Daniel Phillips <phillips@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Have you got before/after benchmark results? See attached. These show a couple of things: (1) Dealing with lots of metadata slows things down a lot. Note the result of looking and reading lots of small files with tar (the last result). The NFS client has to both consult the NFS server *and* the cache. Not only that, but any asynchronicity the cache may like to do is rendered ineffective by the fact tar wants to do a read on a file pretty much directly after opening it. (2) Getting metadata from the local disk fs is slower than pulling it across an unshared gigabit ethernet from a server that already has it in memory. These points don't mean that fscache is no use, just that you have to consider carefully whether it's of use to *you* given your particular situation, and that depends on various factors. Note that currently FS-Caching is disabled for individual NFS files opened for writing as there's no way to handle the coherency problems thereby introduced. David --- =========================== FS-CACHE FOR NFS BENCHMARKS =========================== (*) The NFS client has a 1.86GHz Core2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM. (*) The NFS client has a Seagate ST380211AS 80GB 7200rpm SATA disk on an interface running in AHCI mode. The chipset is an Intel G965. (*) A partition of approx 4.5GB is committed to caching, and is formatted as Ext3 with a blocksize of 4096 and directory indices. (*) The NFS client is using SELinux. (*) The NFS server is running an in-kernel NFSd, and has a 2.66GHz Core2 Duo CPU and 6GB of RAM. The chipset is an Intel P965. (*) The NFS client is connected to the NFS server by Gigabit Ethernet. (*) The NFS mount is made with defaults for all options not relating to the cache: warthog:/warthog /warthog nfs rw,vers=3,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,hard,proto=tcp,timeo=600, retrans=2,sec=sys,fsc,addr=w.x.y.z 0 0 ================== FEW BIG FILES TEST ================== Where: (*) The NFS server has two files: [root@andromeda ~]# ls -l /warthog/bigfile -rw-rw-r-- 1 4043 4043 104857600 2006-11-30 09:39 /warthog/bigfile [root@andromeda ~]# ls -l /warthog/biggerfile -rw-rw-r-- 1 4043 4041 209715200 2006-03-21 13:56 /warthog/biggerfile Both of which are in memory on the server in all cases. No patches, cold NFS cache: [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/bigfile >/dev/null real 0m1.909s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.520s [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/biggerfile >/dev/null real 0m3.750s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.904s CONFIG_FSCACHE=n, cold NFS cache: [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/bigfile >/dev/null real 0m2.003s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.124s [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/biggerfile >/dev/null real 0m4.100s user 0m0.004s sys 0m0.488s Cold NFS cache, no disk cache: [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/bigfile >/dev/null real 0m2.084s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.136s [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/biggerfile >/dev/null real 0m4.020s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.720s Completely cold caches: [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/bigfile >/dev/null real 0m2.412s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.892s [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/biggerfile >/dev/null real 0m4.449s user 0m0.000s sys 0m2.300s Warm NFS pagecache: [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/bigfile >/dev/null real 0m0.067s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.064s [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/biggerfile >/dev/null real 0m0.133s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.136s Warm Ext3 pagecache, cold NFS pagecache: [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/bigfile >/dev/null real 0m0.173s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.172s [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/biggerfile >/dev/null real 0m0.316s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.316s Warm on-disk cache, cold pagecaches: [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/bigfile >/dev/null real 0m1.955s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.244s [root@andromeda ~]# time cat /warthog/biggerfile >/dev/null real 0m3.596s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.460s =================================== MANY SMALL/MEDIUM FILE READING TEST =================================== Where: (*) The NFS server has an old kernel tree: [root@andromeda ~]# du -s /warthog/aaa 347340 /warthog/aaa [root@andromeda ~]# find /warthog/aaa | wc -l 20443 All of which is in memory on the server in all cases. No patches, cold NFS cache: [root@andromeda ~]# time tar cf - /warthog/aaa >/dev/zero real 0m21.698s user 0m0.156s sys 0m5.284s CONFIG_FSCACHE=n, cold NFS cache: [root@andromeda ~]# time tar cf - /warthog/aaa >/dev/zero real 0m22.337s user 0m0.152s sys 0m5.476s Cold NFS cache, no disk cache: [root@andromeda ~]# time tar cf - /warthog/aaa >/dev/zero real 0m22.734s user 0m0.124s sys 0m5.796s Completely cold caches: [root@andromeda ~]# time tar cf - /warthog/aaa >/dev/zero real 0m37.497s user 0m0.248s sys 0m6.648s Warm NFS pagecache: [root@andromeda ~]# time tar cf - /warthog/aaa >/dev/zero real 0m15.167s user 0m0.168s sys 0m4.856s Warm Ext3 pagecache, cold NFS pagecache: [root@andromeda ~]# time tar cf - /warthog/aaa >/dev/zero tar: Removing leading `/' from member names tar: Removing leading `/' from hard link targets real 0m13.818s user 0m0.200s sys 0m5.492s Warm on-disk cache, cold pagecaches: [root@andromeda ~]# time tar cf - /warthog/aaa >/dev/zero real 1m54.350s user 0m0.044s sys 0m1.256s - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html