[CentOS] Best mkfs.ext2 performance options on RAID5 in CentOS 4.2

[Joshua Baker-LePain]

On Mon, 31 Oct 2005 at 4:10pm, Sean Staats wrote

> I can't seem to get the read and write performance better than
> approximately 40MB/s on an ext2 file system.  IMO, this is horrible
> performance for a 6-drive, hardware RAID 5 array.  Please have a look at
> what I'm doing and let me know if anybody has any suggestions on how to
> improve the performance...
>
> System specs:
> -----------------
> 2 x 2.8GHz Xeons
> 6GB RAM
> 1 3ware 9500S-12
> 2 x 6-drive, RAID 5 arrays with a stripe size of 256KB.  Each array is
> 2.3TB after formatting.
> ioscheduler set to use the deadline scheduler.

Make sure you are using the absolute latest firmware for the 3ware board 
(2.08.00.005).  There is a bad cache allocation bug in previous firmwares 
that kills performance with more than one unit (as you have).

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University