
difference.
Also, the HBA might have different defaults for SAS vs SATA, look in the HBA
to see if write back / write through are the same...
I don't know if the HBA gives you some way to enable/disable the on-disk
cache, but take a look and see.
Also, maybe the SAS disks are only doing SATA. If the HBA is only able to
do SATA, then SAS disks will work, but might not work as optimally as they
would if they were connected to a real SAS HBA.
And one final thing - If you're planning to run ZFS (as I suspect you are,
posting on this list running OI) ... It actually works *better* without any
HBA. *Footnote
*Footnote: ZFS works the worst, if you have ZIL enabled, no log device, and
no HBA. It's a significant improvement, if you add a battery backed or
nonvolatile HBA with writeback. It's a signfiicant improvement again, if
you get rid of the HBA, add a log device. It's a significant improvement
yet again, if you get rid of the HBA and log device, and run with ZIL
disabled (if your work load is compatible with a disabled ZIL.)
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First, ditto everything Edward says above. I'd add that your "dd" test
creates a lot of straight sequential IO, not anything that's likely to
be random IO. I can't speak to why your SAS might not be performing any
better than Edward did, but your SATA's probably screaming on straight
sequential IO, where on something more random I would bet they won't
perform as well as they do in this test. The tool I've seen used for
that sort of testing is iozone - I'm sure there are others as well, and
I can't attest what's better or worse.
cheers,
Brian
--
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Brian Wilson, Solaris SE, UW-Madison DoIT
Room 3114 CS&S 608-263-8047
brian.wilson(a)doit.wisc.edu
'I try to save a life a day. Usually it's my own.' - John Crichton
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