[CentOS] 3Ware 9550SX-4LP Performance

[Kirk Bocek]

Francois Caen wrote:
> On 9/30/06, Kirk Bocek <t004 at kbocek.com> wrote:
>> Whoa! Block writes jumped to 130MB/Sec with no other changes. XFS Rocks!
> 
> Too bad it's not supported and QA'd by the upstream vendor and
> therefore shouldn't be used in production on CentOS :-(
> 

Well hey! I think the downstream vendor rocks too! And it sounds like 
centosplus has done some defacto QA too. :)

Doing some further benchmarking, I added 'blockdev --setra 32768 /dev/sdb' to 
my previous setup and ran a bunch of benchmarks overnight. The results:

                  ------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
Beryl   50G:256k 58911  93 198971  36 57194   8 47548  73 166183  14  62.2   2
Beryl   50G:256k 60773  94 196980  36 56325   8 47719  74 166580  14  61.8   2
Beryl   50G:256k 59977  94 187017  36 55981   8 47975  74 165562  14  64.0   2
Beryl   50G:256k 60193  94 196472  36 56896   8 47913  74 166449  14  63.0   2
Beryl   50G:256k 59802  94 201524  38 56746   8 48084  75 168710  14  64.7   1
Beryl   50G:256k 60677  94 199188  37 52997   7 47682  74 163131  15  64.0   2
Beryl   50G:256k 60061  94 191342  37 55949   9 47794  74 165348  15  64.3   2
Beryl   50G:256k 60261  94 184231  35 56235   8 48090  74 166860  14  61.8   2
                  ------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
Beryl         16  3597  17 +++++ +++  4088  18  3101  15 +++++ +++   856   4
Beryl         16  3240  16 +++++ +++  4561  20  3030  15 +++++ +++   755   3
Beryl         16  3039  14 +++++ +++  4446  20  3111  15 +++++ +++   754   3
Beryl         16  3317  16 +++++ +++  4509  21  2978  15 +++++ +++   767   3
Beryl         16  5037  25 +++++ +++  4801  20  3349  17 +++++ +++   891   4
Beryl         16  3390  16 +++++ +++  3341  14  3222  17 +++++ +++   806   3
Beryl         16  3547  17 +++++ +++  3700  16  2986  15 +++++ +++   799   4
Beryl         16  3556  18 +++++ +++  3183  13  3391  17 +++++ +++   863   4

Block writes are still close to 200MB/Sec but block reads still haven't 
changed from 166MB/Sec. :(

Anyone have any thoughts on increasing read speed other than using blockdev?

Kirk Bocek