I'm just beginning the process of benchmarking and tuning a new server. Something I really haven't done before. I'm using Greg's book as a guide. I started with bonnie++ (1.96) and immediately got anomalous results (I think).
Hardware is as follows:
2x quad core xeon 5504 2.0Ghz, 2x4MB cache
192GB DDR3 1066 RAM
24x600GB 15K rpm SAS drives
adaptec 52445 controller
The default config, being tested at the moment, has 2 volumes, one 100GB and one 3.2TB, both are built from a stripe across all 24 disks, rather than splitting some spindles out for one volume and another set for the other volume. At the moment, I'm only testing against the single 3.2TB volume.
The smaller volume is partitioned into /boot (ext2 and tiny) and / (ext4 and 91GB). The larger volume is mounted as xfs with the following options (cribbed from an email to the list earlier this week, I think): logbufs=8,noatime,nodiratime,nobarrier,inode64,allocsize=16m
Bonnie++ delivered the expected huge throughput for sequential read and write. It seems in line with other benchmarks I found online. However, we are only seeing 180 seeks/sec, but seems quite low. I'm hoping someone might be able to confirm that and. hopefully, make some suggestions for tracking down the problem if there is one.
Results are as follows:
1.96,1.96,newbox,1,1315935572,379G,,1561,99,552277,46,363872,34,3005,90,981924,49,179.1,56,16,,,,,19107,69,+++++,+++,20006,69,19571,72,+++++,+++,20336,63,7111us,10666ms,14067ms,65528us,592ms,170ms,949us,107us,160us,383us,31us,130us
Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
newzonedb.z1.p 379G 1561 99 552277 46 363872 34 3005 90 981924 49 179.1 56
Latency 7111us 10666ms 14067ms 65528us 592ms 170ms
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
-Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files:max:min /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
newbox 16 19107 69 +++++ +++ 20006 69 19571 72 +++++ +++ 20336 63
Latency 949us 107us 160us 383us 31us 130us
My seek times increase when I reduce the size of the file, which isn't surprising, since once everything fits into cache, seeks aren't dependent on mechanical movement. However, I am seeing lots of bonnie++ results in google which appear to be for a file size that is 2x RAM which show numbers closer to 1000 seeks/sec (compared to my 180). Usually, I am seeing 16GB file for 8GB hosts. So what is an acceptable random seeks/sec number for a file that is 2x memory? And does file size make a difference independent of available RAM such that the enormous 379GB file that is created on my host is skewing the results to the low end?
